lowbrowculture https://lowbrowculture.com/ Recent content on lowbrowculture Hugo -- gohugo.io en-us Mon, 04 Mar 2024 10:42:29 +0000 Towards a quieter, friendlier web • Cory Dransfeldt → https://coryd.dev/posts/2024/towards-a-quieter-friendlier-web/ Mon, 04 Mar 2024 10:42:29 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/towards-a-quieter-friendlier-web--cory-dransfeldt/ <p>This is a great list of some principles that would make the internet more pleasant for everyone. This one, in particular, stood out as one I think about a lot:</p> <blockquote> <p>You aren&rsquo;t obligated to reply or participate in any discussion. Don&rsquo;t feel bad about not engaging if it doesn&rsquo;t serve you. Arguing on the internet is rarely healthy, dialogue and discussion certainly can be.</p> </blockquote> <p>Don&rsquo;t speak unless you can improve the silence. 100%.</p> Nimona - How Are You I'm Fine Thanks → https://gingerhaze.tumblr.com/post/13850449969/some-character-designs-with-someatypical-color Mon, 26 Feb 2024 08:42:15 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/how-are-you-im-fine-thanks/ <p>TIL <em>Nimona</em> (one of my daughter&rsquo;s favourite movies from last year) started life as a sketch on Tumblr.</p> The Scratch - Pull Your Jocks Up - YouTube https://lowbrowculture.com/video/the-scratch---pull-your-jocks-up-official-video---youtube/ Fri, 23 Feb 2024 08:52:06 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/video/the-scratch---pull-your-jocks-up-official-video---youtube/ <div class="embed video-player"> <iframe class="youtube-player" type="text/html" width="640" height="385" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/U6I39ov1OII" allowfullscreen frameborder="0"> </iframe> </div> <p>This is currently on <em>hard</em> rotation in my house.</p> /uses page https://lowbrowculture.com/post/uses-page/ Sat, 17 Feb 2024 19:06:39 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/uses-page/ <blockquote> <p>This is my rifle. There are many like it, but this one is mine.</p> </blockquote> <p>I&rsquo;m a real sucker for a good <a href="https://uses.tech">/uses</a> page. Because they&rsquo;re <em>real people</em> taking their time to document the things they&rsquo;re passionate about, hey can be a great way of discovering new tools that you might not have come across before.</p> <p>Anyway, after weeks of procrastination, <a href="https://lowbrowculture.com/uses">I&rsquo;ve added my own /uses page</a>. I hope someone will find something useful on it.</p> Pluralistic: How I got scammed (05 Feb 2024) → https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/05/cyber-dunning-kruger/ Tue, 06 Feb 2024 13:18:33 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/pluralistic-how-i-got-scammed-05-feb-2024--pluralistic-daily-links-from-cory-doctorow/ <p>If Cory Doctorow can fall victim to a phishing scam, what hope do the rest of us have?</p> <p>Coincidentally, someone on the <a href="https://irishtechcommunity.com/">Irish Tech Community</a> slack reported that they were the victim of an attempt where their &ldquo;bank&rdquo; read out the first 8 digits of their virtual card and was asking them to read out the last 8. Turns out that you can basically construct the first 8 digits of any card if you know the card type, the issuer and the issuing country.</p> <p>Let&rsquo;s be careful out there.</p> Physical Media 2024 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/physical-media-2024/ Mon, 05 Feb 2024 11:20:06 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/physical-media-2024/ <p>Anecdata!</p> <p>We were in Harvey Norman yesterday buying a new fridge. Have you ever been fridge-shopping with two small children? Hoooly shit is it hard work. After myself and my wife finally managed to snag 10 seconds of peace and quiet to discuss the options to ourselves, I took the kids off to distract them with the demo-mode TVs while my wife talked to a salesperson.</p> <p>While the kids were hypnotised by the crisp images of crystal glasses melting like ice, I used the opportunity to ask a salesperson if they happened to have any 4K Blu-Ray players because I&rsquo;m <a href="https://lowbrowculture.com/link/pluralistic-if-buying-isnt-owning-piracy-isnt-stealing-08-dec-2023--pluralistic-daily-links-from-cory-doctorow/">doubling down on physical media</a>. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll have to check the system&rdquo; he says. So we walk across the shop to their DOS-based(!) inventory system. Along the way we pass an entire row of record players. About 20 of them. Everything from cheapo all-in-ones to top-of-the-range Pro-ject ones. They were even selling a few vinyl records. &ldquo;No, we don&rsquo;t have any 4K Blu-Ray players,&rdquo; says the salesman, &ldquo;we could order one in if you&rsquo;d like?&rdquo;</p> <p>Apparently in 2024, a 150-year-old technology is better catered for in a shop like Harvey Norman than a 20-year old one.</p> <p>(Incidentally, DID Electrical, Curry&rsquo;s and Power City also did not have any Blu-Ray players for sale, but they <em>did</em> have DVD players for sale.)</p> <p>See also:</p> <p><a href="https://deadline.com/2023/11/universal-oppenheimer-sold-out-4k-discs-christopher-nolan-best-buy-amazon-1235641121/">Universal “Working To Replenish” Sold-Out Stock Of ‘Oppenheimer’ 4K Discs In Time For Holidays</a><br> <a href="https://variety.com/2023/digital/news/best-buy-ending-dvd-blu-ray-disc-sales-1235754919/">Best Buy to End DVD, Blu-ray Disc Sales </a></p> How to Install Custom Fonts on Your Kindle → https://www.howtogeek.com/734645/how-to-install-custom-fonts-on-your-kindle/ Mon, 29 Jan 2024 10:38:31 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/how-to-install-custom-fonts-on-your-kindle/ <p>This is probably old news, but TIL you can install your own fonts on your Kindle.</p> Zed Industries - Zed is now open source → https://zed.dev/blog/zed-is-now-open-source Fri, 26 Jan 2024 09:55:59 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/zed-is-now-open-source/ <p>I&rsquo;m a reluctant Visual Studio Code user. It&rsquo;s got a lot of great design ideas but it&rsquo;s so slowwwwww and I miss the speed of something like <a href="https://www.sublimetext.com/">Sublime Text</a>. Zed (from the makers of <a href="https://atom-editor.cc/">Atom</a>) is an editor that prioritises speed but copies a lot from vscode. It&rsquo;s just missing vscode&rsquo;s massive extensibility, but now it&rsquo;s been open sourced maybe that will change? One worth keeping an eye on.</p> Why Platformer is leaving Substack - by Casey Newton → https://www.platformer.news/p/why-platformer-is-leaving-substack Fri, 12 Jan 2024 07:56:21 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/why-platformer-is-leaving-substack---by-casey-newton/ <p>This is pretty huge - Casey Newton&rsquo;s is taking his newsletter off of Substack because of its ridiculous policies on hate speech.</p> <blockquote> <p>In 2023, we added more than 70,000 free subscribers. While I would love to credit that growth exclusively to our journalism and analysis, I believe we have seen firsthand how quickly and aggressively tools like &lt;substack&rsquo;s newsletter promotion features&gt; can grow a publication.</p> <p>And if Substack can grow a publication like ours that quickly, it can grow other kinds of publications, too.</p> </blockquote> All the Types of Science Fiction - McSweeney’s Internet Tendency → https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/all-the-types-of-science-fiction Thu, 11 Jan 2024 20:20:53 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/all-the-types-of-science-fiction---mcsweeneys-internet-tendency/ <p>I think I&rsquo;ve read most of these books. My favourites are:</p> <blockquote> <ol start="20"> <li> <p>Basically Mein Kampf</p> </li> <li> <p>Bomb Cock 2: Mutually Assured Destruction</p> </li> </ol> </blockquote> <p>and</p> <blockquote> <ol start="42"> <li>The Turing Test, but sexy</li> </ol> </blockquote> Old Made Good https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/old-made-good/ Wed, 10 Jan 2024 22:26:38 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/old-made-good/ <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2024/busy.jpg#center" alt="&ldquo;Stop the glorification of busy&rdquo;"></p> <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2024/do-no-harm.jpg#center" alt="&ldquo;DO NO HARM BUT TAKE NO SHIT&rdquo;"></p> <p><a href="https://oldmadegoodnashville.bigcartel.com/">Old Made Good</a> is a vintage shop in Nashville that takes boring old prints and makes them a thousand times better they&rsquo;re extremely My Shit. <a href="https://www.instagram.com/oldmadegood">Their Instagram</a> was an instant-follow for me.</p> Galerie → https://www.galerie.com/ Thu, 04 Jan 2024 08:21:00 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/galerie/ <p>Wes Anderson has started a movie club/streaming site, where each month&rsquo;s films are curated by different people like <a href="https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0590122/?ref_=fn_al_nm_1">Mike Mills</a> and <a href="https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1645832/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0_tt_1_nm_7_q_ari%2520wegner">Ari Wegner</a>. So kind of like Mubi used to be? But it&rsquo;s $10/month and the films are only streaming in the US. Cute idea but kind of a shit deal for non-US people.</p> Hugo to Wordpress. And Back Again https://lowbrowculture.com/post/2024-hugo-to-wordpress-and-back-again/ Wed, 03 Jan 2024 14:59:27 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/2024-hugo-to-wordpress-and-back-again/ <p>In the middle of 2022, my tech restlessness took over and I felt like I needed a change. It had been years since I looked at Wordpress in any serious way and I was curious to see what had changed under the hood there (answer: probably a lot if you’re using it as a CMS for a complicated site but as a lowly single blogger using it for personal writing, not a lot!). Plus, there has been a bit of movement in terms of <a href="https://github.com/aaemnnosttv/wp-sqlite-db/">using sqlite as a WP backend</a> which feels like a pretty great step forward to me? So over the course of an evening, I moved my blog from Hugo back to Wordpress. I stayed on there for about 14 months, switching back last week. Let’s talk about the experience.</p> <p>The WP ecosystem is great. Apps like <a href="https://redsweater.com/marsedit/">MarsEdit</a> make it so easy to interact with your blog - uploading images and dropping them into a blog post is very straightforward. Having a client on my phone meant that I could write and publish blog posts from anywhere. And the organisation of posts inside of Wordpress is incredibly simple. And the search! Oh my goodness, so great. Loved all that.</p> <p>But the spam is unreal. Wordpress is basically unusable without an Askimet account to scan every comment. And even using sqlite as the backend and not running an entire MySQL server for my extremely low-traffic blog felt a good bit safer, every interaction is still run through PHP which is still way more of an attack vector than I’m comfortable with (if you want to spike your anxiety, try Vladimir Smitka&rsquo;s <a href="https://smitka.me/2022/07/01/wordpress-installer-attack-race/">WordPress installer attack race</a> where he documents a Wordpress blog being compromised <em>during installation</em> 😬).</p> <p>Writing and publishing on Hugo, on the other hand, is much slower and more convoluted. Let’s be generous and say it’s “deliberate”. There’s no phone client that lets me publish blog posts from wherever (not that I ever actually did that, but it was a nice option to have). Publishing can only really be done on a computer<sup id="fnref:1"><a href="#fn:1" class="footnote-ref" role="doc-noteref">1</a></sup>. Want to embed an image in your blog post? You need to handle the resizing yourself, upload it to a <code>static</code> folder, then figure out the magical markdown incantation for referencing the image, but remember to remove the <code>static</code> part from the URL you put in because that gets stripped when the files get published. The whole thing is actively user-unfriendly.</p> <p>But what you get in return is content that is truly <em>yours</em>. It’s not stored off in a service on another computer somewhere, where you pray you have a decent backup system. The files that make up this website are on my computer, and my computer is automatically backed up on my NAS. And I keep everything in a private GitHub repo as well for triple redundancy. And because everything is just markdown files, it’s dead simple to just display this image differently if you want. For example, my <a href="https://lowbrowculture.com/reading/">reading/</a> section is just markdown files, same as the main part of my blog. It’s just rendered differently there because Hugo makes that <em>so simple</em>.</p> <p>And let’s be honest, the stuff I’m publishing on this website isn’t exactly breaking news, so maybe I can afford for the process of getting things written and published to be more deliberate. In fact, it’s something I’d like to aim for. Something that struck me while copying across the blog posts I’d made in Wordpress back into Hugo was how not-deliberate my writing was. I’d bang something out without a second thought and maybe, <em>maybe</em> go back and fix any typos I spotted (but mostly I did not).</p> <p>Anyway, my point here is that Hugo isn’t perfect but it’s pretty great for my needs. Are you reading this, future-John who is currently thinking about moving off to something else? Say it with me: <em>Hugo is pretty great for my needs</em>.</p> <div class="footnotes" role="doc-endnotes"> <hr> <ol> <li id="fn:1"> <p>Obviously this is a giant generalisation - for example, prior to moving to Wordpress, I was running a build pipeline in a locally-hosted Jenkins that would detect any changes to my blog’s GitHub repo and automatically build and deploy the Hugo site. So it <em>can</em> be done, but this is a whole step beyond what most people expect from software in 2024.&#160;<a href="#fnref:1" class="footnote-backref" role="doc-backlink">&#x21a9;&#xfe0e;</a></p> </li> </ol> </div>  The Internet Is About to Get Weird Again → https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-commentary/internet-future-about-to-get-weird-1234938403/ Wed, 03 Jan 2024 11:15:39 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/the-internet-is-about-to-get-weird-again/ <blockquote> <p>Across today’s internet, the stores that deliver all the apps on our phones are cracking open, the walls between social media platforms are coming down as the old networks fail, the headlong rush towards AI is making our search engines and work apps weirder (and often worse!). But amidst it all, the human web, the one made by regular people, is resurgent. We are about to see the biggest reshuffling of power on the internet in 25 years, in a way that most of the internet’s current users have never seen before.</p> </blockquote> <p><a href="https://lowbrowculture.com/link/blue-skies-over-mastodon/">It&rsquo;s happening dot gif</a></p> The 50 best albums of 2023 | The Guardian → https://www.theguardian.com/music/2023/dec/05/the-50-best-albums-of-2023 Thu, 21 Dec 2023 12:41:11 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/the-50-best-albums-of-2023--pop-and-rock--the-guardian/ <p>Bookmarking because I’m trying to collect as many recommendations for new music as I can. As I write this (21st December) they haven’t revealed their #1 slot, but if I was a betting man, I’d say it’s going to be Lankum’s <em>False Lankum</em>.</p> <p><em>Update (24th December): I was right!</em></p> “If buying isn’t owning, piracy isn’t stealing” – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow → https://pluralistic.net/2023/12/08/playstationed/ Mon, 18 Dec 2023 12:39:09 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/pluralistic-if-buying-isnt-owning-piracy-isnt-stealing-08-dec-2023--pluralistic-daily-links-from-cory-doctorow/ <blockquote> <p>But without Sony’s complicity in designing a remote, irreversible, nonconsensual downgrade feature into the Playstation, Zaslav’s war on art and creative workers would be limited to material that hadn’t been released yet. Thanks to Sony’s awful choices, David Zaslav can break into your house, steal your movies – and he doesn’t even have to leave a twenty on your kitchen table.</p> </blockquote> <p>Moving country multiple times will change your relationship to physical media. I got rid of over 2,000 DVDs in 2012 because I couldn’t face the idea of packing and unpacking two dozen boxes of little shiny plastic discs one more time. But now in 2023, I’ve started buying physical media again because <a href="https://variety.com/2023/tv/news/warwick-davis-slams-disney-willow-pulled-streaming-embarrassing-1235758155/">streaming is a fuckin dumpster-fire</a> and <a href="https://mastodon.social/@ponysmasher/111598354827729175">even “buying” digital media is a minefield</a>.</p> <p>Maybe instead of spending money on blu-rays, I should invest that money in bigger hard drives for my NAS.</p> Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga https://lowbrowculture.com/video/furiosa-a-mad-max-saga/ Fri, 01 Dec 2023 10:29:14 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/video/furiosa-a-mad-max-saga/ <div class="embed video-player"> <iframe class="youtube-player" type="text/html" width="640" height="385" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/XJMuhwVlca4" allowfullscreen frameborder="0"> </iframe> </div> <p>I let out the biggest FUCK YES when I found out the first trailer for <em>Furiosa</em> just dropped. And immediately out came all the haters to say “it looks too CGI – I loved the practical effects of <em>Fury Road</em>”.</p> <p>Ah yes, <em>Fury Road</em>, the film that didn’t have any CGI at all.</p> <div style="position: relative; padding-bottom: 56.25%; height: 0; overflow: hidden;"> <iframe src="https://player.vimeo.com/video/132806170" style="position: absolute; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; border:0;" title="vimeo video" webkitallowfullscreen mozallowfullscreen allowfullscreen></iframe> </div> <p>One thing I noticed while looking over the old trailers for FR was <a href="https://youtu.be/akX3Is3qBpw?t=133">this shot from the Comic-Con trailer (released July 2014)</a></p> <p><img src="../../pictures/2023/fr-1-scaled.jpg" alt=""></p> <p>Compare this with <a href="https://youtu.be/YWNWi-ZWL3c?t=106">the same shot from the final trailer (released December 2014)</a></p> <p><img src="../../pictures/2023/fr-2-scaled.jpg" alt=""></p> <p>Yep, no CGI at all.</p> The 100 Best Movies of the 1970s – Far Out → https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/100-best-movies-of-the-1970s/ Tue, 21 Nov 2023 10:21:50 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/the-100-best-movies-of-the-1970s--far-out/ <p>What a list! <em>The Godfather</em> isn’t even in the top 10 and everything above it is a banger.</p> These 38 Reading Rules Changed My Life – Ryanholiday.net → https://ryanholiday.net/these-38-reading-rules-changed-my-life/ Mon, 25 Sep 2023 10:20:31 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/these-38-reading-rules-changed-my-life--ryanholidaynet/ <blockquote> <p>The rule I like is ‘one hundred pages minus your age.’ Say you’re 30 years old—if a book hasn’t captivated you by page 70, stop reading it. So as you age, you have less time to endure crap.</p> </blockquote> <p>This post comes perilously close to one of those insufferable LinkedIn “if you’re not reading Marcus Aurelius from a beat-up paperback, are you really reading?” humblebrags, but I liked this rule in particular. The older I get, the more likely I am to DNF if a book isn’t holding me.</p> The Gist: Capital Crimes → https://www.thegist.ie/the-gist-capital-crimes/ Wed, 16 Aug 2023 10:19:03 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/the-gist-capital-crimes/ <blockquote> <p>Government ministers had theatrical fits of the vapours at a piece of art depicting the police attending an historical eviction. They needn’t have worried. The image was clearly too subtle.</p> <p>No artist would be so crude as to simply show the police force of the state standing guard at Bank Machines, protecting money against the people who own it.</p> <p>And now, no one needs to.</p> </blockquote> <p>I usually try to avoid anything too political over here, but this whole situation is just too bonkers to ignore, and Simon McGarr’s take is spot on.</p> Double Fine PsychOdyssey https://lowbrowculture.com/video/double-fine-psychodyssey/ Sat, 05 Aug 2023 10:14:29 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/video/double-fine-psychodyssey/ <div class="standard"> <iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/videoseries?list=PLIhLvue17Sd70y34zh2erWWpMyOnh4UN_" allowfullscreen title="YouTube Video"></iframe> </div> <p>Wait, shit, speaking about Tim Schafer, I should also throw some love at Double Fine’s PsychOdyssey which was released earlier this year! It’s an epic warts-and-all, 6 year long behind-the-scenes documentary about the making of <em>Psychonauts 2</em>. The BTS stuff we usually get for most games is part of the promotion of the game, and the PR people would never allow anything bad to be shown. <em>PsychOdyssey</em>, on the other hand, shows a company at its best and at its worst and it’s absolutely insane to me that a company would allow itself to be so candid. By the end, I was sobbing. <em>Sobbing</em>.</p> <p>Honestly, even if you’re not into gamedev, this is worth your time, just because I don’t think we’ll ever see anything like it again.</p> Monkey Island 2 Lechucks Revengethe Commentary Tracks → https://funzone.mixnmojo.com/CommentaryMI2/ Sat, 05 Aug 2023 10:13:15 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/monkey-island-2-lechucks-revengethe-commentary-tracks/ <p>Ron Gilbert, Dave Grossman and Tim Schafer recorded a commentary for the special edition of <em>Monkey Island 2</em> and now you can listen without having to play through the game. A great rambling conversation with three old friends about the process of making a classic game.</p> Everyone Is Beautiful and No One Is Horny Blood Knife → https://bloodknife.com/everyone-beautiful-no-one-horny/ Fri, 04 Aug 2023 10:11:44 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/everyone-is-beautiful-and-no-one-is-horny--blood-knife/ <blockquote> <p>When revisiting a beloved Eighties or Nineties film, Millennial and Gen X viewers are often startled to encounter long-forgotten sexual content content: John Connor’s conception in Terminator, Jamie Lee Curtis’s toplessness in Trading Places, the spectral blowjob in Ghostbusters. These scenes didn’t shock us when we first saw them. Of course there’s sex in a movie. Isn’t there always?</p> <p>The answer, of course, is not anymore—at least not when it comes to modern blockbusters</p> </blockquote> <p>Pretty insane that <em>Oppenheimer</em>, of all films, would be the exception that proves the rule.</p> Life Before Cellphones the Barely Believable After Work Activities of Young People in 2002 → https://slate.com/human-interest/2023/06/life-before-cell-phones-internet-after-work.html Fri, 23 Jun 2023 21:12:03 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/life-before-cellphones-the-barely-believable-after-work-activities-of-young-people-in-2002/ <p>It’s incredible how things have changed in the last twenty years.</p> <blockquote> <p>Sally: You had to plan more ahead and hope it worked out. People didn’t flake as much. There’s no option to text someone 10 minutes before, because you knew they were waiting for you.</p> <p>Dan: Even if you didn’t feel like it, you just showed up. If you didn’t show up, people would stop inviting you out. And then you would have fun! Or maybe it would suck, but next time would be fun.</p> <p>Matt: You’d be late or they’d be late and you’d just talk to whoever was there. It was a whole skill, taking to a person you don’t know.</p> </blockquote> Searching for a Search Engine → https://garrettdimon.com/journal/posts/searching-for-a-search-engine Sun, 18 Jun 2023 10:10:40 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/searching-for-a-search-engine/ <blockquote> <p>DuckDuckGo was encouraging for focusing on privacy, but the quality of results has been underwhelming. Google has seemingly devolved from a genuine search engine to some sort of recommendation engine with low-quality generic “answers” surfaced by scraping content from sites.</p> <p>Everything has just felt either sleazy, low-quality, or both.</p> </blockquote> <p>If you’re anything like me and have been feeling pretty bummed out at the state of search on the modern web, you should read this. I hadn’t heard of Kagi before but I’ve been getting some good results from it so far.</p> Robin Sloan on the 'This Is How You Win the Time War'/Bigolas Dickolas Phenomenon → https://www.robinsloan.com/newsletters/lit-up-like-a-sparkler/ Tue, 06 Jun 2023 21:10:24 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/robin-sloan-on-the-this-is-how-you-win-the-time-warbigolas-dickolas-phenomenon/ <blockquote> <p>This is a good thing happening to a great book and better people — but/and, there’s something unsettling about these algorithmic lightning bolts. From afar, watching the flash, it feels like the activity of a classical god. The algorithm’s choices are exactly that consequential; exactly that capricious.</p> </blockquote> Blue Skies Over Mastodon - Erin Kissane → Mon, 01 May 2023 21:08:48 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/blue-skies-over-mastodon/ <blockquote> <p>I—a nerd—actually really like Mastodon most of the time, but I would like it so much more and feel like it was doing a lot more good in the world if it were more welcoming and easier to use. When I raise these points on Mastodon, I get a steady stream of replies telling me that everything I’m whining about is actually great, that valuing a “pleasant UI” over the abstraction of federation is shallow and disqualifying, and that that people who find Mastodon difficult don’t belong anyway, so I should “go join Spoutible” or whatever.</p> <p>And of course this stuff shows up in much worse ways for at least some Black and brown people on Mastodon.</p> <p>I hate it that I can’t in good conscience encourage Black friends to get on Mastodon, because I know they’re going to be continuously chided by white people if they mention race or criticize anything at all about Mastodon itself. I hate that “a difficult sign-up process keeps out lazy people with bad culture” is a thing in so many Mastodon conversations. (Fun fact, if you hold this idea up to your ear, you can hear them say “sheeple.”)</p> </blockquote> <p>I feel like Mastodon is a return to the internet of the 2000s, both for good and bad. It’s decentralised, and not owned by a billionaire whose sole metric is “engagement”. But also its interpersonal frictions are like being on Livejournal as a teenager with mods constantly sub-tooting their ongoing dramas and it’s <em>exhausting</em> keeping up with it all. Worse is the old guard of Mastodon who refuse to see the problems with their platforms. I had hoped that the influx of genpop using it in a non-standard way would reluctantly drag the platform into addressing some of its problems (e.g. grassroots quote-toots, even if the software doesn’t actually offer that functionality) but I really don’t know if that’s actually going to happen now.</p> Best Printer 2023 Just Buy This Brother Laser Printer Everyone Has Its Fine - The Verge → https://www.theverge.com/23642073/best-printer-2023-brother-laser-wi-fi-its-fine Thu, 16 Mar 2023 21:07:39 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/best-printer-2023-just-buy-this-brother-laser-printer-everyone-has-its-fine--the-verge/ <p><strong>This</strong> is how you write a buyer’s guide in 2023.</p> <blockquote> <p>And here’s 275 words about printers I asked ChatGPT to write so this post ranks in search because Google thinks you have to pad out articles in order to demonstrate “authority,” but I am telling you to just buy whatever Brother laser printer is on sale and never think about printers again.</p> </blockquote> Why Everything You Buy Is Worse Now https://lowbrowculture.com/video/why-everything-you-buy-is-worse-now/ Wed, 15 Feb 2023 21:06:02 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/video/why-everything-you-buy-is-worse-now/ <div class="embed video-player"> <iframe class="youtube-player" type="text/html" width="640" height="385" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/DHXBacEH0qo" allowfullscreen frameborder="0"> </iframe> </div> <p>Or, if you don’t like Vox’s video essays, you can <a href="https://www.vox.com/the-goods/23529587/consumer-goods-quality-fast-fashion-technology">check out the article that inspired it</a>.</p> <p>tl;dw: companies cheap out on products because the cost of everything (labour, materials) has risen and as consumers we probably wouldn’t pay a fair market price.</p> Four Thousand Weeks → https://leebyron.com/4000/ Tue, 07 Feb 2023 21:05:03 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/four-thousand-weeks/ <p>I’m currently reading the Oliver Burkeman book about time management and this is a lovely summary/tribute.</p> The Fail Whale Cascade → https://www.lkhrs.com/blog/2022/11/twitter/ Tue, 07 Feb 2023 21:04:14 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/the-fail-whale-cascade/ <blockquote> <p>I’m on Mastodon, but I’m bored of what I call “the timeline era”. Scanning an unending stream of disconnected posts for topics of interest is no longer fun, I prefer deciding what to read based on titles, or topic-based discussion.</p> </blockquote> <p>I’ve enjoyed the freshness of Mastodon. I really liked starting with a blank slate on a smaller social network. But as things have gotten bigger there, I’m finding Mastodon is starting to exhaust me just like Twitter used to. I guess I just don’t have the energy to stay connected to the firehose of the unconnected thoughts of strangers.</p> The Honest Broker - Did the Music Business Just Kill the Vinyl Revival → https://tedgioia.substack.com/p/did-the-music-business-just-kill Tue, 31 Jan 2023 21:02:55 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/the-honest-broker--did-the-music-business-just-kill-the-vinyl-revival/ <p>A great essay about how the vinyl resurgence appears to be cresting because of the greed of the music industry. Interesting fact I learned from this – only half of the people buying vinyl actually own a record player. I mean, I’ve bought a few records I’ve never actually put on my player because I streamed the album so much and wanted to support the artist. But even still, 50% is staggering.</p> My Year in Films 2022 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/my-years-in-film-2022/ Fri, 06 Jan 2023 20:58:18 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/my-years-in-film-2022/ <p>Letterboxd have released their <a href="https://letterboxd.com/2022/">2022 year in review</a>. I love these roundups because they&rsquo;re usually pretty great at bubbling up some gems. It&rsquo;s not any one person or publication&rsquo;s opinion of the top films of the year, it&rsquo;s aggregate opinions across the kinds of people who like to track their film-watching across the year. Well, I&rsquo;m one of those kinds of people, so it&rsquo;s probably a good time to look at <a href="https://letterboxd.com/johnke/year/2022/">my own stats for 2022</a>. I logged 115 films in 2022. The second-highest number of films in a year since I started tracking this a decade ago. Although technically I watched more because I don&rsquo;t count the films that I watch (and rewatch, and rewatch) with my kids because that feels like I&rsquo;d just be cheating my numbers.</p> <p>Here are my highest-rated films that I watched in 2022 that were released 2022:</p> <p><img src="../../pictures/2023/SCR-20230106-d9z.png" alt="Highest-rated films from 2022"></p> <p>And here are my highest-rated films that I watched in 2022 from earlier:</p> <p><img src="../../pictures/2023/SCR-20230106-d9s.png" alt="Highest-rated films from earlier"></p> <p>Most of these were first-watches for me, trying to close out some obvious blindspots (I&rsquo;m in my 40s and had never seen <em>Once Upon a Time in the West</em>). <em>Penda&rsquo;s Fen</em> was a real standout. I watched this as part of <a href="https://severinfilms.com/collections/shop/products/folk-horror-box">Severin Films&rsquo; incredible box set of folk horror</a> because it&rsquo;s got some great extras, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ghu0ITA8aSE">but you can just check it out for free on YouTube right now (and you should)</a>. Apparently my most-watched actor in 2022 was Scott Adkins, the best stunt-actor working today. But my most-watched director is George Pollock, a man mostly known for directing cozy Agatha Christie adaptations.</p> <p><img src="../../pictures/2023/871b044020faa3bb.png" alt="Most-watched actor: Scott Adkins. Most-watched director: George Pollock."></p> <p>I contain multitudes, I guess.</p> <p>Anyway, <a href="https://letterboxd.com/johnke/">you should follow me on Letterboxd</a>.</p> Riding Japans 7 Star Luxury Sleeper Train Seven Stars in Kyushu https://lowbrowculture.com/video/riding-japans-7-star-luxury-sleeper-train--seven-stars-in-kyushu/ Wed, 04 Jan 2023 20:55:52 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/video/riding-japans-7-star-luxury-sleeper-train--seven-stars-in-kyushu/ <div class="embed video-player"> <iframe class="youtube-player" type="text/html" width="640" height="385" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/KoUEQca_k9I" allowfullscreen frameborder="0"> </iframe> </div> <p>Solo Solo Travel is one of my favourite YouTube channels to watch before bedtime. It’s a type of ASMR, I guess, like a soothing digestif to help me wind down for sleep – mostly-wordless videos of someone traveling around Japan on various forms of transport. The thing I love most about the videos are the captions the filmmaker has added to describe what they’re doing/seeing. This person is an underrated comedy genius. Perfect timing, perfect phrasing. My wife and I watched this one the other night, where the person is traveling around one of Japan’s islands on one of the most exclusive trains in the world (pretty niche content!) and belly-laughing our way through the entire thing.</p> Bring Back Personal Blogging - The Verge → https://www.theverge.com/23513418/bring-back-personal-blogging Sun, 01 Jan 2023 20:54:01 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/bring-back-personal-blogging--the-verge/ <blockquote> <p>At the end of the day, we don’t know what is going to happen next with Twitter or any of these platforms. We don’t know what changes Web 3.0 is going to bring to the internet. We do know that we will all still be here, wanting to share our thoughts, talk about anything and everything, and commune with our people. Personal blogging is the simplest and fastest way to do all of that.</p> </blockquote> <p>I don’t know if blogging is as easy as The Verge are making out in this article. They talk about owning your own platform so that you can be sure that your content won’t go away. But to do that, you really need to host your own blog, and that brings its own set of headaches (Ask me what my backup strategy is for this blog! Ask me if it’s something I worry about!) And toxic social media has made me extremely reluctant to share intimate details of my life on the internet. And the whole rise of AI has made me extremely wary of contributing anything to the corpus of things that will help train them.</p> <p>But, all that being said, it’s a noble goal. Godspeed.</p> Polygon Announce a Making of Spycraft Documentary → https://www.polygon.com/videos/23505495/spycraft-documentary-announce Tue, 13 Dec 2022 20:52:39 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/polygon-announce-a-making-of-spycraft-documentary/ <p>Oh wow! <em>Spycraft</em> was one of my favourite games of the 90s but it’s been pretty well forgotten by most people, despite the fact it did some really interesting things both narratively and gameplay-wise. And it had Charles Fuckin Napier!</p> <p>So fair play to Polygon for going back and revisiting it now for a making-of documentary that sounds like it’s been in the works for a while. The documentary is coming in 2023 but you can watch the trailer now. And if you want to play the game, it’s available from <a href="https://store.steampowered.com/app/569220/Spycraft_The_Great_Game/">Steam</a> and <a href="https://www.gog.com/en/game/spycraft_the_great_game">GOG</a> and it runs pretty well in Dosbox, even on a Mac.</p> Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny Trailer https://lowbrowculture.com/post/indiana-jones-and-the-dial-of-destiny-trailer/ Wed, 07 Dec 2022 20:46:57 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/indiana-jones-and-the-dial-of-destiny-trailer/ <p>The trailer for <em>Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny</em> was released last week, and of course I went through it frame-by-frame. And since I was already going through each frame, what about putting together a collage of frames from each shot? So that’s what this is – one frame from each shot in the trailer.</p> <p>Click through for a larger version (19400(!)x6576, 6.5MB).</p> <p><a href="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2023/indy.jpg"><img src="../..//pictures/2023/indy_thumb.jpg" alt=""></a></p> Electronic Music Icon Korg Makes Music With Raspberry Pi → https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/electronic-music-icon-korg-makes-music-with-raspberry-pi/ Wed, 07 Dec 2022 20:45:55 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/electronic-music-icon-korg-makes-music-with-raspberry-pi/ <p>TIL recent Korg synths have Raspberry Pis under the hood, which is probably another reason why RPis are so hard to come by these days.</p> A Year of New avenues → https://www.robinsloan.com/lab/new-avenues/ Wed, 07 Dec 2022 20:42:32 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/a-year-of-new%C2%A0avenues/ <blockquote> <p>I want to insist on an amateur internet; a garage internet; a public library internet; a kitchen table internet. At last, in 2023, I want to tell the tech CEOs and venture capitalists: pipe down. Buzz off. Go fave each other’s tweets.</p> </blockquote> <p>With the implosion of Twitter and the move towards Mastodon and the federated web, the internet of late 2022 is feeling more and more like the internet of 2002: <em>ours</em>.</p> An Oral History of Tim Currys Escape to the One Place Uncorrupted by Capitalism → https://www.vice.com/en/article/qjkv9q/an-oral-history-of-tim-currys-escape-to-the-one-place-uncorrupted-by-capitalism Fri, 19 Aug 2022 20:39:12 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/an-oral-history-of-tim-currys-escape-to-the-one-place-uncorrupted-by-capitalism/ <p>A wonderful deep-dive into a tiny, tiny moment that had a lasting impact. I also love that as well as interviewing game developers and critics, they also spoke to people like Katie Mack and Yanis Varoufakis.</p> Everyone Everywhere Needs Waymond Wang (and Ke Huy Quan) https://lowbrowculture.com/video/everyone-everywhere-needs-waymond-wang/ Wed, 20 Jul 2022 20:36:43 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/video/everyone-everywhere-needs-waymond-wang/ <div class="embed video-player"> <iframe class="youtube-player" type="text/html" width="640" height="385" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/O7YnbGszcb8" allowfullscreen frameborder="0"> </iframe> </div> <p>This is a wonderful essay about <em>Everything Everywhere All At Once</em>’s portrayal of masculinity. I hadn’t consciously picked up on Waymond’s lack of a character arc, but it makes so much sense.</p> <p>Also EEAAO (as no-one is calling it) was unexpectedly one of the best films I’ve seen so far this year. If you’ve been putting off watching it, please do check it out.</p> Did People Used to Look Older? https://lowbrowculture.com/video/did-people-used-to-look-older/ Wed, 13 Jul 2022 20:34:50 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/video/did-people-used-to-look-older/ <div class="embed video-player"> <iframe class="youtube-player" type="text/html" width="640" height="385" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/vjqt8T3tJIE" allowfullscreen frameborder="0"> </iframe> </div> <p>I was watching <em>Thief</em> the other night and couldn’t get over how James Caan (RIP to a real one) was only 41 in that film but looked so much older. This is a great explanation of why that is.</p> The Inside Outtakes → https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5XWEVoI40sE Thu, 30 Jun 2022 20:27:33 +0100 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/the-inside-outtakes/ <p>Bo Burnham has put up an hour-long video of the outtakes from <em>Inside</em>. But it’s more than just your usual outtakes – some of it is really cleverly done. Like showing all the takes of a song all at once, and turning off the unused takes as he messes up, so that at the end it’s like a <em>Super Meatboy</em> level replay and you’re just left with the take he used in the final film.</p> <p><a href="https://letterboxd.com/johnke/film/bo-burnham-inside/">I wasn’t originally taken by Inside</a> (although this might have been overly harsh because of, you know, <em>everything</em>) but I really appreciate the amount of work he put in.</p> The 22 Best Board Games - Polygon → https://www.polygon.com/tabletop-games/22751449/best-board-games Tue, 07 Jun 2022 20:30:37 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/the-22-best-board-games--polygon/ <p>A solid list. If you’re just getting into board games, this is a great place to start.</p> Francis Ford Coppola on the Importance of Theme → https://99u.adobe.com/articles/6973/Francis-Ford-Coppola-On-Risk-Money-Craft-Collaboration Sun, 29 May 2022 20:25:57 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/francis-ford-coppola-on-the-importance-of-theme/ <blockquote> <p>When you make a movie, always try to discover what the theme of the movie is in one or two words. Every time I made a film, I always knew what I thought the theme was, the core, in one word. In “The Godfather,” it was succession. In “The Conversation,” it was privacy. In “Apocalypse,” it was morality.The reason it’s important to have this is because most of the time what a director really does is make decisions. All day long: Do you want it to be long hair or short hair? Do you want a dress or pants? Do you want a beard or no beard? There are many times when you don’t know the answer. Knowing what the theme is always helps you.</p> <p>…</p> <p>I remember in “The Conversation,” they brought all these coats to me, and they said: Do you want him to look like a detective, Humphrey Bogart? Do you want him to look like a blah blah blah. I didn’t know, and said the theme is ‘privacy’ and chose the plastic coat you could see through. So knowing the theme helps you make a decision when you’re not sure which way to go.</p> </blockquote> Lego Release an Upscaled Version of the Original Galaxy Explorer → https://www.lego.com/en-ie/product/galaxy-explorer-10497 Thu, 19 May 2022 20:34:02 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/lego-release-an-upscaled-version-of-the-original-galaxy-explorer/ <p><em>Spaceship!!</em></p> Meet Mavis: A Powerful, Patchable, Analog Synth | Moog → https://www.moogmusic.com/news/meet-mavis-powerful-patchable-analog-synth Sun, 15 May 2022 20:32:38 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/meet-mavis-a-powerful-patchable-analog-synth/ <p>Moog have launched a really cheap (well, <em>for Moog</em>), build-it-yourself, semi-modular analog synth and the reviews have been <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cUJydY6QGO4">pretty great</a> so far.</p> robinsloan > The lost thread → https://www.robinsloan.com/lab/lost-thread/ Tue, 03 May 2022 15:55:57 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/robinsloan-the-lost-thread/ <blockquote> <p>Many peo­ple don’t want to [quit Twitter] because they worry: with­out my Twitter account, who will lis­ten to me? In what way will I matter to the world beyond my apartment, my office, my family? I believe these hes­i­ta­tions reveal some­thing totally unre­lated to Twit­ter. I don’t have words for it, exactly, but if you find yourself fret­ting in this way, I will gen­tly sug­gest that it’s worth quest­ing a bit inside your­self to dis­cover what you’re <em>really</em> worried about.</p> </blockquote> Pronounce GIF · The Correct Way, Without Question → https://pronouncegif.com/ Tue, 12 Apr 2022 10:52:16 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/pronounce-gif-the-correct-way-without-question/ <blockquote> <p>Simply stated, the proper pronunciation of the acronym GIF is with a ‘soft g’ sound. As in, ”it is a gigantic waste of your time to try and debate me on this, because I’ve worked out all the angles.”</p> </blockquote> Hypercritical: An Unsolicited Streaming App Spec → https://hypercritical.co/2022/02/15/streaming-apps Wed, 16 Feb 2022 08:34:05 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/hypercritical-an-unsolicited-streaming-app-spec/ <p>Forwarding this to the RTE Player team.</p> Joel Coen's "The Tragedy of Macbeth", Reviewed by Ethan Coen → https://imightbewrong.substack.com/p/joel-coens-the-tragedy-of-macbeth Thu, 03 Feb 2022 10:37:49 +0100 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/joel-coen-s-the-tragedy-of-macbeth-reviewed-by-ethan-coen/ <blockquote> <p>In the interest of full disclosure, my editor has requested that I mention that I was Mr. Coen’s writing partner, producer, and creative collaborator on the aforementioned 18 films. I am also his brother. We parted ways prior to Macbeth in a split that the press described as completely amicable. Despite my prior association with Mr. Coen, I feel that I am entirely capable of reviewing his work in a fair and objective way.</p> <p>Macbeth is Joel Coen’s shittiest movie by several billion light years.</p> </blockquote> How we made: Billy Bragg’s A New England | Billy Bragg | The Guardian → https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2022/jan/24/how-we-made-billy-braggs-a-new-england-john-peel-biryani Mon, 24 Jan 2022 19:54:06 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/how-we-made-billy-braggs-a-new-england-billy-bragg-the-guardian/ <blockquote> <p>By 1980, Margaret Thatcher had been elected, the band had broken up and punk had dissipated into synthesiser groups, so A New England was my way of saying that I needed a hug as well as a new ideology.</p> </blockquote> <p>Me too, Billy. Me too.</p> The Mitchells vs. the Machines | Netflix Awards → https://mvmbook.netflixawards.com/ Mon, 17 Jan 2022 09:09:18 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/the-mitchells-vs-the-machines-netflix-awards/ <p>I love a good artbook and Netflix have uploaded the artbook for The Mitchells vs the Machines. The film is great and the artbook is lovely.</p> Modern for Wikipedia → https://www.modernwiki.app/ Tue, 07 Dec 2021 13:12:23 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/modern-for-wikipedia/ <p>A handy browser extension to re-skin Wikipedia to make it a bit more modern. Has some nice customization options.</p> Processing: the Software that Shaped Creative Coding → https://eyeondesign.aiga.org/processing-the-software-that-shaped-creative-coding/ Wed, 10 Nov 2021 15:35:16 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/processing-the-software-that-shaped-creative-coding/ <p>An oral history of Processing, which has a <a href="https://lowbrowculture.com/tags/processing/">special place in my heart</a></p> Shadow Planet, by The Cotton Modules → https://ooo.ghostbows.ooo/ Thu, 28 Oct 2021 10:48:36 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/shadow-planet-by-the-cotton-modules/ <p>An album made of AI and cassette tapes. Sounds really organic and haunting. They also <a href="https://ooo.ghostbows.ooo/about/">wrote about the album&rsquo;s creation</a>.</p> Merlin's Wisdom (Draft) → https://gist.github.com/merlinmann/09af1df28d76ba028b0999f66945fd61#yet-yet-more-new-wisdom Thu, 28 Oct 2021 10:10:27 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/merlin-s-wisdom-draft/ <blockquote> <p>Never argue on the internet. No one will remember whether you won or lost the argument; they&rsquo;ll just remember that you are the sort of person who argues on the internet.</p> </blockquote> <p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;m at the stage in my life where I stay out of discussions. Even if you say 1+1=5. You&rsquo;re right, have fun.&rdquo;</p> How the Mountain Goat’s “No Children” became a TikTok viral hit - Vox → https://www.vox.com/the-goods/22745655/mountain-goats-no-children-tiktok Tue, 26 Oct 2021 18:55:16 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/how-the-mountain-goats-no-children-became-a-tiktok-viral-hit-vox/ <blockquote> <p>“It’s really cool to have it affirmed that music is a gigantic conversation between all generations,” Darnielle says. “I am a father of two. There is a certain joy in sort of feeling like, well, the kids have got a thing going on that I’m not going to fully get. But I can just enjoy watching. I think people fear getting older and fear that they’ll feel left out, but there’s a kind of buoyancy in that left-out quality sometimes, if you ride it the right way.”</p> </blockquote> <p>John Darnielle is good people.</p> Kebab Kid, London: ‘Take-away as a cult’ – restaurant review | Food | The Guardian → https://www.theguardian.com/food/2021/oct/17/jay-rayner-restaurant-review-kebab-kid-london-take-away-as-a-cult-nusr-et-steakhouse Sun, 17 Oct 2021 10:02:23 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/kebab-kid-london-take-away-as-a-cult-restaurant-review-food-the-guardian/ <blockquote> <p>After all, as well as tasting of nothing, all that gold leaf will pass straight through the body. So let me leave you with this image: Salt Bae’s customers, the morning after the night before, getting off the throne, looking down and clocking that all their money has bought them is a bunch of glittering turds.</p> </blockquote> <p>This whole review is worth reading. It&rsquo;s like jazz - all about the food not reviewed.</p> The nostalgia onion - Garbage Day → https://www.garbageday.email/p/the-nostalgia-onion Tue, 05 Oct 2021 12:21:39 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/the-nostalgia-onion-garbage-day/ <blockquote> <p>The always-on-point Rebecca Jennings for Vox last year actually wrote about this weird trend that mvnicx is a part of. It’s not about being nostalgic for the 90s, nor is it about being nostalgic for the early-2010s. Instead, it’s about being nostalgic for being in the early-2010s being nostalgic for the 90s. It’s a lot to wrap your head around.</p> </blockquote> <p>🤯</p> Mister Rogers's Simple Set of Rules for Talking to Kids - The Atlantic → https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2018/06/mr-rogers-neighborhood-talking-to-kids/562352/ Wed, 22 Sep 2021 08:51:12 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/mister-rogers-s-simple-set-of-rules-for-talking-to-kids-the-atlantic/ <p>My kids do weekly GAA training and there&rsquo;s one &ldquo;problem&rdquo; child in my daughter&rsquo;s group who disrupts everything and none of the trainers can control him. Except for one. The minute she starts speaking, every kid, even the problem child, is hooked. Being able to talk to children like this is a gift and Fred Rogers was a master.</p> Embedded → https://embedded.substack.com Mon, 16 Aug 2021 10:28:07 +0100 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/embedded/ <p>I love reading about how other people work. It&rsquo;s a great way of finding new tools, new sites, new people to follow. <a href="https://www.workspaces.xyz/">Workspaces</a> is a good example of this. <a href="https://usesthis.com/">Uses This</a> is a <em>great</em> example of this. And along comes <a href="https://embedded.substack.com/">embedded</a>, a newsletter about being Very Online. It&rsquo;s got a great recurring feature called &ldquo;My Internet&rdquo; all about how famous internet-people use the internet, asking everyone the same questions like &ldquo;what podcasts do you listen to&rdquo; and &ldquo;what are you willing to pay for online&rdquo;, and it&rsquo;s always really revealing and helpful.</p> <p>For example, here&rsquo;s some advice from <a href="https://embedded.substack.com/p/my-internet-folu-akinkuotu">Folu Akinkuotu</a></p> <blockquote> <p><strong>What&rsquo;s one thing you recommend for maintaining a healthy relationship with the internet?</strong><br> React in the group chat, not on the timeline.</p> </blockquote> <p>(<a href="https://anildash.com/2021/08/16/getting-embedded/">Via Anil Dash</a>)</p> Teenage Engineering’s OP-1 finally gets USB audio support a decade after it was released - The Verge → https://www.theverge.com/2021/7/14/22577029/teenage-engineering-op-1-usb-audio-support-firmware-update Wed, 14 Jul 2021 17:06:32 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/teenage-engineerings-op-1-finally-gets-usb-audio-support-a-decade-after-it-was-released-the-verge/ <p>I can&rsquo;t think of many 10 year old devices that are still getting <em>major</em> features through firmware. Fair play, Teenage Engineering.</p> Back to the Future with RSS! → https://blog.ncase.me/posts/back-to-the-future-with-rss/ Mon, 05 Jul 2021 11:15:19 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/back-to-the-future-with-rss/ <p>Nicky Case has a genuine gift for being able to explain technical things really well. In this case, they&rsquo;re explaining RSS, the glue that holds the internet together. The only thing I&rsquo;d add to what they say here is that you don&rsquo;t need a subscription service to start enjoying RSS! Modern apps like Reeder and NetNewsWire allow you to scrape feeds from your own computer!</p> 100 Visions of Fatherhood → https://theluupe.com/blog/2021/06/18/100-visions-of-fatherhood/ Wed, 30 Jun 2021 09:56:16 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/100-visions-of-fatherhood/ <p>I challenge you not to cry at some of these.</p> Alternate Realities https://lowbrowculture.com/video/alternate-realities/ Thu, 17 Jun 2021 08:32:21 +0100 https://lowbrowculture.com/video/alternate-realities/ <div class="embed video-player"> <iframe class="youtube-player" type="text/html" width="640" height="385" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/iKBs9l8jS6Q" allowfullscreen frameborder="0"> </iframe> </div> <p>2,400 CG artists were all given the same basic animation and this is the 100 best renders. They&rsquo;re all great, but some of them are jaw-dropping.</p> Drunk Post: Things I've learned as a Sr Engineer : ExperiencedDevs → https://old.reddit.com/r/ExperiencedDevs/comments/nmodyl/drunk_post_things_ive_learned_as_a_sr_engineer/ Mon, 31 May 2021 07:30:10 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/drunk-post-things-i-ve-learned-as-a-sr-engineer-experienceddevs/ <p>Shitty framing device aside (don&rsquo;t pretend to be drunk, just admit you want to be brutally honest and sincere, friend!), there&rsquo;s a lot of truth here.</p> Bluey Is the Best Kids’ Show of Our Time → https://www.vulture.com/2021/05/bluey-best-kids-tv-show.html Tue, 25 May 2021 09:02:24 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/bluey-is-the-best-kids-show-of-our-time/ <p>I sometimes half-joke that I really hate the Dad in Bluey because he&rsquo;s always <em>so fuckin perfect</em> and he makes me feel like a bad parent but the truth is that I&rsquo;ve learned a lot about being a <em>better</em> parent from watching Bluey. The fact that it&rsquo;s a genuinely delightful show is just a happy bonus.</p> Addison Rae, Bella Poarch, Charli D’Amelio, and the blandness of TikTok’s biggest stars - Vox → https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2021/5/18/22440937/tiktok-addison-rae-bella-poarch-build-a-bitch-charli-damelio-mediocrity Tue, 18 May 2021 18:06:26 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/addison-rae-bella-poarch-charli-damelio-and-the-blandness-of-tiktoks-biggest-stars-vox/ <blockquote> <p>What I’m talking about here is “straight TikTok,” the side of the app that can be described as “pretty people filming themselves being pretty.” On straight TikTok, you can be an okay dancer with an expressive face, and one year later, you get a beauty brand, a publicist-concocted friendship with a Kardashian, and the starring role in the gender-swapped Netflix adaptation of She’s All That.</p> </blockquote> <p>TikTok has been one of the highlights of 2020 for me and one of the things that kept me from Twitter-doomscrolling myself into an early grave. But this is a fairly spot-on evaluation - it&rsquo;s interesting to see who bubbles to the top on that stupid clock app and I wonder how much of this is an algorithm thing and how much of this is just the mediocrity of aggregated opinions.</p> Kindle Lock Screen can now display book covers https://lowbrowculture.com/post/kindle-lock-screen-can-display-book-covers/ Sat, 24 Apr 2021 11:55:00 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/kindle-lock-screen-can-display-book-covers/ <p><a href="https://www.theverge.com/2021/4/16/22387146/amazon-display-cover-lockscreen-current-book-image">The Verge</a>:</p> <blockquote> <p>Amazon Kindle owners can now set the lockscreen image to the cover of the book they’re reading. The long overdue Display Cover feature, first spotted by Engadget, was previously only available after jailbreaking your device (and a popular motivator to do so). Amazon says that it works with “most books, magazines, comics, and Manga.”</p> </blockquote> <p>I&rsquo;m not sure what the hold-up was &ndash; some kind of competitor&rsquo;s patent or just laziness or whatever &ndash; but as someone who has been waiting for this feature for over 10 years now, I&rsquo;d just like to say: fuckin FINALLY.</p> <p>I&rsquo;ve been <a href="https://lowbrowculture.com/reading">reading</a> a lot more books over the last couple of months. Physical books, I mean. I think this is partly A) coming out of baby/pandemic brain-fog and B) I&rsquo;d forgotten how lovely it is to hold a physical book. Every time you see your book, every time you open it, every time you turn a page with it, you increase your connection to it. A well-beaten book is a well-loved book that&rsquo;s been with you for a while.</p> <p>Opening the Kindle and seeing a generic screen saver gives you absolutely nothing. It&rsquo;s not cementing my relationship to the form or the content. This isn&rsquo;t helped by the fact that the Kindle turns on immediately drops you where you left off with no indication of whether you&rsquo;re near the end of the book or just getting started. Like getting dropped in an unfamiliar place with no map. You just have to keep going forward and eventually you&rsquo;ll reach <em>somewhere</em>. It&rsquo;s a handy feature, for sure, but my dumb lizard-brain gets <em>something</em> from the physicality of being able to <em>feel</em> where I am in a book. The Kindle&rsquo;s attempt to address this &ndash; putting the % completed in the corner just fills me with anxiety. Kind of like the inverse of watching a phone battery percentage trickling down, <em>why amn&rsquo;t I making progress in this goddamn book?!</em></p> <p>Spotify completely changed my connection to music (I could probably tell you the name of every song on every album I&rsquo;ve physically owned - these days I couldn&rsquo;t even describe the cover of albums I <em>love</em> that I&rsquo;ve only listened to on Spotify), the Kindle changed my connection to the books I read. It&rsquo;s not unusual for me to finish a book and not be able to tell you the name of the author. Hopefully for the sake of my already-overflowing bookshelves, this will draw me back to the Kindle as a device for reading again and my physical to-read pile (<a href="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2021/books-backlog.jpg">here&rsquo;s a photo from last month - yikes</a>) won&rsquo;t grow any more.</p> 75 Artists, 7 Questions, One Very Bad Year - The New York Times → https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/03/10/arts/artists-coronavirus-lockdown.html Fri, 12 Mar 2021 13:38:33 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/75-artists-7-questions-one-very-bad-year-the-new-york-times/ <p>Trent Reznor, answering the question of what art he&rsquo;s turned to during the lockdown:</p> <blockquote> <p>I’ve stumbled into the world of YouTube tutorials for various bits of musical gear. I’ve really found some comfort in curling up with a nice long video of someone demonstrating an obscure guitar pedal or synth at length. I’m usually watching and forgetting all information simultaneously but it feels like some kind of accomplishment.</p> </blockquote> <p>Same, Trent. Same.</p> We Have to Grieve Our Last Good Days - The Atlantic → https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2021/03/we-have-grieve-our-last-good-days/618233/ Wed, 10 Mar 2021 09:26:03 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/we-have-to-grieve-our-last-good-days-the-atlantic/ <p>This hit hard.</p> Sleep Around Before You Marry An Argument - essaying → https://tressie.substack.com/p/sleep-around-before-you-marry-an Wed, 10 Mar 2021 09:18:21 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/sleep-around-before-you-marry-an-argument-essaying/ <p>All the best essays are about the &ldquo;why&rdquo; and not the &ldquo;who&rdquo;. This is a great introduction to the idea of reading <em>around</em> a subject.</p> HANIA RANI — F MAJOR on Vimeo → https://vimeo.com/397439878 Tue, 23 Feb 2021 20:00:24 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/hania-rani-f-major-on-vimeo/ <p>This is <em>lovely</em> but also really sort of makes me want to watch the OA again?</p> LEGO White Noise - Spotify → https://open.spotify.com/album/6qZUya0mkucuxvoIp4akVT Wed, 03 Feb 2021 15:57:46 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/lego-white-noise-spotify/ <p>A 7-hour album of LEGO ASMR might not be your cup of tea, but it&rsquo;s exactly what I need right now.</p> Max Richter: Tiny Desk (Home) Concert - YouTube → https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=blPehZQd6Ms&feature=emb_title Sat, 23 Jan 2021 18:31:10 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/max-richter-tiny-desk-home-concert-youtube/ <p>Just lovely. I really want a piano and a lovely sleepy dog to listen to me play piano.</p> Halt and Catch Fire Syllabus → https://bits.ashleyblewer.com/halt-and-catch-fire-syllabus/ Fri, 22 Jan 2021 15:52:19 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/halt-and-catch-fire-syllabus-halt-and-catch-fire-syllabus/ <blockquote> <p>This site features a curriculum developed around the television series, Halt and Catch Fire (2014-2017), a fictional narrative about people working in tech during the 1980s-1990s.</p> </blockquote> <p>I can think of few TV shows that deserve a syllabus like this. I can&rsquo;t wait to dive into it.</p> From Cover to Cover | Jenny Volvovski → https://www.from-cover-to-cover.com/ Tue, 12 Jan 2021 19:06:38 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/from-cover-to-cover-jenny-volvovski/ <p>This lady redesigns book covers after she reads them. I love this idea.</p> Billie Eilish: Same Interview, The Fourth Year → https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hS2x1zl4rn0 Wed, 02 Dec 2020 12:00:33 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/billie-eilish-same-interview-the-fourth-year/ <p>For the last four years, Vanity Fair have been doing an interview with Billy Eilish where they ask her the same questions each year year. They first caught her in 2017, right before she blew up, so it&rsquo;s amazing to watch the changes as she&rsquo;s become one of the biggest pop stars in the world.</p> Web Conversations With the Year 2000 → https://ftrain.medium.com/web-conversations-with-the-year-2000-f0c40fb8b19c Tue, 01 Dec 2020 10:12:48 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/web-conversations-with-the-year-2000/ <p>A little too real.</p> Laura Hudson live-tweets her readthrough of Ready Player Two → https://twitter.com/laura_hudson/status/1331271143421042688 Fri, 27 Nov 2020 09:49:22 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/laura-hudson-live-tweets-her-readthrough-of-ready-player-two/ <p>A hilarious thread from someone who hated the first book as much as I did. But what&rsquo;s with the random, selective takedowns of pictures of her highlighted passages from the book? Who is the copyright holder in cases where it&rsquo;s a photo of a book that only contains whole passages from other, better things?</p> Booting from a vinyl record – BOGIN, JR. → http://boginjr.com/it/sw/dev/vinyl-boot/ Mon, 23 Nov 2020 08:18:34 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/booting-from-a-vinyl-record-bogin-jr/ <p>Oh, your OS boots from a floppy disk? That&rsquo;s cute too, I guess.</p> mom friend™ on Twitter: 'This thread is evidence of the way TikTok’s duet feature can result in the most hilarious and creative collaborations.' → https://twitter.com/emmaspacelynn/status/1312952644193996800 Wed, 07 Oct 2020 09:03:03 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/mom-friendtm-on-twitter-this-thread-is-evidence-of-the-way-tiktoks-duet-feature-can-result-in-the-most-hilarious-and-creative-collaborations/ <p>I know I&rsquo;m not exactly the target market for this stuff, but I think TikTok is just about the last great thing on the internet right now.</p> Orthographic media → https://www.robinsloan.com/notes/orthographic/ Tue, 15 Sep 2020 08:16:46 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/orthographic-media/ <p>Robin Sloan:</p> <blockquote> <p>Browsing Twitter the other day, I once again found myself sucked into a far-off event that truly does not matter, and it occurred to me that social media is an orthographic camera.</p> </blockquote> <p>This has been stuck in my brain since Robin mentioned it because I think he&rsquo;s hit the nail right on the head. I look at my Twitter timeline and see jokes and breakfast updates and outrage given the same space and importance as world-changing news events. No wonder we&rsquo;re all so exhausted.</p> An AI generated blog made it to the top of Hacker News → https://liamp.substack.com/p/my-gpt-3-blog-got-26-thousand-visitors Thu, 06 Aug 2020 06:20:46 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/an-ai-generated-blog-made-it-to-the-top-of-hacker-news/ <p>My (least?) favourite part of this story is that some people noticed it might have been written by an AI because there was nothing substantial being said and it was pure regurgitation and these people got downvoted for being rude.</p> <p>A perfect encapsulation of the Internet in 2020.</p> Alanis Morissette: Ablaze (TV Debut) - YouTube → https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jenJ4_TlZcU Tue, 04 Aug 2020 09:44:14 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/alanis-morissette-ablaze-tv-debut-youtube/ <p>This is just adorable but it&rsquo;s also is a great example of how hard is to be a parent and not let your parenting affect your day job.</p> Andy Samberg Makes Each Day Count With Thundercat and ‘Not Too Much’ Bourbon - The New York Times → https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/14/movies/andy-samberg-palm-springs.html Tue, 21 Jul 2020 06:59:25 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/andy-samberg-makes-each-day-count-with-thundercat-and-not-too-much-bourbon-the-new-york-times/ <p>Andy Samberg recommends some things he&rsquo;s been enjoying recently. His review of <em>Portrait of a Lady on Fire</em> is pretty spot-on.</p> Andrew Canion - Replicating Hey.com Features in Regular Email Systems → https://blog.andrewcanion.com/2020/06/16/replicating-heycom-features.html Mon, 20 Jul 2020 17:48:06 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/andrew-canion-replicating-hey-com-features-in-regular-email-systems/ <p>I love Hey a lot, but I&rsquo;m not really sure this needed to be a platform as opposed to just an extension of a client. Andrew Canion does a great job of showing how close you can get with just MailMate.</p> MailMate and Tagging - BrettTerpstra.com → https://brettterpstra.com/2019/08/26/mailmate-and-tagging/ Mon, 20 Jul 2020 07:31:16 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/mailmate-and-tagging-brettterpstra-com/ <p>If you need more examples of how powerful MailMate is once you get your head around it, Brett Terpstra has you covered.</p> Mmhmm https://lowbrowculture.com/video/mmhmm/ Wed, 08 Jul 2020 09:07:02 +0200 https://lowbrowculture.com/video/mmhmm/ <div class="embed video-player"> <iframe class="youtube-player" type="text/html" width="640" height="385" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/c8KhKBLoSMk" allowfullscreen frameborder="0"> </iframe> </div> <p>I have no doubt this will eventually get <a href="https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=sherlocked">sherlocked</a> because it&rsquo;s such a great idea: use your video&rsquo;s virtual background for actually useful stuff, like presenting slides, so that the audience don&rsquo;t have to choose if they want to see the presenter or the slides.</p> The Technium: 68 Bits of Unsolicited Advice → https://kk.org/thetechnium/68-bits-of-unsolicited-advice/ Wed, 06 May 2020 09:41:53 +0200 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/the-technium-68-bits-of-unsolicited-advice/ <p>To commemorate his 68th birthday, Kevin Kelly came up with 68 bits of unsolicited advice. Knowledge he&rsquo;s gathered over his 68 years. And they&rsquo;re all wonderful. My absolute favourite is</p> <blockquote> <p>Being enthusiastic is worth 25 IQ points.</p> </blockquote> <p>This is something I&rsquo;ve only recently come to realise and I&rsquo;ve been trying to apply it wherever I can. Go read the rest, they&rsquo;re worth your time.</p> Nostalgia https://lowbrowculture.com/post/nostalgia/ Wed, 29 Apr 2020 10:11:31 +0200 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/nostalgia/ <p>In December, the hardest working man on YouTube, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/user/killianm2">KillianM2</a> uploaded a copy of the Late Late Toy Show from 1985. The entire thing<sup id="fnref:1"><a href="#fn:1" class="footnote-ref" role="doc-noteref">1</a></sup>. For a little context, I&rsquo;m a 41 year old man with two children and a mortgage. The toys and gadgets I currently have in my house are so fantastically beyond anything 1985 could even imagine that they even go beyond science fiction for them. In my phone, I have something with more computing power than basically all the computers in 1985, and with it I can access any information I want, read any book I want, watch any film I want, listen to any music I want.</p> <p>Even still, as I was watching this flashback where Gay Byrne in his slightly snarky, slightly soused manner demonstrated the year&rsquo;s popular toys to the mammies and daddies of Ireland in 1985, I found myself with this deep, deep pain and sadness bubbling up inside me. Because I would love to have &ndash; I dunno take your pick of all the crappy toys &ndash; some shitty remote control Nissan outlander. I would give up my iPhone to have one. In a fucking heartbeat, I would.</p> <p>As they say, nostalgia is a hell of a drug.</p> <p>Of course it&rsquo;s not about the actual toys on the show. I don&rsquo;t actually <em>want</em> a remote control Nissan Outlander. Looking at the toys with grown-up eyes, the logical part of my brain can see that they&rsquo;re all cheap Chinese garbage and the ones that aren&rsquo;t changing hands for obscene amounts of money on eBay are all piled up in a landfill now. It&rsquo;s everything <em>around</em> the toys that got to me. It&rsquo;s the design of the toys, the boxy shape of the cars, the vibe of the thing, the hairstyles, the clothes (the audience are dressed like normal people, not an ironically awful Christmas jumper to be seen). These are the thing that remind me of home. They remind me of my childhood. Of that special feeling of safety I was fortunate enough to experience as a child. Of feeling looked after. Too right that&rsquo;s a powerful thing. At one point, the show covered some toys I <em>actually owned</em> back then and I swear to god right then I could smell the room in my house where I used to play with those toys, I could feel the carpet.</p> <p>Create a weapon that can trigger that sensation and you&rsquo;ll end all wars forever.</p> <p>But I don&rsquo;t think nostalgia is necessarily a bad thing. Especially now, what with one thing and another. It&rsquo;s easy to dismiss nostalgia as something to be avoided, like some pithy aphorism embroidered on a tea towel: &ldquo;you never move forward when you&rsquo;re living in the past&rdquo;. But at the same time, this kind of nostalgia can be a reliable way of recreating a feeling of safety. It&rsquo;s a way of self-soothing.</p> <p>As I said, I&rsquo;m a 41 year old man with two kids and a mortgage and, to top it all off, <em>we&rsquo;re in the middle of a global pandemic</em>. This is my reality and I can&rsquo;t escape it. Wait, no. This is <em>our</em> reality and <em>we</em> can&rsquo;t escape it. I&rsquo;ve found myself struggling to engage with things. I&rsquo;m sure you&rsquo;re the same. I start a new book and I can&rsquo;t focus on the words because my brain goes elsewhere. I start watching a film and I end up checking the latest infection figures. And so I&rsquo;ve found myself going back to familiar things &ndash; rewatching <em>Parks and Recreation</em>, for example &ndash; because they make me feel safe and looked after.</p> <p>And this, in turn, lets me try to make my kids feel safe and looked after so that when they&rsquo;re in their 40s and they watch a video of the Late Late Toy Show from 2020 (assuming it even happens, of course), they won&rsquo;t have any memory of feeling fear or anxiety about the state of the world., they&rsquo;ll just have the same warm, comforting feelings I&rsquo;m talking about here.</p> <p>So whatever it takes for you to get through this, whatever media you need to consume to make you feel all right, don&rsquo;t feel ashamed, just do it.</p> <p>Stay safe.</p> <div class="footnotes" role="doc-endnotes"> <hr> <ol> <li id="fn:1"> <p>Since then, he&rsquo;s taken it down, I&rsquo;m guessing for Copyright reasons?&#160;<a href="#fnref:1" class="footnote-backref" role="doc-backlink">&#x21a9;&#xfe0e;</a></p> </li> </ol> </div> Best Games I Played in 2019 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/best-games-i-played-in-2019/ Mon, 27 Apr 2020 09:32:37 +0200 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/best-games-i-played-in-2019/ <p><em>Previously: <a href="https://lowbrowculture.com/post/best-games-i-played-in-2013/">2013</a>, <a href="https://lowbrowculture.com/post/the-best-games-i-played-in-2014/">2014</a>, <a href="https://lowbrowculture.com/post/best-games-i-played-in-2015/">2015</a>, <a href="https://lowbrowculture.com/post/best-games-i-played-in-2016/">2016</a>, <a href="https://lowbrowculture.com/post/best-games-i-played-in-2017/">2017</a>, <a href="https://lowbrowculture.com/post/best-games-i-played-in-2018/">2018</a></em></p> <p>I realise we&rsquo;re more than a third of the way through 2020 already but what with one thing and another, now seems like an ideal time to sit in and bang outa couple hundred words on something that no-one cares about. As with previous years, normal caveats apply: I have two small children and limited free time (which is why this post is being written in April), so I missed a lot of big-budget games that, had I played them probably would have appeared on here. <sup id="fnref:1"><a href="#fn:1" class="footnote-ref" role="doc-noteref">1</a></sup></p> <h2 id="what-the-golf">What the Golf?</h2> <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/games-2019/what_the_golf.jpg" alt=""></p> <p>I thought this was going to be <em>just a good golf game</em>. Now, let me make it clear that there&rsquo;s nothing wrong with being <em>just a good golf game</em>. Last year&rsquo;s <em>Golf Story</em> was a good golf game and ended up being one of my favourite games of the year. But <em>What the Golf</em> is so much more than just a golf game. The first level is straightforward, you pull down and release to knock a ball to the flag. The second level, you pull down and release and the <em>golf club</em> flies forward, and you have to make the club hit the flag. And the game continues in this manner, getting more and more wild and creative and wildly creative on each level. At one point, about halfway through, it starts making golf versions of other popular games, so you&rsquo;ll get <em>Super Meatboy</em> with golf. Or <em>Portal</em> with golf. This was the most fun I&rsquo;ve had with a game all year. (It&rsquo;s also the most frustrated I got with a game, but that&rsquo;s another post).</p> <h2 id="the-outer-wilds">The Outer Wilds</h2> <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/games-2019/outer_wilds.jpg" alt=""></p> <p>I guess this is best described as a science fiction archaeology game? You launch your spaceship, visit different planets, and I guess that <em>could</em> describe the entire game, if you wanted it? I mean, there&rsquo;s nothing driving you forward in the game except your own curiosity. But it rewards that curiosity better than any other game I can think of. And I loved it so much because of that. More games like this, please.</p> <h2 id="heavens-vault">Heaven&rsquo;s Vault</h2> <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/games-2019/heavens_vault.jpg" alt=""></p> <p>Typical. You wait your whole life for a science fiction archaeology game and two come along at once. This one is done by the people who made <em>80 Days</em>, so as you&rsquo;d expect, it has much more straightforward narrative than <em>Outer Wilds</em> (i.e. it acts and feels like a choose-your-own-adventure game). But the puzzles in this one are so cleverly constructed. You start uncovering alien artefacts and, through them, you start learning an entirely new language, creating meaning via logic and context, just like learning a real language. When the pieces started falling into place, I felt like a <em>genius</em>. Again, more games like this, please?</p> <h2 id="death-stranding">Death Stranding</h2> <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/games-2019/death_stranding.jpg" alt=""></p> <p>I found the last few <em>Metal Gear Solid</em> games a little too much for me to handle, but I really liked <em>Death Stranding</em> so I want to say that <em>Death Stranding</em> is like a Hideo Kojima game with most of the Kojima-ness washed off. But even that&rsquo;s not entirely true because this is an <em>incredibly</em> Kojima game. I think it&rsquo;s because it&rsquo;s got all his heart and his creativity but none of the dark cynicism? Despite the bleak setting, <em>Death Stranding</em> is a game about hope and I can&rsquo;t think of anything we need more in 2019.</p> <h2 id="tetris-effect">Tetris Effect</h2> <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/games-2019/tetris_effect.jpg" alt=""></p> <p>Technically this came out in 2018 but I played it for the first time in VR in 2019 and I&rsquo;m usually pretty strict about such things but honestly, this was the closest I came to having a religious experience all year.</p> <h2 id="legend-of-zelda-cadence-of-hyrule">Legend of Zelda Cadence of Hyrule</h2> <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/games-2019/cadence_of_hyrule.jpg" alt=""></p> <p>I hadn&rsquo;t played the original <em>Crypt of the NecroDancer</em> so the mechanic of this took me a while to get used to. Basically, it&rsquo;s a rhythm-based Zelda game, where you need to move and fight on the beat. But once you settle into it, it works really well as a Zelda game and the art style is gorgeous. I just wish there was more of it.</p> <h2 id="dragon-quest-builders-2">Dragon Quest Builders 2</h2> <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/games-2019/dragon_quest_builders.jpg" alt=""></p> <p>I&rsquo;m probably in the minority here, but I&rsquo;m not a fan of <em>Minecraft&rsquo;s</em> story mode. It feels unnaturally bolted on to what is, essentially, just a Lego sandbox. <em>Dragon Quest Builders 2</em> has the opposite problem: it has a <em>wonderful</em> story mode (I hadn&rsquo;t played DQB1 or many of the DQ games before 8 so I&rsquo;m not big into the lore and I still enjoyed it), to the point where every time it presented me with its creative mode, I wasn&rsquo;t that interested. &ldquo;Hey did you know you can build up a town for these people with all sorts of different buildings like bedrooms and saloons and showers and toilets?&rdquo; &ldquo;IDGAF give me the next bit of story&rdquo;. I haven&rsquo;t been pulled through a game like this in a while.</p> <h2 id="star-wars-jedi-fallen-order">Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order</h2> <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/games-2019/fallen_order.jpg" alt=""></p> <p>The best <em>Star Wars</em> game since <em>Knights of the Old Republic</em>? I loved how it didn&rsquo;t shy away from its <em>Star Wars</em>-ness and didn&rsquo;t just wear it like a coat of paint over a generic sci-fi game. I&rsquo;m not sure the <em>Dark Souls</em> influence really works in this game: the controls aren&rsquo;t as good or reliable as they need to be to hang with the <em>Souls</em> games, but that&rsquo;s a minor complaint for what is an otherwise great game.</p> <h2 id="luigis-mansion">Luigi&rsquo;s Mansion</h2> <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/games-2019/luigis_mansion.jpg" alt=""></p> <p>This was a lovely little palate cleanser of a game. It&rsquo;s so light and delicious and every time I felt myself losing interest because it&rsquo;s <em>too light</em>, the game would do something delightful and draw me back in again.</p> <h2 id="ori-and-the-blind-forest">Ori and the Blind Forest</h2> <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/games-2019/ori_and_the_blind_forest.jpg" alt=""></p> <p>Again maybe another cheat because this is an old game, but it only came out on Switch in 2019 and that&rsquo;s the first time I played it. And I feel weird about putting it on here because technically I hate-played it. Remember I mentioned above about how <em>Fallen Order</em>&rsquo;s controls weren&rsquo;t as precise as they needed to be? <em>Ori</em>&rsquo;s controls are exactly as precise as they need to be. It&rsquo;s a beautiful game from that point of view. And after a few hours, when you&rsquo;ve unlocked most of your abilities and can chain together some beautiful moves, it&rsquo;s a wonderful <em>flow</em> game. That is then completely ruined by some of the worst set-pieces I&rsquo;ve ever seen that rely almost entirely on failure and memorisation. I loved this game. I hated this game.</p> <div class="footnotes" role="doc-endnotes"> <hr> <ol> <li id="fn:1"> <p>Just wanted to mention that I did, however, finish <em>Diablo 3</em> because the switch is the perfect platform for this game because it meant I could chip away at this game in five-minute doses.&#160;<a href="#fnref:1" class="footnote-backref" role="doc-backlink">&#x21a9;&#xfe0e;</a></p> </li> </ol> </div> Protecting Lives & Liberty: How Contact Tracing Can Foil COVID-19 & Big Brother → https://ncase.me/contact-tracing/ Mon, 13 Apr 2020 09:20:01 +0200 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/protecting-lives--liberty-how-contact-tracing-can-foil-covid-19--big-brother/ <p>There&rsquo;s an old, not very funny joke about the two hardest things in computer science being cache invalidation, naming things, and off-by-one errors.</p> <p>But I&rsquo;d like to add that the <em>real</em> hardest thing is taking complicated concepts and explaining them in simple language so that even non-computer-people can comprehend them. And that&rsquo;s something Nicky Case is <em>great</em> at. Along with security &amp; privacy researcher Carmela Troncoso and epidemiologist Marcel Salathé, Nicky came up an explanation of how <a href="https://github.com/DP-3T/documents">DP-3T</a> works that is so great, so understandable that I&rsquo;d feel comfortable showing it to my mother so she could make sense of it.</p> <p>The reason I&rsquo;m linking to it, besides it being a great example of how to do explainers like this properly, is that this is kiiiinda like <a href="https://covid19-static.cdn-apple.com/applications/covid19/current/static/contact-tracing/pdf/ContactTracing-BluetoothSpecification.pdf">the model proposed by both Google and Apple for their contact tracing protocol</a>, and that&rsquo;s probably something that&rsquo;s going to become incredibly important over the next few months so it&rsquo;s important people understand it.</p> How the Death of iTunes Explains the 2010s - The Atlantic → https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2020/01/how-death-itunes-explains-2010s/604291/ Mon, 24 Feb 2020 10:37:49 +0100 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/how-the-death-of-itunes-explains-the-2010s---the-atlantic/ <blockquote> <p>What the idealized iPhone user and the idealized Gmail user shared was a perfect executive-functioning system: Every time they picked up their phone or opened their web browser, they knew exactly what they wanted to do, got it done with a calm single-mindedness, and then closed their device. This dream illuminated Inbox Zero and Kinfolk and minimalist writing apps. It didn’t work. What we got instead was Inbox Infinity and the algorithmic timeline. Each of us became a wanderer in a sea of content. Each of us adopted the tacit—but still shameful—assumption that we are just treading water, that the clock is always running, and that the work will never end.</p> </blockquote> <p>This might be one of the best essays on technology (and my favourite topics: the internet that was and the internet that could have been) that I&rsquo;ve ever read.</p> Cards Against Humanity Purchases Satire Site ClickHole From G/O Media → https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/katienotopoulos/cards-against-humanity-buys-clickhole Tue, 04 Feb 2020 09:32:34 +0100 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/cards-against-humanity-purchases-satire-site-clickhole-from-go-media/ <p>I&rsquo;ve already mentioned <a href="https://lowbrowculture.com/post/cards-against-humanity/">how much I don&rsquo;t like Cards Against Humanity as a game</a>, but I really admire them as a company. They&rsquo;re constantly doing interesting things like <a href="https://lowbrowculture.com/link/cards-against-humanitys-private-island/">buying a private island</a> and giving 1 sq ft to each of their subscribers. This time, they&rsquo;ve bought ClickHole and turned it into an independent, majority employee-owned company.</p> Basecamp Guide to Internal Communication → https://basecamp.com/guides/how-we-communicate Sat, 04 Jan 2020 12:31:53 +0100 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/basecamp-guide-to-internal-communication/ <p>I work remotely with a team that&rsquo;s spread across Europe and I just before Christmas, I calculated that I lost a full third of my week to video calls, most of which should have been emails. So I read this and shouted OMFG YES to almost every point. Obviously, every team is different and this guide isn&rsquo;t a one-size-fits-all solution (nor does it claim to be) but there&rsquo;s so much in here to take on board.</p> <p>(Until I sort out my professional blog, you&rsquo;re just going to have to put up with the occasional work/devops related post on here, sorry about that.)</p> Internet via Email https://lowbrowculture.com/post/internet-via-email/ Tue, 24 Dec 2019 09:21:58 +0100 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/internet-via-email/ <p>Knowing there&rsquo;s a real risk of this blog turning into &ldquo;old man yells at cloud<sup id="fnref:1"><a href="#fn:1" class="footnote-ref" role="doc-noteref">1</a></sup>&rdquo;, here are few thoughts, sort of connected.</p> <p>First there was <a href="https://newconsumer.com/2019/12/the-new-consumer-year-one/">Dan Frommer talking about his first year of running a subscription newsletter</a>:</p> <blockquote> <p>Social media continues to strengthen direct relationships between readers and writers. The internet has made discovery easier for quality, niche publications. (Though that is probably the biggest hurdle.) Email remains an amazing delivery and distribution method for timely written content.</p> </blockquote> <p>Here&rsquo;s <a href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2019/12/23/new-consumer-year-one">John Gruber&rsquo;s take on this</a>:</p> <blockquote> <p>And readers love newsletters. Websites are getting harder and harder to read. Paywalls forget who you are on a seemingly weekly basis. Websites put interstitial popovers directly over the content you’re trying to read. Videos are set to autoplay. How many times are you supposed to tell the same goddamn website whether you’ll accept their fucking cookies? It’s like they’re purposefully making it hard to read. Newsletters have none of that. They’re just easy and fun to read. The web can and should be that way too, but all too often it’s not.</p> </blockquote> <p>It&rsquo;s a fair point - websites are, for the most part, terrible content delivery mechanisms. Which makes me think that maybe RMS, as shitty as he could be, might have hit on something when he talked about <a href="https://stallman.org/stallman-computing.html">the way he consumes the internet</a></p> <blockquote> <p>I generally do not connect to web sites from my own machine, aside from a few sites I have some special relationship with. I usually fetch web pages from other sites by sending mail to a program (see <a href="https://git.savannah.gnu.org/git/womb/hacks.git">https://git.savannah.gnu.org/git/womb/hacks.git</a>) that fetches them, much like wget, and then mails them back to me. Then I look at them using a web browser, unless it is easy to see the text in the HTML page directly. I usually try lynx first, then a graphical browser if the page needs it (using konqueror, which won&rsquo;t fetch from other sites in such a situation).</p> </blockquote> <p>Incidentally, I&rsquo;ve recently moved my RSS from Inoreader to Feedbin and one of the features that drew me away was the newsletter-to-rss gateway - you get a unique email address with which you can sign up for newsletters and they automatically get created as RSS feeds for you. Which means you can read the content in RSS<sup id="fnref:2"><a href="#fn:2" class="footnote-ref" role="doc-noteref">2</a></sup>. So I&rsquo;ve spent my day unsubscribing with my email address and re-subscribing with my Feedbin address and my email inbox feels so much lighter and fresher and how an email inbox <em>should feel</em><sup id="fnref:3"><a href="#fn:3" class="footnote-ref" role="doc-noteref">3</a></sup>.</p> <div class="footnotes" role="doc-endnotes"> <hr> <ol> <li id="fn:1"> <p>:goodjoke:&#160;<a href="#fnref:1" class="footnote-backref" role="doc-backlink">&#x21a9;&#xfe0e;</a></p> </li> <li id="fn:2"> <p>which is how the internet was going until <a href="https://mcfunley.com/google-reader-killed-rss">Google Reader killed RSS</a>&#160;<a href="#fnref:2" class="footnote-backref" role="doc-backlink">&#x21a9;&#xfe0e;</a></p> </li> <li id="fn:3"> <p>I have a strict policy regarding notifications on my phone - no notifications unless they came from a human being directly to me. I don&rsquo;t see why my email should have a different policy.&#160;<a href="#fnref:3" class="footnote-backref" role="doc-backlink">&#x21a9;&#xfe0e;</a></p> </li> </ol> </div> 2019 Movie Trailer Mashup https://lowbrowculture.com/video/2019-movie-trailer-mashup/ Fri, 06 Dec 2019 11:28:39 +0100 https://lowbrowculture.com/video/2019-movie-trailer-mashup/ <div class="embed video-player"> <iframe class="youtube-player" type="text/html" width="640" height="385" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/0SnuMAfDlgo" allowfullscreen frameborder="0"> </iframe> </div> <p>While we wait for David Ehrlich&rsquo;s video of his best films of 2019 (which are still the high water mark for this kind of thing - <a href="https://vimeo.com/304064569">2018</a>, <a href="https://vimeo.com/303953880">2017</a>, <a href="https://vimeo.com/302872174">2016</a>, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8-oEEiPYm6Y">2015</a>, <a href="https://vimeo.com/302868211">2014</a>, <a href="https://vimeo.com/80862133">2013</a>, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Af7ueNy_ozM">2012</a>), Sleepy Skunk has put together a pretty great mashup of some of the trailers from the year.</p> <p>I&rsquo;ve probably seen maybe a quarter of the films in this video, and of the one&rsquo;s I&rsquo;ve seen, not all of them were particularly great (I wasn&rsquo;t, for example, a fan of <em>Midsommar</em>. In fact, <a href="https://letterboxd.com/johnke/film/midsommar/">I think Ari Aster might be a complete charlatan</a>), but in the context of this mashup, they all looked <em>amazing</em>. Which made me think <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/06/21/opinion/editorials/errol-morris-lobster-sviatoslav-richter.html">maybe Errol Morris was right when he said</a></p> <blockquote> <p>I believe that there are no good movies, no good books, no good music compositions just great scenes, great passages, great moments.</p> </blockquote> <p>(Except for <em>Mad Max: Fury Road</em>. That is a <em>perfect</em> movie.)</p> This Tom Hanks Story Will Help You Feel Less Bad - The New York Times → https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/13/movies/tom-hanks-mister-rogers.html Thu, 14 Nov 2019 09:27:33 +0100 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/this-tom-hanks-story-will-help-you-feel-less-bad---the-new-york-times/ <p>I cried more than once while reading this profile of Tom Hanks. Just lovely.</p> My Obsession With the Bon Appetit Cinematic Universe → https://jezebel.com/my-obsession-with-the-bon-appetit-cinematic-universe-1839497437 Thu, 07 Nov 2019 20:05:13 +0100 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/my-obsession-with-the-bon-appetit-cinematic-universe/ <p>Throwback to that moment last year when my entire YouTube home screen was taken up by Brad Leone, so this one really hits home.</p> <p><img src="../../static/pictures/../../../static/pictures/bradleone.png" alt=""></p> <p>(Also, the &ldquo;Bon Appetit Cinematic Universe&rdquo;? 😗👌)</p> It's so much more than cooking → https://theweek.com/articles/864481/much-more-than-cooking Fri, 25 Oct 2019 10:38:32 +0200 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/its-so-much-more-than-cooking/ <p>Leaving aside the sexism in this article, I feel like it&rsquo;s articulated a lot of things that have been bothering me subconsciously. My job is 100% remote and I work from home, so there&rsquo;s a sort of expectation in our house that I&rsquo;ll do almost all of the the cooking. And that&rsquo;s sort of fine, because I genuinely enjoy cooking. But it&rsquo;s also extremely stressful because it&rsquo;s not just cooking. It&rsquo;s the planning (two small picky-eating children who even <em>smell</em> garlic and complain &ldquo;it&rsquo;s too spicy!&rdquo;), it&rsquo;s the shopping, it&rsquo;s the prepping. It&rsquo;s the mental and emotional labour <em>around</em> cooking that makes it so stressful.</p> Inside the Tiny Bedroom Where Finneas and Billie Eilish Are Redefining Pop Music https://lowbrowculture.com/video/inside-the-tiny-bedroom-where-finneas-and-billie-eilish-are-redefining-pop-music/ Thu, 24 Oct 2019 11:43:22 +0200 https://lowbrowculture.com/video/inside-the-tiny-bedroom-where-finneas-and-billie-eilish-are-redefining-pop-music/ <div class="embed video-player"> <iframe class="youtube-player" type="text/html" width="640" height="385" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/ZBJ914ha6LQ" allowfullscreen frameborder="0"> </iframe> </div> <p>Over the summer, I watched the Showtime documentary series <a href="https://www.sho.com/shangri-la">Shangri-La</a>, which is all about Rick Rubin and creativity and inspiration and his Malibu studio, which is treated like some holy place by everyone in the documentary. For example, when they are between artists, Rubin has his interns <em>repaint the studio floors</em> - I dunno, to make it feel like some blank page for the next artist that&rsquo;s going to use it?</p> <p>By contrast, Billy Eilish&rsquo;s <em>When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?</em> was produced in her childhood home, by her brother, using prosumer-level equipment. And, for my money, it was one of the best-produced albums of 2019.</p> <p>This video is a really great companion piece to <em>Shangri-La</em> - both emphasise how important the <em>space</em> is to the creative process, but they approach the topic from entirely different ends of the spectrum.</p> Now https://lowbrowculture.com/post/now/ Fri, 18 Oct 2019 09:13:12 +0200 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/now/ <p>tl;dr this site now has a <a href="https://lowbrowculture.com/now">/now</a> page where you can keep track of what I&rsquo;m up to right now.</p> <hr> <p>Back in the old days &ndash; I mean the <em>old</em> old days &ndash; there was this wonderful command called <code>finger</code> where you could look up information about users on a UNIX system<sup id="fnref:1"><a href="#fn:1" class="footnote-ref" role="doc-noteref">1</a></sup>. It would tell you some personal information about the user, like their name and their phone number. But my favourite part about this command was that it would also return the contents of the user&rsquo;s <code>plan</code> file.</p> <p><code>.plan</code> was supposed to be to tell people what you were working on that day, but people eventually turned started using it for other forms of expression. I guess it was an early form of microblogging<sup id="fnref:2"><a href="#fn:2" class="footnote-ref" role="doc-noteref">2</a></sup>.</p> <p>Looking at the blogs I still read in 2019, there&rsquo;s a lot of &ldquo;here are a list of curated links to cool things on the internet&rdquo; and there&rsquo;s a lot of &ldquo;here is an article I have written so I can include it as a &lsquo;publication&rsquo; on my linkedin profile&rdquo;. But there&rsquo;s not much in terms of personal writing. I never get a real sense of what the person writing the blog is doing, what they&rsquo;re working on, what they&rsquo;re reading, what&rsquo;s bothering them (And before you say &ldquo;isn&rsquo;t that what Twitter is for?&rdquo; I&rsquo;d ask have you actually <em>seen</em> Twitter these days?) (And don&rsquo;t get me started on Facebook).</p> <p>The idea behind a &rsquo;now&rsquo; page is to bring back some of that same <code>.plan</code> feeling. <a href="https://nownownow.com/about">From Derek Sivers&rsquo;s nownownow.com</a>:</p> <blockquote> <p>Besides answering the common question, “What are you up to these days?”, those who have a now page say it’s a good reminder of their priorities. By publicly showing what you are focused on now, it helps you say no to other requests.</p> </blockquote> <p>So if you want to see what I&rsquo;m up to now, you can just go to <a href="https://lowbrowculture.com/now">lowbrowculture.com/now</a>.</p> <div class="footnotes" role="doc-endnotes"> <hr> <ol> <li id="fn:1"> <p>I realise the command wasn&rsquo;t limited to just UNIX systems, but let&rsquo;s just keep it simple, shall we?&#160;<a href="#fnref:1" class="footnote-backref" role="doc-backlink">&#x21a9;&#xfe0e;</a></p> </li> <li id="fn:2"> <p>For a great example of someone using the <code>.plan</code> file and watching its use morph over time, check out the <a href="https://github.com/ESWAT/john-carmack-plan-archive">John Carmack .plan Archive</a>&#160;<a href="#fnref:2" class="footnote-backref" role="doc-backlink">&#x21a9;&#xfe0e;</a></p> </li> </ol> </div> https://lowbrowculture.com/uses/ Wed, 09 Oct 2019 09:18:16 +0200 https://lowbrowculture.com/uses/ <h1 id="uses">/uses</h1> <p>All the things I use on a day-to-day basis. For more lists of the things people use, check out <a href="https://uses.tech">uses.tech</a>.</p> <p><em>Last updated: 2024-02-17</em></p> <h2 id="hardware">Hardware</h2> <ul> <li><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IMac_(Intel-based)?useskin=vector#5th_generation:_Retina_iMac">2020 27” iMac</a> with 64GB of RAM. This is my personal machine. I try to keep work and personal stuff separate, so I use this for calls, listening to music and personal projects.</li> <li><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=MacBook_Pro&amp;useskin=vector#14-inch_and_16-inch_(2021%E2%80%93present)">2021 14” MacBook Pro</a> with 32GB of RAM. This is my work-supplied laptop.</li> <li>Monitor: An old 27” Dell. I use this to drive my work laptop.</li> <li>Keyboard: <a href="https://www.zsa.io/moonlander/">ZSA Moonlander</a> with <a href="https://drop.com/buy/drop-matt3o-mt3-dev-tty-keycap-set?defaultSelectionIds=962042">Matt3o /dev/tty keycaps</a></li> <li>Mouse: <a href="https://www.logitech.com/en-us/products/mice/mx-master-3s.910-006557.html">Logitech MX Master 3S</a> (the mouse equivalent of the Brother <a href="https://www.theverge.com/23642073/best-printer-2023-brother-laser-wi-fi-its-fine">“just buy the one everyone has, it’s fine” printer</a>)</li> <li>Headphones: <a href="https://europe.beyerdynamic.com/dt-990-pro.html">Beyerdynamic DT 990 Pro headphones</a></li> <li>Audio Interface: <a href="https://focusrite.com/products/scarlett-4i4">Focusrite Scarlett 2i2</a></li> <li>Microphone: <a href="https://www.shure.com/en-US/products/microphones/sm7b">Shure SM7B</a></li> <li>Thing-doer: <a href="https://www.elgato.com/us/en/p/stream-deck-mk2-black">Elgato Streamdeck MK2</a></li> <li>Webcam: <a href="https://www.logitech.com/en-eu/products/webcams/c920-pro-hd-webcam.html">Logitech C920 HD</a></li> </ul> <h2 id="software">Software</h2> <ul> <li>KVM: <a href="https://github.com/debauchee/barrier">Barrier</a>, a software KVM that allows me to control my work laptop with the keyboard and mouse plugged into my personal iMac.</li> <li>Mail client: <a href="https://freron.com/">Mailmate</a></li> <li>Code editor: <a href="https://code.visualstudio.com/">Visual Studio Code</a> (reluctantly)</li> <li>RSS: <a href="https://www.reederapp.com/">Reeder</a></li> <li>Browser: <a href="https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/new/">Firefox</a></li> <li>Read it later: <a href="https://omnivore.app/">Omnivore</a></li> <li>Task Management: <a href="https://www.omnigroup.com/omnifocus">Omnifocus 4</a> (but will probably switch back to <a href="https://culturedcode.com/things/">Things</a> shortly)</li> <li>Note taking: <a href="https://obsidian.md/">Obsidian</a></li> <li>Mastodon: <a href="https://tapbots.com/ivory/">Ivory</a></li> <li>Launcher: <a href="https://alfred.app/">Alfred</a> (also used for clipboard management and text replacement)</li> <li>Terminal: <a href="https://iterm2.com/">iTerm2</a></li> <li>Shell: <a href="https://fishshell.com/">fish</a></li> <li>Font (for terminal and editor) <a href="https://philpl.gumroad.com/l/dank-mono">Dank Mono</a></li> <li>Theme (for terminal and editor) <a href="https://github.com/catppuccin/catppuccin">Catpuccin Macchiato</a></li> <li>Photo Editing: <a href="https://www.pixelmator.com/pro/">Pixelmator Pro</a> / <a href="https://www.pixelmator.com/photomator/">Photomator</a></li> <li>Document management: <a href="https://www.devontechnologies.com/apps/devonthink">Devonthink</a></li> <li>Search Engine: <a href="https://duckduckgo.com/">DuckDuckGo</a></li> <li>Screenshots: <a href="https://cleanshot.com/">CleanShot X</a></li> <li>Keyboard Macros: <a href="https://www.keyboardmaestro.com/main/">Keyboard Maestro</a></li> <li>Image organiser: <a href="https://eagle.cool/">Eagle</a></li> </ul> <h2 id="mobile">Mobile</h2> <ul> <li>iPhone 14 Pro Max</li> <li>iPad</li> <li><a href="https://nuphy.com/products/air60">Nuphy Air60</a> keyboard for when I need to type on the iPad</li> <li><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Apple_Watch&amp;useskin=vector#Eighth_generation_(Series_8,_SE_(2nd_generation)_and_Ultra)">Apple Watch Series 8 45mm</a></li> <li><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Amazon_Kindle&amp;useskin=vector#Kindle_Paperwhite_(fifth_iteration)">Kindle Paperwhite</a></li> </ul> <h2 id="fun">Fun</h2> <ul> <li><a href="https://store.steampowered.com/steamdeck">Valve Steamdeck OLED</a></li> <li><a href="https://www.nintendo.co.uk/Hardware/Nintendo-Switch-Family/Nintendo-Switch-OLED-Model/Nintendo-Switch-OLED-Model-2000984.html">Nintendo Switch OLED</a> (co-opted by my 5 year old)</li> <li><a href="https://www.nintendo.co.uk/Hardware/Nintendo-Switch-Family/Nintendo-Switch/Nintendo-Switch-1148779.html">Nintendo Switch</a> (co-opted by my 7 year old)</li> <li><a href="https://www.xbox.com/en-US/consoles/xbox-series-x">Xbox Series X</a></li> <li><a href="https://www.playstation.com/en-ie/ps5/">Playstation 5</a></li> <li><a href="https://www.analogue.co/pocket">Analogue Pocket</a></li> </ul> Once Upon a Time in Hollywood: The Final Rodeo → https://birthmoviesdeath.com/2019/09/30/once-upon-a-time-in-hollywood-the-final-rodeo Tue, 01 Oct 2019 09:23:00 +0200 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/the-final-rodeo/ <p>I wasn&rsquo;t fully taken with <em>Once Upon a Time in Hollywood</em> (On my <a href="https://letterboxd.com/johnke/list/qt-ranked/">letterboxd ranking of Tarantino films</a>, it&rsquo;s second from bottom), but Priscilla Page makes a pretty great argument for the film, explaining a lot of the smaller details that idiots like me might have missed, such as:</p> <blockquote> <p>&hellip; their front gate opening to him like the pearly gates of heaven as Maurice Jarre’s “Miss Lily Langtry” plays. (When this song plays in The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean, the title card reads: “Maybe this isn’t the way it was…it’s the way it should have been.”)</p> </blockquote> An Elite Athlete's Training Plan → https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/09/well/move/leadville-katie-arnold-ultramarathon-training-parenthood.html Mon, 30 Sep 2019 10:08:13 +0200 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/an-elite-athletes-training-plan/ <blockquote> <p>You don’t necessarily have to train long for this, just smart. This is true for nearly any endurance event, whether it’s a 5K or 100 miles or everyday life. You have to be creative. You have to steal time from the edges of your day, teach yourself to eat on the fly, learn to function on suboptimal sleep, and keep going even when you want to lie down and cry. In other words, just like parenthood.</p> </blockquote> <p>I&rsquo;m not an elite athlete, but I am father to two children under 4 and it definitely confirm what this lady is saying - being a parent makes you very good at two things: ruthlessly prioritising and getting comfortable existing at the edges of what most people would consider &rsquo;tolerable living&rsquo;. I haven&rsquo;t had an unbroken night of sleep in almost four years. When I finish something for myself, even something as simple as reading a book, it&rsquo;s because I slowly slowly chipped away at it and it feels like a major accomplishment.</p> <p>Anyway, this lady&rsquo;s whole article is terrific and is worth reading.</p> An Important Update From Chef → https://blog.chef.io/2019/09/23/an-important-update-from-chef/ Mon, 23 Sep 2019 19:05:10 +0200 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/an-important-update-from-chef/ <p>After the <a href="https://blog.chef.io/2019/09/19/chefs-position-on-customer-engagement-in-the-public-and-private-sectors/">previous update by Barry Crist effectively saying &ldquo;suck it up, losers&rdquo;</a>, Chef have announced that they would not be renewing their contract with ICE and CBP. More importantly though, it sounds as though they&rsquo;ll be bringing a moral element to their business decisions from now on. This can only be a good thing.</p> Five Books → https://fivebooks.com/ Fri, 20 Sep 2019 10:52:03 +0200 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/five-books/ <p>Ever since the death of <a href="http://review.oysterbooks.com/archives">The Oyster Review</a>, I&rsquo;ve been pretty suck for a good source of book recommendations. The Algorithm is good at many things but recommending things that depend on personal tastes and interests is not one of them. Five Books seems like it might be a good replacement though<sup id="fnref:1"><a href="#fn:1" class="footnote-ref" role="doc-noteref">1</a></sup>. It bypasses The Algorithm and asks real live human experts to recommend, as the name implies, five books on a given topic. For example, <a href="https://fivebooks.com/reader-list/5-science-fictions-books-on-the-future-of-europe-porcarorama/">5 Sci-Fi books on the future of Europe</a>, or <a href="https://fivebooks.com/best-books/art-living-roman-krznaric/">5 books on The Art of Living</a>.</p> <div class="footnotes" role="doc-endnotes"> <hr> <ol> <li id="fn:1"> <p>Come to think of it, could Five Books actually be related to The Oyster Review? &ldquo;five books&rdquo; was <a href="http://review.oysterbooks.com/archives/five-books">one of their original features too</a>.&#160;<a href="#fnref:1" class="footnote-backref" role="doc-backlink">&#x21a9;&#xfe0e;</a></p> </li> </ol> </div> Come to the Edge https://lowbrowculture.com/quote/come-to-the-edge/ Tue, 27 Aug 2019 16:11:46 +0200 https://lowbrowculture.com/quote/come-to-the-edge/ <blockquote> <p>Come to the edge.<br> We might fall.<br> Come to the edge.<br> It&rsquo;s too high!<br> COME TO THE EDGE!<br> And they came,<br> And he pushed,<br> And they flew.</p> <p>&ndash; Christopher Logue</p> </blockquote> In Praise of Food Dad, Nigel Slater → https://www.vice.com/en_uk/article/5979y8/in-praise-of-food-dad-nigel-slater Fri, 07 Jun 2019 16:58:55 +0200 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/in-praise-of-food-dad/ <p>Ruby Tandoh gets it. Nigel Slater&rsquo;s <em>Real Food</em> completely changed my relationship to cooking and I have a special place in my heart for his writing.</p> How to Read More Books in the Golden Age of Content https://lowbrowculture.com/video/how-to-read-more-books-in-the-golden-age-of-content/ Tue, 30 Apr 2019 09:54:05 +0200 https://lowbrowculture.com/video/how-to-read-more-books-in-the-golden-age-of-content/ <div class="embed video-player"> <iframe class="youtube-player" type="text/html" width="640" height="385" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/lIW5jBrrsS0" allowfullscreen frameborder="0"> </iframe> </div> <p>Okay look, this video kind of goes a little &ldquo;maybe the real books we read were the friends we made along the way&rdquo; at the end, but it&rsquo;s got a wonderful (if slightly obvious/well-trod) set of central messages: make time for more reading and you&rsquo;ll read more; there&rsquo;s no &lsquo;canon&rsquo;, just read widely; enjoy it.</p> <p>But the thing that really blew my mind was how these enormous, gorgeous book stores are <em>thriving</em> in the 21st Century. Ateneo Gran Splendid was only opened in the year 2000. And the thing I noticed was how they aren&rsquo;t just places to buy books - they have cafes and bars and patisseries to help you enjoy your time in the space, not just get in and get out as fast as you can.</p> 5 Star Phonies → https://thehustle.co/amazon-fake-reviews Tue, 16 Apr 2019 09:43:26 +0200 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/5-star-phonies/ <p>In the past few years, I&rsquo;ve basically given up trusting Amazon reviews. If I&rsquo;m in the market to buy something, I&rsquo;ll look for reviews by actual people I trust. <a href="https://thewirecutter.com/">thewirecutter</a> hasn&rsquo;t been 100% successful for me<sup id="fnref:1"><a href="#fn:1" class="footnote-ref" role="doc-noteref">1</a></sup>, but it&rsquo;s still a lot better than trusting Amazon.</p> <div class="footnotes" role="doc-endnotes"> <hr> <ol> <li id="fn:1"> <p>a few people in my office bought their top recommendation for exercise headphones and we saw 100% failure rate within a couple of uses, and saw plenty of people in the comments section reporting the same thing.&#160;<a href="#fnref:1" class="footnote-backref" role="doc-backlink">&#x21a9;&#xfe0e;</a></p> </li> </ol> </div> How Animators Created the Spider-Verse https://lowbrowculture.com/video/how-animators-created-the-spider-verse/ Thu, 04 Apr 2019 09:25:27 +0200 https://lowbrowculture.com/video/how-animators-created-the-spider-verse/ <div class="embed video-player"> <iframe class="youtube-player" type="text/html" width="640" height="385" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/l-wUKu_V2Lk" allowfullscreen frameborder="0"> </iframe> </div> <p>There are so many great things in this video. My favourite is the tiny detail about how the characters are animated on every second frame (animated on 2s), and how they used this in the forest scene where Miles and Peter are swinging through the trees but they&rsquo;re both animated on different 2s to indicate how their personalities aren&rsquo;t in sync yet.</p> Norway's Underwater Restaurant → https://www.demilked.com/underwater-restaurant-under-snohetta/ Sun, 24 Mar 2019 09:46:32 +0100 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/underwater-restaurant-norway/ <p>Instant addition to my bucket list - an underwater restaurant that could double as the lair of a Bond villain:</p> <blockquote> <p>“If the weather is bad, it’s very rough. It’s a great experience, and to sit here and be safe, allowing the nature so close into you. It’s a very romantic and nice experience.”</p> </blockquote> <p>(Although can you imagine how sick you&rsquo;d be if you booked this restaurant and <em>didn&rsquo;t</em> get a table right by the window?)</p> Carly Rae Jepsen Rpg → https://www.kotaku.com.au/2019/03/carly-rae-jepsen-unreleased-music-tabletop-rpg/ Wed, 06 Mar 2019 09:09:17 +0100 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/carly-rae-jepsen-rpg/ <blockquote> <p>A higher number means you&rsquo;re better at LASERS (technology; science; cold rationality; calm, precise action; mechanisms). A low number means you&rsquo;re better at FEELINGS (intuition; diplomacy; seduction; wild, passionate action; convincing).</p> </blockquote> <p>This sounds <em>perfect</em>. I can&rsquo;t wait to try it out.</p> Best Games I Played in 2018 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/best-games-i-played-in-2018/ Sat, 12 Jan 2019 19:44:48 +0100 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/best-games-i-played-in-2018/ <p><em>Previously: <a href="https://lowbrowculture.com/post/best-games-i-played-in-2013/">2013</a>, <a href="https://lowbrowculture.com/post/the-best-games-i-played-in-2014/">2014</a>, <a href="https://lowbrowculture.com/post/best-games-i-played-in-2015/">2015</a>, <a href="https://lowbrowculture.com/post/best-games-i-played-in-2016/">2016</a>, <a href="https://lowbrowculture.com/post/best-games-i-played-in-2017/">2017</a></em></p> <p>It&rsquo;s probably obvious but still worth mentioning that this entire list is based on an extremely incomplete sampling. I had very little free time in 2018, so I had to be <em>ruthless</em> with the games I played. For example, I slowly made my way through 2017&rsquo;s <em>Assassin’s Creed: Origins</em> somewhere around the middle of the year. And I loved it so much. It probably would have been in my list of favourite games of 2017. But am I in a hurry to drop another 60 hours on <em>Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey</em> now? Am I fuck.</p> <p>Anyway, here we go.</p> <h2 id="minit">Minit</h2> <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2019/games-2018/minit.jpg" alt="Minit"></p> <p>My son &ndash; my second child &ndash; was born in March, which meant that my free time in 2018 was more precious than ever before. Thank fuck, then, for a game like <em>Minit</em>, which <em>respects</em> the player’s time. I was able to dip in and play this in tiny drops.</p> <h2 id="florence">Florence</h2> <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2019/games-2018/florence.png" alt="Florence"></p> <p>It&rsquo;s pretty rare to see a video game even try to tackle the subject of interpersonal relationships, and it&rsquo;s even rarer to see one incorporate the subject <em>into the mechanics of the game</em>.</p> <h2 id="captain-toad-treasure-tracker">Captain Toad Treasure Tracker</h2> <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2019/games-2018/captaintoad.jpg" alt="Captain Toad Treasure Tracker"></p> <p>Is this a bit of a cheat because it&rsquo;s a remaster of an old game? I don&rsquo;t care. I played through this all over again on the Switch and I loved it all over again.</p> <h2 id="red-dead-redemption-2">Red Dead Redemption 2</h2> <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2019/games-2018/rdr2.jpg" alt="Red Dead Redemption 2"></p> <p>This is everything I wanted from a sequel to one of my favourite games of all time: a giant cowboy sandbox, with <em>sliiiightly</em> wonky controls that make everything just that little bit more interesting.</p> <h2 id="marvels-spider-man">Marvel&rsquo;s Spider-Man</h2> <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2019/games-2018/spiderman.jpg" alt="Marvel&rsquo;s Spider-Man"></p> <p>For a while there towards the end of the year, this game was very much my happy place. It still is. When I want to relax and shut out the world for a while, I&rsquo;ll fire up <em>Spider-Man</em> and just swing around the city. Maybe not coincidentally, this is the first game on the PS4 that I&rsquo;ve platinumed.</p> <h2 id="gorogoa">Gorogoa</h2> <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2019/games-2018/gorogoa.jpg" alt="Gorogoa"></p> <p>I still don&rsquo;t understand how a human mind could have created something like this.</p> <h2 id="return-of-the-obra-dinn">Return of the Obra Dinn</h2> <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2019/games-2018/obradinn.png" alt="Return of the Obra Dinn"></p> <p>When I was 12 or 13, I got a Panasonic 3DO for Christmas along with a copy of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lost_Files_of_Sherlock_Holmes">Sherlock Holmes: The Case of the Serrated Scalpel</a>. And while the 3DO isn’t the best console in the world and this Sherlock Holmes game is definitely not the best game in the world, they both have a really special place in my heart. When I think back to my time spent playing that game and the way it had my dumb little 12-year old brain cracking its mysteries, I&rsquo;m reminded of all the things <em>around</em> the game. Like I remember that Christmas being the last one where everyone I knew and loved was happy. Like, genuinely, sincerely happy. And so it’s a very <em>warm</em> game for me.</p> <p>It&rsquo;s a strange comparison, I know, but <em>Return of the Obra Dinn</em> gave me those same feelings and the whole time I was playing it, I was brought right back to that Christmas, on that couch in my Ma&rsquo;s front room. Which is pretty spectacular when you consider it&rsquo;s basically just a giant <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logic_puzzle">logic puzzle</a></p> <h2 id="tetris-effect">Tetris Effect</h2> <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2019/games-2018/tetriseffect.jpg" alt="Tetris Effect"></p> <p>Every year, it feels like there&rsquo;s one game that stands out for me because of the way it helps me tackle whatever anxiety or depression or other emotional issues I might be going through at the time. This year, it&rsquo;s <em>Tetris Effect</em>. A real joy of a game that will be unfairly overlooked because it’s “just <em>Tetris</em>”.</p> <h2 id="subnautica">Subnautica</h2> <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2019/games-2018/subnautica.jpg" alt="Subnautica"></p> <p>With games like <em>Minecraft</em>, the most entertaining and the most <em>magical</em> part of the game is the first few minutes, when you’re first getting set up and exploring and struggling to survive. <em>Subnautica</em> somehow managed to sustain this feeling for <em>hours</em>.</p> The Cost of Living in Mark Zuckerberg’s Internet Empire → https://www.theringer.com/tech/2018/12/19/18148701/mark-zuckerberg-facebook-year-in-review Thu, 20 Dec 2018 10:30:23 +0100 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/mark-zuckerberg-facebook-year-in-review/ <p>Articles talking about how Facebook destroyed the personal, friendly, welcoming internet are fairly common now, but this one by Brian Philips is actually worth your time.</p> <blockquote> <p>Before I started writing, I did a Google search for “Facebook” and “annus horribilis,” which showed that dozens if not hundreds of media outlets — <em>The Guardian</em>, the BBC, <em>El Mundo</em>, <em>Die Welt</em>, <em>The Atlantic</em>, the <em>Silicon Valley Business Journal</em> — used this phrase, Latin for “horrible year,” to describe Facebook’s 2018. But 2018 wasn’t an annus horribilis for Facebook. It was an annus horribilis for us, the people who actually faced the surveillance and dishonesty and abuse. It was an annus horribilis for us because of Facebook.</p> </blockquote> <p>To get on my soap box a little bit here, if none of these stories &ndash; the Cambridge Analytica story, the whole Russia thing, this most recent one about giving media companies back-room access to personal private data &ndash; if none of these stories make you want to delete your Facebook account, then <em>what will?</em> Where is the line for you?</p> <p>To go a little further: if you haven&rsquo;t deleted your Facebook account by now, then you are <em>complicit</em> in all of this shit.</p> People from all over the world are sending emails to Melbourne’s trees → https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-12-12/people-are-emailing-trees/10468964 Thu, 13 Dec 2018 09:31:48 +0100 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/hello-tree/ <blockquote> <p>Melbourne gave 70,000 trees email addresses so people could report on their condition. But instead people are writing love letters, existential queries and sometimes just bad puns.</p> </blockquote> <p>This is just lovely. My favourite line is &ldquo;Hope it all goes well with the photosynthesis&rdquo;.</p> Peter Sagal - The Case Against Running With Headphones → https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/30/well/move/peter-sagal-book-running-without-headphones.html Mon, 10 Dec 2018 13:35:11 +0100 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/running-without-headphones/ <blockquote> <p>I have a friend who wears headphones on long solo runs because, he says, “I can’t spend that much time alone in my head.” I disagree. He can, and he should. Spending that much time inside one’s head, along with the voices and the bats hanging from the various dendrites and neurons, is one of the best things about running, or at least one of the most therapeutic. Your brain is like a duvet cover: Every once in a while, it needs to be aired out.</p> </blockquote> <p>As someone who can&rsquo;t do basic household chores like washing dishes or folding laundry without a pair of headphones, this cut me deep.</p> Titanic in Unreal 4 https://lowbrowculture.com/video/titanic-in-unreal-4/ Fri, 30 Nov 2018 22:15:28 +0100 https://lowbrowculture.com/video/titanic-in-unreal-4/ <div class="embed video-player"> <iframe class="youtube-player" type="text/html" width="640" height="385" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/pNLnXNADMwc" allowfullscreen frameborder="0"> </iframe> </div> <p>We visited the Titanic museum in Belfast last year and it was a great museum but honestly, this connected with me on a much deeper level. There&rsquo;s a good reason the narrator keeps saying &ldquo;just imagine&rdquo;.</p> <p>Because <em>just imagine</em>.</p> The Graphic Art of Incredibles 2 → http://joshholtsclaw.com/blog/2018/3/5/the-graphic-art-of-incredibles-2 Tue, 20 Nov 2018 15:49:20 +0100 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/the-graphic-art-of-incredibles-2/ <p>The best part of <em>The Incredibles 2</em> wasn&rsquo;t the story but the amazing world they built. This is a great, tiny peek into the design process behind creating that world.</p> The Night Watch https://lowbrowculture.com/posts/the-night-watch/ Thu, 18 Oct 2018 07:34:28 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/posts/the-night-watch/ <p>This is some pretty cool news - the Rijiksmuseum in Amsterdam will be livestreaming their restoration of Rembrandt&rsquo;s <em>The Night Watch</em>.</p> <p>If you don&rsquo;t know much about this painting then you can do a lot worst than checking out Peter Greenaway&rsquo;s film <em>Night Watching,</em> which is a weirdly mesmerizing primer on the history behind the painting, told as if it was a Rembrandt painting itself.</p> <div class="embed video-player"> <iframe class="youtube-player" type="text/html" width="640" height="385" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/JN2eLySBIMc" allowfullscreen frameborder="0"> </iframe> </div> The Google Pixel 3 Is A Very Good Phone. But Maybe Phones Have Gone Too Far. → https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/mathonan/google-pixel-3-review-android Tue, 16 Oct 2018 07:12:05 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/the-google-pixel-3-is-a-very-good-phone-but-maybe-phones-have-gone-too-far/ <blockquote> My neck hurts. I am never not looking down. When I am not looking at my phone, I become slightly anxious. And then, when I do actually look at it, I become even more so. It reminds me of how I once felt about cigarettes. I experience the world with a meticulously crafted, tiny computer slab between me and it. I am an asshole. But so, maybe, are you? </blockquote> <p>Instead of the usual gushing over the new shiny, I wish more people wrote phone reviews like this.</p> The end of Predator but with the Grange Hill theme https://lowbrowculture.com/video/the-end-of-predator-but-with-the-grange-hill-theme/ Mon, 08 Oct 2018 08:12:15 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/video/the-end-of-predator-but-with-the-grange-hill-theme/ <div class="embed video-player"> <iframe class="youtube-player" type="text/html" width="640" height="385" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/pRyVC7LeOkU" allowfullscreen frameborder="0"> </iframe> </div> <p>I spent way too long on this dumb joke.</p> Apple Watch Series 4 Fall Detection Tested By a Hollywood Stunt Double → http://www.wsj.com/video/series/joanna-stern-personal-technology/apple-watch-series-4-fall-detection-tested-by-a-hollywood-stunt-double/3940468A-DFEC-4F1F-A0F5-C9BAC8A26B1B Wed, 03 Oct 2018 07:12:27 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/apple-watch-series-4-fall-detection-tested-by-a-hollywood-stunt-double/ <p>The new Apple Watch OS has improved &ldquo;exercise detection&rdquo;. Except when I&rsquo;m sitting on the couch, rocking the baby to sleep, it will buzz and say &ldquo;It looks like you&rsquo;re doing an elliptical workout, track it?&rdquo;. At least the fall detection looks like it actually <em>works</em>.</p> ▶︎ Net Split or, the Fathomless Heartbreak of Online Itself | MC Frontalot → https://frontalot.bandcamp.com/album/net-split-or-the-fathomless-heartbreak-of-online-itself Tue, 02 Oct 2018 07:11:40 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/e296b6efb88e-net-split-or-the-fathomless-heartbreak-of-online-itself-mc-frontalot/ <p>I have a really low tolerance for nerdcore, but this is actually pretty good. And it speaks volumes that even <em>MC Frontalot</em> is sorta renouncing nerd culture. From &ldquo;Internet Sucks&rdquo;:</p> <blockquote>I don't love you any more internet You used to be a safe home for my nerd hard and my intellect Now you got so much hate but you just gotta interject Now you got too many chefs up in your kitchenette</blockquote> Apple buys animated film from Kilkenny-based Cartoon Saloon → https://www.irishtimes.com/business/media-and-marketing/apple-buys-animated-film-from-kilkenny-based-cartoon-saloon-1.3625369 Tue, 11 Sep 2018 19:51:29 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/apple-buys-animated-film-from-kilkenny-based-cartoon-saloon/ <p>Delighted for Cartoon Saloon. They&rsquo;re quietly pumping out some of the loveliest animations I&rsquo;ve seen in a long time &ndash; like Ghibli at their finest. If you don&rsquo;t believe me, check out <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puffin_Rock">Puffin Rock</a> on Netflix, which is a genuinely great children&rsquo;s cartoon that&rsquo;s full of charm and wit and visual inventiveness and it tells stories about friendship and intelligence that have none of the normal moralising one traditionally associates with children&rsquo;s tv.</p> Just Read the Book Already → https://slate.com/culture/2018/08/reader-come-home-by-maryanne-wolf-reviewed.html Tue, 21 Aug 2018 14:53:50 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/reader-come-home-by-maryanne-wolf-reviewed/ <p>Laura Miller reviews Maryanne Wolf&rsquo;s <em>Reader, Come Home</em>, a book about rediscovering the power to actually read &ndash; I mean <em>deep read</em> &ndash; in the digital world of 2018.</p> <p>There&rsquo;s a lot of things that stood out to me in this review, but I&rsquo;ll highlight this one because it&rsquo;s so obvious and also so <em>right</em></p> <blockquote>One of the reasons that digital readers skim is not because of some quality inherent in screens, as Wolf seems to think, but because so much of what we find online is not worth our full attention.</blockquote> <p>Ordered.</p> Moonlight https://lowbrowculture.com/posts/moonlight/ Fri, 17 Aug 2018 08:29:17 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/posts/moonlight/ <div class="embed video-player"> <iframe class="youtube-player" type="text/html" width="640" height="385" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/zNpsy6lBPBw" allowfullscreen frameborder="0"> </iframe> </div> <p>There are two times when it&rsquo;s appropriate to use <em>Clair de Lune</em>: over amazing high-resolution videos of sunrise on the moon, and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cfu9s89C-pc">the ending of Ocean&rsquo;s Eleven</a>.</p> <p>That&rsquo;s it.</p> Ice Cube Celebrates The Eames https://lowbrowculture.com/videos/ice-cube-celebrates-the-eames/ Fri, 17 Aug 2018 08:17:21 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/videos/ice-cube-celebrates-the-eames/ <div class="embed video-player"> <iframe class="youtube-player" type="text/html" width="640" height="385" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/PPFcZ-Ux4Lg" allowfullscreen frameborder="0"> </iframe> </div> <p>See also: <a href="https://lowbrowculture.com/videos/a-brief-history-of-john-baldessari/">Tom Waits gives a brief history of John Baldessari</a>.</p> Unfollowing Everybody → https://anildash.com/2018/07/13/unfollowing-everybody/ Thu, 09 Aug 2018 14:47:57 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/unfollowing-everybody/ <p>Anil Dash recently took the step of unfollowing everyone he was following on Twitter. This line in particular stood out to me:</p> <blockquote> ... when something terrible happens in the news, I don't see an endless, repetitive stream of dozens of people reacting to it in succession. It turns out, I don't mind knowing about current events, but it _hurts_ to see lots of people I care about going through anguish or pain when bad news happens. I want to optimize for being aware, but not emotionally overwhelmed. </blockquote> <p>That&rsquo;s entirely it. I&rsquo;ve got a private list of maybe 20 people I follow because they&rsquo;re the ones that are the <em>least outraged</em> about The Thing That People Are Outraged About Today, and it&rsquo;s recently become my <em>main view</em> for Twitter because I&rsquo;m too exhausted (emotionally, spiritually) for the main timeline.</p> <p>See also Matt Haughey&rsquo;s recent announcement <a href="https://a.wholelottanothing.org/2018/08/08/im-done-with-twitter/">I&rsquo;m done with Twitter</a>.</p> Amazon is turning Simon Stålenhag’s haunting retro sci-fi paintings into a TV series - The Verge → https://www.theverge.com/2018/7/18/17586706/amazon-tales-from-the-loop-simon-stalenhag-retro-sci-fi-art-book-tv-series Fri, 20 Jul 2018 07:42:55 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/amazon-is-turning-simon-stalenhags-haunting-retro-sci-fi-paintings-into-a-tv-series-the-verge/ <p>Congrats to Simon Stålenhag, but I can&rsquo;t help feeling like, culturally, we&rsquo;ve scraped right through the bottom of the barrel and found more barrel to scrape.</p> Chance The Rapper Bought Chicagoist And Announced It In Newly Released Song: Gothamist → http://gothamist.com/2018/07/19/chance_the_rapper_chicagoist.php Thu, 19 Jul 2018 07:27:44 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/chance-the-rapper-bought-chicagoist-and-announced-it-in-newly-released-song-gothamist/ <p>I have a lot of time for Chance the Rapper and it&rsquo;s precisely because he&rsquo;s always doing things like this. This is a statement of intent, supporting local, community-driven journalism in his home town.</p> Instapaper is going independent → http://blog.instapaper.com/post/175953870856 Tue, 17 Jul 2018 07:17:35 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/instapaper-is-going-independent/ <blockquote> Today, we’re announcing that Pinterest has entered into an agreement to transfer ownership of Instapaper to Instant Paper, Inc., a new company owned and operated by the same people who’ve been working on Instapaper since it was sold to betaworks by Marco Arment in 2013. The ownership transfer will occur after a 21 day waiting period designed to give our users fair notice about the change of control with respect to their personal information. </blockquote> <p>Worth noting that today, almost two months since GDPR came into effect, <a href="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2018/07/2018-07-17-at-09.14.png">Instapaper is still unavailable for users in Europe</a>. GDPR isn&rsquo;t a particularly hard thing to enforce <em>unless</em> your entire business model is built around doing shady things with your customer&rsquo;s data.</p> Scorched earth during heatwave reveals new monument at Newgrange → https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/heritage/scorched-earth-during-heatwave-reveals-new-monument-at-newgrange-1.3561326 Thu, 12 Jul 2018 07:00:57 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/scorched-earth-during-heatwave-reveals-new-monument-at-newgrange/ <p>One good thing to come out of the heatwave Ireland is currently enjoying: the sun is basically X-raying the ground for underground monuments. Take a look at the rest of the pictures on <a href="https://www.facebook.com/mythicalireland/">Mythical Ireland&rsquo;s Facebook Page</a> - they&rsquo;re genuinely stunning.</p> Recent Films - June 2018 https://lowbrowculture.com/posts/recent-films-june-2018/ Wed, 11 Jul 2018 08:18:01 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/posts/recent-films-june-2018/ <p><em>(I try to post reviews of all the films I watch over on <a href="http://www.letterboxd.com/johnke/">letterboxd</a>. Here are the most recent reviews I’ve written)</em></p> <p><strong>A Quiet Place</strong> - 2018 - ★★★★</p> <p>Since my daughter was born, certain films hit me way harder than they otherwise should. Anything involving a child in peril is danger territory for me. Throw in a father trying to protect the child-in-peril and I&rsquo;m completely screwed. I&rsquo;ll be a wreck. For example, <em>War for the Planet of the Apes</em> had me absolutely <em>sobbing</em> in the cinema.</p> <p><em>A Quiet Place</em> is exactly the kind of film that hits me harder than it probably should, what with John Krasinski&rsquo;s kind-faced father bringing the pathos like a doe-eyed hammer. Throw in a nihilistic pre-credits sequence to establish the stakes and, yeah, I hadn&rsquo;t a fuckin hope.</p> <p>Some late-game rule-changing to score a cheap emotional hit kinda ruins it a little, but it&rsquo;s still a tight, tight film.</p> <p><strong>Super Troopers 2</strong> - 2018 - ★★½</p> <p>The only thing really missing from this film was a Rodney Dangerfield cameo where he comes out and tells the cops and the mounties to lighten up before turning on really cheesy hair rock music and starting an impromptu dance party.</p> <p>As light and nutritionally void as the first film, but slightly shorter on charm.</p> <p><strong>Pitbull. New Order</strong> - 2016 - ★½</p> <p>My continuing education in the less-&ldquo;worthy&rdquo; Polish film canon continues with this, a sub-<em>Love/Hate</em> gangster film set in Warsaw. The writer-director, Patryk Vega, is described as the Polish Guy Ritchie. And from what I&rsquo;ve seen of his films so far, maybe people mean <em>Revolver</em>-era Guy Ritchie? I dunno.</p> <p>The film itself is a regressive, homophobic and insecure piece of filmmaking. The main character, &ldquo;Miami&rdquo;, is a quote-unquote &ldquo;tough&rdquo; quote-unquote &ldquo;sexy&rdquo; quote-unquote &ldquo;cop&rdquo;. No woman can look at him without wanting to fuck him. No man can look at him without wanting to fuck him. &ldquo;That was the best sex I&rsquo;ve ever had&rdquo; says one of his lays. &ldquo;Coffee?&rdquo; a detective offers him. &ldquo;I bet you take it black.&rdquo; Yes, he&rsquo;s a hard-fuckin, hard-drinkin cop. Oh, and when the suits in internal affairs take away his badge, he tells them to give it back or he&rsquo;ll kick the shit out of them. And they do.</p> <p>It&rsquo;s <em>that</em> kind of film. The kind we haven&rsquo;t really seen since Joel Silver cut down on his cocaine intake.</p> <p>I&rsquo;ve read a lot of reviews saying that based on this film, it won&rsquo;t be long before Hollywood comes knocking at Patryk Vega&rsquo;s door. And I don&rsquo;t doubt that&rsquo;s true, but only because they just need <em>any</em> new blood. But the real person who should be tapped for better things is the cinematographer. This film is total garbage, but at least it&rsquo;s <em>handsome</em> garbage.</p> <p><strong>Supersonic</strong> - 2016 - ★★★½</p> <p>I wouldn&rsquo;t consider myself a fan of Oasis. Their music does nothing for me and their personalities are so ugh (although I love reading interviews with Noel Gallagher). So why am I giving three-and-a-half stars to an Oasis documentary? Well, because it&rsquo;s not a documentary about Oasis. I mean, not really. It&rsquo;s really a documentary about a period in time. It&rsquo;s a documentary about success. It&rsquo;s a documentary about regret.</p> <p>The music is just helpful context.</p> <p><strong>Blockers</strong> - 2018 - ★½</p> <p>Why does everyone keep saying what a great comedian John Cena is? Or even Leslie Mann, for that matter? All these huge comedy stars playing the parents and they got DEMOLISHED by the kids in this film. Very weak.</p> <p><strong>Sneakers</strong> - 1992 - ★★★★★</p> <p>I fucking LOVE this film. It&rsquo;s my ultimate comfort film.</p> <p>BUT.</p> <p>There&rsquo;s a bit, a plot point, where Mary McDonnell was pretending to be hooked up with Stephen Tobolowsky on a computer date to get his office access card and his voice print and stuff and she gets stung. Except they make it look like she&rsquo;s not stung. And then, being a pro grifter, she goes &ldquo;This is the last computer date I go on&rdquo; and Ben Kingsley mafia-hacker goes &ldquo;A computer would never match her with him, I SMELL A RAT&rdquo;.</p> <p>BRUH IT&rsquo;S 2018 AND NETFLIX STILL KEEPS RECOMMENDING I WATCH THE BIG BANG THEORY I THINK YOUR SHITTY 1993 COBOL DATING PROGRAM IS PROBABLY NOT AS FUCKIN SOPHISTICATED AS YOU THINK IT IS.</p> <p><strong>Gotowi na wszystko. Exterminator</strong> 2018 - ★★½</p> <p>My first legit Polish-language film I&rsquo;m watching for language homework rather than because of &lsquo;merit&rsquo; or whatever and it&rsquo;s about a middle-aged man-child who spends too much on old videogames and gets berated by his partner. Oops!</p> <p>The film started to lose me in the middle when they suddenly turned the &ldquo;plot&rdquo; dial up a thousand notches. But it really lost me when a guy tried to convince his girlfriend to leave the mental hospital she was checked into. &ldquo;But I need my meds! If I don&rsquo;t have them, I don&rsquo;t know what will happen!&rdquo; &ldquo;It&rsquo;s okay because we&rsquo;ll be together&rdquo;.</p> <p>Nope.</p> Stanley Kubrick Explains the Ending of 2001: A Space Odyssey → http://www.openculture.com/2018/07/stanley-kubrick-explains-mysterious-ending-2001-space-odyssey-newly-unearthed-interview.html Wed, 11 Jul 2018 07:52:23 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/stanley-kubrick-explains-the-ending-of-2001-a-space-odyssey/ <p>I think the only time I&rsquo;ve ever actually seen Stanley Kubrick explain the ending of <em>2001</em> in such unambiguous terms.</p> <p>The clip is taken from a series of interviews (mostly with Vivian Kubrick) conducted by Jun&rsquo;ichi Yaoi while he visited the set of <em>The Shining</em> for an unaired Japanese documentary on the Paranormal. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fVlXbS0SNqk">The rest of the video is fascinating</a>.</p> Renner* → http://indestructibletype.com/Renner.html Tue, 10 Jul 2018 16:24:11 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/renner/ <p>A pay-what-you-want font designed by <a href="http://indestructibletype.com/Home.html">indestructible type</a> as an updated, modernized Futura.</p> Inside the Guild Wars 2 firing that’s rocked the game industry. - Polygon → https://www.polygon.com/2018/7/9/17549492/arenanet-jessica-price-guild-wars-2-writer-fired Tue, 10 Jul 2018 07:33:21 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/inside-the-guild-wars-2-firing-thats-rocked-the-game-industry-polygon/ <p>This is a terrible precedent for the company to set, and you can see why in the reaction from the quote-unquote &lsquo;fans&rsquo; on reddit: &ldquo;We&rsquo;re literally running the company now&hellip; the moment a dev steps out of line or try to talk back to a player, guess what, they&rsquo;ll know we got their hands on their throat and we can squeeze any time we like&rdquo;.</p> Not yourself? https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/2018-07-08-not-yourself/ Sun, 08 Jul 2018 10:42:34 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/2018-07-08-not-yourself/ <p><a href="https://twitter.com/HumansOfLate/status/1015330093743398919"><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2018/07/DhctTcLUcAAuC5e.jpg-large.jpg" alt="Not Yourself?"></a></p> DJ Shadow Announces Podcast: DJ Shadow Presents Find, Share, Rewind | DJ Shadow | Official Website → https://djshadow.com/findsharerewindpodcast/ Wed, 04 Jul 2018 08:59:12 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/dj-shadow-announces-podcast-dj-shadow-presents-find-share-rewind-dj-shadow-official-website/ <p>This might be old news to other people, but I just found out that DJ Shadow has a podcast. Well, it&rsquo;s a limited-series podcast of a 7-episode show he ran on an L.A. radio station last year. It&rsquo;s basically a giant mix/unofficial new album. Two episodes out so far and they&rsquo;re both really great.</p> Paper Towns https://lowbrowculture.com/posts/paper-towns/ Fri, 29 Jun 2018 09:29:02 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/posts/paper-towns/ <p>I knew very little about Poland before moving here. Almost nothing about Warsaw. &ldquo;I hear they have good <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warsaw_Pact">pacts</a>&rdquo;, I used to dad-joke<sup id="fnref:1"><a href="#fn:1" class="footnote-ref" role="doc-noteref">1</a></sup>.</p> <p>Since then, we&rsquo;ve been trying to get better. We recently went to the National Museum in Warsaw, where they have a new &ldquo;<a href="http://www.mnw.art.pl/en/collections/permanent-galleries/gallery-of-polish-design/">Gallery of Polish Design</a>&rdquo; exhibit which is aimed squarely at dipshits like me who have a weird thing for mid-century design and electronics housed in discolouring plastic. Here&rsquo;s a video of what you can expect in the exhibit:</p> <p>Although not exactly vintage, they also had a <em>vintage-inspired</em> &ldquo;paper town&rdquo; toy that reminded me so much of <a href="https://labo.nintendo.com/">Nintendo&rsquo;s Labo</a>. It&rsquo;s basically a box filled with sheets of cardboard that you punch out and bend and fold into various parts of a &rsquo;town'.</p> <p>As we were leaving, I noticed they were selling a couple of these in the gift shop. So, of course, I bought them.</p> <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2018/06/P6260060.jpg" alt="P6260060"></p> <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2018/06/P6260061.jpg" alt="P6260061"></p> <p>Here&rsquo;s the finished product from a different set that we made earlier, so you can see what they look like finally constructed:</p> <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2018/06/P6260057.jpg" alt="P6260057"></p> <p>My daughter (who&rsquo;s two and a half), was too young to &lsquo;get&rsquo; the Labo<sup id="fnref:2"><a href="#fn:2" class="footnote-ref" role="doc-noteref">2</a></sup> but she absolutely <em>loves</em> these. She loved punching out the little buildings and vehicles and handing them to me to construct. The first night, she took the restaurant (the two-tiered building in the back-left of that bottom picture) to bed with her. My wife even said that if she was in need of a present for a similarly-aged toddler, she would get them one of these packs. They&rsquo;re cheap, extremely cute, very tactile and <em>recyclable</em>.</p> <p>If you can&rsquo;t make it to the National Museum in Warsaw to buy them, you can also order them from <a href="http://ringoringo.pl/products.php">ringoringo.pl</a>.</p> <div class="footnotes" role="doc-endnotes"> <hr> <ol> <li id="fn:1"> <p>One of the good things about being a dad is that you can dad-joke unironically.&#160;<a href="#fnref:1" class="footnote-backref" role="doc-backlink">&#x21a9;&#xfe0e;</a></p> </li> <li id="fn:2"> <p>Too much waiting around for not enough payoff at the end for her&#160;<a href="#fnref:2" class="footnote-backref" role="doc-backlink">&#x21a9;&#xfe0e;</a></p> </li> </ol> </div> Housekeeping https://lowbrowculture.com/posts/housekeeping-2/ Fri, 29 Jun 2018 08:44:13 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/posts/housekeeping-2/ <p>You may have noticed some changes on this blog (or maybe you didn&rsquo;t - there&rsquo;s too much going on in the world for you to be concerned with my bullshit website).</p> <p>The short version is that I&rsquo;d been thinking a lot about what I wanted this blog to be. It&rsquo;s probably the primary face of my internet presence, and I wasn&rsquo;t really pleased with how it was representing me. Part of the problem, I realised, is that I was using a static website generator to power the website.</p> <p>Don&rsquo;t get me wrong, static site generators are <em>wonderful</em> pieces of software. You didn&rsquo;t have to worry about backups or databases or where your content lives or extracting it from some SQL file later on. But they also mean that writing a blog post is a non-trivial task. To write a post, I had to create a file on my hard drive, open that in my editor, write the blog post, generate the site, preview it locally, then upload it to this server. I was using a fucking <em>Makefile</em> to streamline this process. Makefiles tickle my nerdy side deeply, but the process was so <em>cumbersome</em> it meant that I&rsquo;d only write a blog post about something that <em>really</em> mattered, instead of just firing off a few posts every day. And I&rsquo;m many things, but I&rsquo;m not a &lsquo;once in a while, here are my thoughts on a capital-I Important capital-T Topic&rsquo; kind of guy. I don&rsquo;t work well like that and I didn&rsquo;t feel like it best represented <em>me</em>.</p> <p>(An anecdotal aside: during my migration back to Wordpress, I came across a prominent Wordpress developer who had actually left the project, citing fundamental problems with PHP as a language and the Wordpress codebase in general. He also moved to a static site generator and, just like me, his output fell off a cliff after the move. You could argue that this is probably a reflection on the general state of blogging in 2018, but like I said, this is just an anecdotal aside.)</p> <p>So that was the short version of what&rsquo;s been happening behind the scenes. Now let&rsquo;s see what happens next.</p> Mondo to Release New ‘Jaws’ Screen Prints Recreating Missing Original Painting → http://www.newsweek.com/jaws-mondo-movie-posters-screen-print-shark-roger-kastel-jason-edmiston-1000259 Thu, 28 Jun 2018 19:27:32 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/mondo-to-release-new-jaws-screen-prints-recreating-missing-original-painting/ <p>The painting of the original Jaws poster was stolen in 1975, so <a href="https://mondotees.com/">Mondo</a> hired Jason Edmiston to recreate it. The timelapse video of his process is <em>so</em> great.</p> Now is the envy of all of the dead https://lowbrowculture.com/photos/now-is-the-envy-of-all-of-the-dead/ Thu, 28 Jun 2018 19:17:58 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/photos/now-is-the-envy-of-all-of-the-dead/ <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2018/06/tumblr_o4ti1842WC1qz6f4bo5_1280.png" alt=""></p> <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2018/06/tumblr_o4ti1842WC1qz6f4bo6_1280.png" alt=""></p> <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2018/06/tumblr_o4ti1842WC1qz6f4bo7_1280.png" alt=""></p> <p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XdV1uFwtCpo">Don Hertzfeldt&rsquo;s World of Tomorrow</a></p> Apple Engineers Its Own Downfall With the Macbook Pro Keyboard | iFixit → https://ifixit.org/blog/10229/macbook-pro-keyboard/ Thu, 28 Jun 2018 07:53:03 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/apple-engineers-its-own-downfall-with-the-macbook-pro-keyboard-ifixit/ <p>My 2011 MacBook Pro finally died (these models suffer from a graphics chip overheating problem) and I&rsquo;m absolutely gutted because it was genuinely a beautiful machine to work on. It was rock-solid, had every port you&rsquo;d ever need, and I sprung for the matte display, so it never had any problem with glare. And most importantly, <em>the keyboard worked</em>. The 2017 Touchbar MacBook Pro is the worst laptop I&rsquo;ve ever used.</p> Facebook’s retreat from the news has painful for publishers—including Slate. → https://slate.com/technology/2018/06/facebooks-retreat-from-the-news-has-painful-for-publishers-including-slate.html Wed, 27 Jun 2018 15:01:06 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/facebooks-retreat-from-the-news-has-painful-for-publishers-including-slate/ <p>Slate is sharing some information regarding their Facebook traffic since the 2017, when Facebook decided it no longer wanted to be a &rsquo;news&rsquo; site. One interesting thing to note is that while most news organisations are seeing a dip in their engagement numbers, Fox News&rsquo;s numbers are actually <em>up</em>. There&rsquo;s a joke to be made here about real news vs news entertainment, but I&rsquo;m not sure even I can be bothered to make it.</p> Yes https://lowbrowculture.com/post/yes/ Thu, 24 May 2018 14:47:42 +0200 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/yes/ <p>Apologies for the interruption to my (ir)regularly scheduled posts about random bullshit no-one actually cares about, but I thought this was worth bringing up. Even though I have no idea how many people are actually reading this, this is <em>my</em> platform for <em>my</em> thoughts and this is something I feel strongly about. So here we go.</p> <hr> <p>The 8th amendment of the Irish constitution recognises the equal right to life of the mother and an unborn child. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eighth_Amendment_of_the_Constitution_of_Ireland#Background">This has always been a controversial amendment</a> and people have argued that such wording has no place in the constitution. So, tomorrow, May 25th, Ireland is holding a referendum to repeal the 8th amendment.</p> <p>I want to encourage any Irish people reading this website to vote <strong>yes</strong> to repeal the 8th amendment on May 25th.</p> <p>We all have our reasons for voting yes or no. We all have our stories. Let me tell you a little bit of my story.</p> <p>We spent a long time trying to conceive. It took <em>forever</em>. Long enough that we experienced that pain when our friends got pregnant. Why could they get pregnant so easily, without appearing to even try? Each month, we&rsquo;d realise we once again weren&rsquo;t successful and we&rsquo;d be desolate, completely unable to comfort each other. If you haven&rsquo;t gone through this, you don&rsquo;t know the pain involved. When I look back on it, I remember it as being one of the hardest points in my life.</p> <p>But eventually we did it. My wife got pregnant.</p> <p>The pregnancy was fun, but the labour wasn&rsquo;t. My daughter was posterior, which basically means that instead of being face-down, the baby was face-up, so the baby&rsquo;s head and spine was pushing against my wife&rsquo;s spine so that every push was intensely painful. Also, with every push, the baby&rsquo;s heart rate would drop precipitously. Eventually, it was decided to bring my wife in for an emergency c-section, where they discovered the chord was wrapped around the baby&rsquo;s neck (just before I heard my daughter cry for the first time, I heard a surgeon say &ldquo;look at this messer!&rdquo;)<sup id="fnref:1"><a href="#fn:1" class="footnote-ref" role="doc-noteref">1</a></sup>.</p> <p>Obviously, this whole experience was extremely traumatic, both emotionally and physically. And that was just the beginning. Then there&rsquo;s the issue of being a brand new mother, trying to breastfeed having had major surgery on your abdominal core. I can&rsquo;t begin to explain the pride and admiration I have for my wife and how she handled the whole thing.</p> <p>And this is when I realised that this only made me <em>more</em> pro-choice. Having seen first-hand the reality of pregnancy and labour and the reality of raising a child and the lasting (permanent?) scars, both literal and metaphorical, involved in the whole process, I firmly believe there is no way a woman should be forced to go through all this if they couldn&rsquo;t manage it. And this is to say nothing of extreme cases involving, say, assault or a fatal foetal abnormality. Forcing a woman to go through all that would be barbaric.</p> <hr> <p>Jump forward a couple of years and we&rsquo;ve been extremely lucky and managed to conceive our second child without really trying very hard at all.</p> <p>But halfway through the pregnancy, we found out there were complications. Well, no, wait, that&rsquo;s not quite accurate. There were <em>possible</em> complications. And not insignificant ones, possibly. Which meant a lot of sleepless nights, worrying about how our child would be affected by all this. And there were a lot of tests. So many tests. During one particular test just after Christmas, a doctor (an Irish doctor) asked us &ldquo;have you considered termination?&rdquo;</p> <p>We hadn&rsquo;t, and we wouldn&rsquo;t, because we knew the risks, and we knew how strong we were and we knew that we could manage it, no matter how bad it turned out to be<sup id="fnref:2"><a href="#fn:2" class="footnote-ref" role="doc-noteref">2</a></sup> and I wouldn&rsquo;t judge <strong>anyone</strong> for making a different choice in the same circumstances.</p> <p>And that&rsquo;s kind of the point of all this: the choice already exists. When the doctor asked us if we&rsquo;d considered termination, he meant &ldquo;have you considered (traveling to England for) termination?&rdquo; The 8th amendment doesn&rsquo;t stop Irish women from having abortions, it just <em>stops them from having abortions in Ireland</em><sup id="fnref:3"><a href="#fn:3" class="footnote-ref" role="doc-noteref">3</a></sup>, where they can be surrounded by their loved ones when they really need it.</p> <p>It&rsquo;s a horrible, uncaring section of our constitution and should be taken out. And that&rsquo;s what this referendum is about. Recognising that something is wrong with the current situation and trying to do something about it.</p> <p>Please, vote yes.</p> <div class="footnotes" role="doc-endnotes"> <hr> <ol> <li id="fn:1"> <p>My daughter came out perfectly fine. As I write this, she&rsquo;s a strong and sturdy two and a half years old. And she&rsquo;s bilingual, did I mention that? She speaks English and Polish. Smartest kid I know.&#160;<a href="#fnref:1" class="footnote-backref" role="doc-backlink">&#x21a9;&#xfe0e;</a></p> </li> <li id="fn:2"> <p>It&rsquo;s fine, by the way. My ten-week old son is healthy and thriving although he will need to be continuously monitored until he&rsquo;s about a year old.&#160;<a href="#fnref:2" class="footnote-backref" role="doc-backlink">&#x21a9;&#xfe0e;</a></p> </li> <li id="fn:3"> <p>The 14th amendment added some extra provisions to the language introduced by the 8th amendment, saying &ldquo;This subsection shall not limit freedom to travel between the State and another state&rdquo;.&#160;<a href="#fnref:3" class="footnote-backref" role="doc-backlink">&#x21a9;&#xfe0e;</a></p> </li> </ol> </div> Your Next Dining Destination (Really): Warsaw → https://www.forbes.com/sites/annabel/2018/05/21/your-next-dining-destination-really-warsaw/ Wed, 23 May 2018 09:26:59 +0200 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/forbes-warsaw/ <p>I do a lot of complaining about Warsaw but the one thing I can&rsquo;t complain about is the quality of the food coming out of the restaurants here. When we first arrived, I would give out about how there&rsquo;s not much of a food culture here. Boy, was I wrong. (Also, not really mentioned in the article is how <em>cheap</em> the food is here. Blows my mind every time.)</p> RetroAhoy: The Secret of Monkey Island https://lowbrowculture.com/video/retroahoy-monkey-island/ Mon, 21 May 2018 09:43:11 +0200 https://lowbrowculture.com/video/retroahoy-monkey-island/ <p>This is very good, if 70-minute documentaries about Monkey Island are your kind of thing.</p> <p>(They are very much my kind of thing.)</p> <iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/9F9ahZQ7oP0" frameborder="0" allow="autoplay; encrypted-media" allowfullscreen></iframe> Subscription Hell → https://techcrunch.com/2018/05/06/subscription-hell/ Tue, 08 May 2018 08:41:01 +0200 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/subscription-hell/ <p>I&rsquo;ve drafted a lot of blog posts about the subscription model (and binned them all because I couldn&rsquo;t figure out a way of saying &ldquo;not everyone is entitled to make a living from the one piece of software they wrote&rdquo; without sounding like a <em>complete asshole</em>), but this article from Danny Crichton says pretty much everything I wanted to &ndash; subscriptions are probably the new norm, but developers and marketers need to be smarter about the pricing to avoid shooting themselves in the foot.</p> Can These Robots Build an Ikea Chair? https://lowbrowculture.com/video/can-these-robots-build-an-ikea-chair/ Fri, 20 Apr 2018 09:12:30 +0200 https://lowbrowculture.com/video/can-these-robots-build-an-ikea-chair/ <iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/1lATyzchT5E" frameborder="0" allow="autoplay; encrypted-media" allowfullscreen></iframe> <p>Spoiler: yes they can.</p> <p>(My favourite part was the jiggle to get the dowel into place.)</p> <p>See also: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=856TBCokG3U">Hikea</a>, where people take LSD and try to assemble Ikea furniture.</p> MVP Soundsystem → https://frankchimero.com/blog/2018/mvp-soundsystem/ Mon, 16 Apr 2018 09:23:19 +0200 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/mvp-soundsystem/ <p>Frank Chimero has a really great way of organising his Spotify playlists, which allows him to tie a song into a place in time. Sometimes Spotify (other streaming services are available) can be a little like drinking from the firehose, so it&rsquo;s great to see how other people handle it.</p> Excerpts from My Upcoming Novel, Ready Player Two: Girl Stuff → https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/excerpts-from-my-upcoming-novel-ready-player-two-girl-stuff Mon, 02 Apr 2018 22:24:13 +0200 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/ready-player-two/ <blockquote> <p>“Wow, Felicity,” he said. My Internet name was Felicity, after the coolest American girl doll. “I never met someone who knew so much about Harry/Draco before.”</p> <p>I laughed. “Thanks, Sasuke420, I guess not everyone is as serious as I am about the Classic Ships.” Then I turned on the best song, “Spice World,” by the Spice Girls. I saw his eyes go wide as he got my musical reference. He was a keeper.</p> <p>“In a while, Totodile,” I said, which is a Pokémon.</p> </blockquote> <p>If you&rsquo;d told me these were real, I would have believed you.</p> The Flight of the Zuckerberg → https://medium.com/@davepell/the-flight-of-the-zuckerberg-1afe6491d9c9 Mon, 26 Mar 2018 10:33:21 +0200 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/the-flight-of-the-zuckerberg/ <p>Dave Pell:</p> <blockquote> <p>Facebook is constantly urging you to share your immediate thoughts and reactions to every life event. We were a couple days into the company’s biggest challenge before Facebook’s creator shared any of his thoughts on the matter. There’s probably a lesson in that.</p> </blockquote> <p>This is the best reaction to the CA/Facebook story that I&rsquo;ve read.</p> Sex Workers Say Porn on Google Drive Is Suddenly Disappearing → https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/9kgwnp/porn-on-google-drive-error Sun, 25 Mar 2018 21:32:17 +0200 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/sex-workers-say-porn-on-google-drive-is-suddenly-disappearing/ <p>If this is true, this is an ugly precedent to set as we move more and more to entirely cloud-based storage. You don&rsquo;t own your data even if you pay someone else to store it for you.</p> Twitter Threads https://lowbrowculture.com/post/twitter-threads-a-love-story/ Sun, 25 Mar 2018 06:46:05 +0100 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/twitter-threads-a-love-story/ <p>A couple of weeks ago, Max Krieger wrote <a href="https://twitter.com/MaxKriegerVG/status/968609994764705792">a really interesting twitter thread about the design of San Francisco&rsquo;s Metreon building</a>. It got a lot of traffic and was retweeted into my timeline a few times. I always find it interesting when multiple people point to a specific Twitter thread because Twitter&rsquo;s awful design makes threaded discussions a <em>nightmare</em> to read. Like reading a novel by turning pages with a pliers - sure, you can do it, but it&rsquo;s an awful experience.</p> <p>I didn&rsquo;t think much more of it until a few days later, when <a href="https://daringfireball.net/2018/03/max_krieger_twitter_design_threads">John Gruber also linked to the thread</a> and, more importantly, linked to some of Max Krieger&rsquo;s <em>older</em> twitter threads through threadreaderapp.com.</p> <p>And, dear readers, this has changed everything for me.</p> <p>Laid out in this more thoughtful way &ndash; flat and with no separations between tweets, with actually readable typography and with no cropping of images forcing you to break flow to see the full context &ndash; you can see how the twitter thread is a wonderful art form in itself. When it&rsquo;s done right, of course (for example, you&rsquo;ll see Krieger isn&rsquo;t numbering his tweets).</p> <p>Unlike blog posts like this one, tweets are conversational by design. You get a much better sense that of the author&rsquo;s actual voice because they&rsquo;re speaking <strong>to</strong> you rather than speaking <strong>at</strong> you. Combine this with a long-form discussion of a topic that the author is really genuinely passionate about and you&rsquo;ve got something I could sit and read for days.</p> <hr> <p>I recently read Cory O&rsquo;Brien&rsquo;s <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Zeus-Grants-Stupid-Wishes-No-Bullshit/dp/039916040X/">Zeus Grants Stupid Wishes</a>, which is a jokey, lighthearted summary of the major world myths. But what makes it interesting is the way it&rsquo;s written. This is not a dry, didactic lecture. The entire book written like an IM conversation with a friend or &ndash; to bring this back on-topic &ndash; like a well-done Twitter thread. Here&rsquo;s an example of what it looks like:</p> <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/zeus_grants_stupid_wishes.png" alt=""></p> <p>And as I predicted, I devoured this book. Loved it. Not just because it was easy to read (which definitely helps when you&rsquo;ve got a weeks-old baby), but because it felt like I was casually talking to someone I knew about something they were super knowledgeable and passionate about.</p> <p>I&rsquo;m not saying I want all books to be written in this way (but wow, can you imagine how great it would be if, say, <em>Ulysses</em> was written like this?), but instead I&rsquo;d like for anyone thinking of starting a Twitter thread to keep these things in mind: keep your voice and remember that Twitter dot com is not designed for long-form threaded monologues, so imagine your words being presented with a designer&rsquo;s eye.</p> How I Wrote Arrival → http://www.talkhouse.com/how-i-wrote-arrival/ Thu, 01 Mar 2018 12:21:26 +0100 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/how-i-wrote-arrival/ <p>Eric Heisserer describes how he adapted Ted Chiang&rsquo;s <em>Story of Your Life</em> for the screen. What I love about this is that his method for deconstructing the story actually became <em>part of the screenplay</em>.</p> What Ever Happened to Brendan Fraser → https://www.gq.com/story/what-ever-happened-to-brendan-fraser Fri, 23 Feb 2018 10:11:54 +0100 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/what-ever-happened-to-brendan-fraser/ <blockquote> <p>The films, in addition to having diminishing returns, were causing a physical toll: He was a big man doing stunts, running around in front of green screens, going from set to set. His body began to fall apart. &ldquo;By the time I did the third Mummy picture in China,&rdquo; which was 2008, &ldquo;I was put together with tape and ice&rdquo;</p> </blockquote> <p>This is the rawest interview I&rsquo;ve read in a long time.</p> This City's Got Love https://lowbrowculture.com/video/this-citys-got-love/ Thu, 22 Feb 2018 10:16:09 +0100 https://lowbrowculture.com/video/this-citys-got-love/ <iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/4TaqdqgcZck" frameborder="0" allow="autoplay; encrypted-media" allowfullscreen></iframe> <p>Not kidding, this video made me so homesick, my heart actually <em>hurt</em>.</p> Add View Image to Google Images → https://github.com/bijij/ViewImage Wed, 21 Feb 2018 11:50:23 +0100 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/add-view-image-to-google-images/ <p>Related to the Frank Chimero piece, removing the &lsquo;view image&rsquo; button makes the internet <em>harder</em> to use. This pulls it back slightly but for how long?</p> Everything Easy is Hard Again → https://frankchimero.com/writing/everything-easy-is-hard-again/ Thu, 15 Feb 2018 10:01:05 +0100 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/everything-easy-is-hard-again/ <p>As someone who recently had to return to the world of frontend web design for the first time in ~10 years, <a href="https://twitter.com/johnke/status/900980511706927104">my experience was not particularly great</a>.</p> <p>Here&rsquo;s Frank Chimero:</p> <blockquote> <p>That breaks my heart, because so much of my start on the web came from being able to see and easily make sense of any site I’d visit. I had view source, but each year that goes by, it becomes less and less helpful as a way to investigate other people’s work. Markup balloons in size and becomes illegible because computers are generating it without an eye for context. Styles become overly verbose and redundant to the point of confusion. Functionality gets obfuscated behind compressed Javascript.</p> </blockquote> <p>This is one of the best things I&rsquo;ve read about the current state of web design. It&rsquo;s not really an old-man-yells-at-cloud nor a wistful reminiscence. It&rsquo;s a manifesto for diligence.</p> Solo a Star Wars Story https://lowbrowculture.com/post/solo-a-star-wars-story/ Tue, 13 Feb 2018 09:47:45 +0100 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/solo-a-star-wars-story/ <p>You probably didn&rsquo;t notice, but I deliberately avoided talking about <em>The Last Jedi</em> last year. And not because I didn&rsquo;t have things to say about it (I do), but because there was too much noise around it and people seemed to be taking it all <em>extremely personally</em>, to the point where telling people <a href="https://twitter.com/johnke/status/941347414648246272">you thought the film was <em>fine</em></a> was functionally equivalent to saying &ldquo;it was the worst film in the world and you are a bad person for liking it&rdquo;.</p> <p>Now we&rsquo;ve all calmed down a bit, let&rsquo;s talk about <em>The Last Jedi</em> for a moment, shall we? I watched it again in Ireland over Christmas and stood by my assessment of &ldquo;fine&rdquo;. It&rsquo;s got a great start and a great ending, but in between &ndash; the entire middle stretch of the film, basically from Finn waking up until the scene in the throne room<sup id="fnref:1"><a href="#fn:1" class="footnote-ref" role="doc-noteref">1</a></sup> &ndash; is extremely poor. It&rsquo;s boring, it doesn&rsquo;t do anything to advance the plot. In fact, at points, you can even detect a whiff of the prequels, which is not a favourable comparison.</p> <p>I saw The Last Jedi twice and twice I came out feeling disappointed. Not because I&rsquo;d seen a bad film (it was <em>fine</em>, remember?) but because I&rsquo;d come out of a <em>Star Wars</em> film and wasn&rsquo;t feeling giddy and excited. It didn&rsquo;t give me that feeling of having seen something <em>really great</em>. The last time I remember walking out of a film feeling that sense of deflation was probably <em>Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull</em><sup id="fnref:2"><a href="#fn:2" class="footnote-ref" role="doc-noteref">2</a></sup> - another film with all the basic ingredients of a thing I love with my whole heart but which just didn&rsquo;t have that ineffable quality that worked for me.</p> <hr> <iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/dNW0B0HsvVs" frameborder="0" allow="autoplay; encrypted-media" allowfullscreen></iframe> <p>The teaser trailer for <em>Solo: A Star Wars Story</em> was released last week and I guess I should lower my expectations for what a &ldquo;<em>Star Wars</em>&rdquo; film means to me. I mean, I&rsquo;m not saying it&rsquo;s all bad. There are some amazing images in there &ndash; a Star Destroyer coming through a storm cloud, Han under the Millennium Falcon in a smokey haze &ndash; and you know what? All those reports about the studio hiring an acting coach for Alden Ehrenreich don&rsquo;t worry me because that one little nod during the &ldquo;It&rsquo;s fine&rdquo; moment in the trailer is such a <em>perfect</em> touch of Han Solo that I&rsquo;m convinced the &ldquo;acting coach&rdquo; was probably more likely an &ldquo;<em>acting like Harrison Ford</em> coach&rdquo;.</p> <p>But almost everything else about this trailer suggests a film that I could easily, happily skip and miss nothing. The whole &ldquo;kicked out of flight academy&rdquo; shit makes me think that there&rsquo;s a solid chance the entire film might be an attempt to replicate the &ldquo;Greedo shoots first&rdquo; scene for providing unnecessary, shitty character motivation and, in doing so, make the character <em>less cool</em>.</p> <p>I dunno, I&rsquo;m sure the film will be <em>fine</em>.</p> <div class="footnotes" role="doc-endnotes"> <hr> <ol> <li id="fn:1"> <p>You like how spoiler-free I&rsquo;m being here?&#160;<a href="#fnref:1" class="footnote-backref" role="doc-backlink">&#x21a9;&#xfe0e;</a></p> </li> <li id="fn:2"> <p>There&rsquo;s probably a deeper comparison to be made between <em>The Last Jedi</em> and <em>Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull</em> but that&rsquo;s probably for another post.&#160;<a href="#fnref:2" class="footnote-backref" role="doc-backlink">&#x21a9;&#xfe0e;</a></p> </li> </ol> </div> Best Games I Played in 2017 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/best-games-i-played-in-2017/ Fri, 19 Jan 2018 21:42:48 +0100 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/best-games-i-played-in-2017/ <p>As is customary with these posts (<a href="https://lowbrowculture.com/post/best-games-i-played-in-2013/">2013</a>, <a href="https://lowbrowculture.com/post/the-best-games-i-played-in-2014/">2014</a>, <a href="https://lowbrowculture.com/post/best-games-i-played-in-2015/">2015</a>, <a href="https://lowbrowculture.com/post/best-games-i-played-in-2016/">2016</a>), it’s worth mentioning that this is based on an incomplete sampling. There were so many games released in 2017 that I never even touched. For example, <em>Horizon: Zero Dawn</em> launched the same week as <em>Zelda</em> and there was no fuckin’ way I could handle two of basically the same game without putting a bit of distance between them<sup id="fnref:1"><a href="#fn:1" class="footnote-ref" role="doc-noteref">1</a></sup>. With all that in mind, these are the best games I played in 2017.</p> <h2 id="golf-story">Golf Story</h2> <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2017/games/golfstory.jpg" alt=""></p> <p>To be perfectly honest, I spent a good portion of 2017 in a fairly shitty place. Not exactly a dark place, but it got pretty gloomy at times. <em>Golf Story</em> was exactly what I needed. A golf RPG that doesn’t care too much about either the golf or the RPG parts of its own game, it just wants to be entertaining. At one point in the game, the action pauses so that two groups can throw down in a <em>rap battle</em>. This game does everything it can to be fun and entertaining and that’s no bad thing. Also, let me tell you a little story: around 75% of the way through the game, I made a series of bad decisions and silly mistakes and ended up accidentally deleting my save game. I immediately started up a new game, no question or hesitation.</p> <h2 id="assassins-creed-origins">Assassin’s Creed: Origins</h2> <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2017/games/aco.jpg" alt=""></p> <p>I thought I was done with <em>Assassin’s Creed</em> games, but I guess not. Pretty early on in my game, I saw the pyramids off in the distance and decided that’s where I was going to go. I traveled across the desert, ignored all of the rest of the world and the game just to get to them. You know that bit in <em>Lawrence of Arabia</em> where Omar Sharif’s character makes his entrance? That’s what it felt like - like I was seeing that scene from Omar Sharif’s point of view. Because of this and thousands of other moments like it, <em>Assassin’s Creed:Origins</em> was more special than I ever expected or that it had any right to be.</p> <h2 id="what-remains-of-edith-finch">What Remains of Edith Finch</h2> <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2017/games/edithfinch.jpg" alt=""></p> <p>There are some parts of <em>Edith Finch</em> that work better than others. The part with the scream-queen daughter was cute and I see what they were going for, but it felt a little too dorky for me. Having said that, when this game hits, it hits <em>hard</em>. Narrative and mechanical inventiveness are important qualities when making up lists like this, but more importantly, it’s the little moments that connect, that hit you in places you didn’t expect, in ways you didn’t expect. In <em>Edith Finch</em>, it was the bathtub section. Before it even started, I knew exactly what was going to happen and they handled it so perfectly that I was a mess of emotions after.</p> <h2 id="stories-untold">Stories Untold</h2> <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2017/games/storiesuntold.jpg" alt=""></p> <p>Why aren’t there more games like this? Collections of short, idiosyncratic games based not around a <em>theme</em> as much as based around a <em>feel</em>. I started playing this thinking I’d give it a few minutes and ended up staying up waaaay too late just to see what it was going to throw at me next.</p> <h2 id="everything">Everything</h2> <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2017/games/everything.jpg" alt=""></p> <p>Like <em>What Remains of Edith Finch</em>, I think I was just in the right place — psychologically, emotionally, spiritually — to appreciate <em>Everything</em>, a game that tries to show the interconnectedness of, well, everything. Like if Alan Watts made a video game. If this sounds twee to you, I can totally understand giving it a wide berth. For me, it was the most ambitious game I played in 2017. And the one I needed most.</p> <h2 id="gnog">Gnog</h2> <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2017/games/gnog.png" alt=""></p> <p><em>Gnog</em> is such a beautiful, hypersaturated, delightful toybox of a game that I played through it in one sitting, and had a great time. And then I immediately played through it again in VR and had another great time.</p> <h2 id="super-mario-odyssey">Super Mario Odyssey</h2> <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2017/games/mario.jpg" alt=""></p> <p>I’d love to be all high-minded and talk about how this is a distillation of everything Nintendo has learned over the last 30-odd years of making Mario games. About how it’s the pinnacle of platform games. About how it reinvigorates Mario as a franchise in a way we haven’t seen since <em>Mario 64</em>.</p> <p>But really, it was just <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1RLzv-M_LCk">Mario’s dance in New Donk City</a> that did it for me. The moment I saw that, I knew I was in love with this game.</p> <h2 id="doki-doki-literature-club">Doki Doki Literature Club</h2> <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2017/games/dokidoki.jpg" alt=""></p> <p>While I was playing this game, I was terrified someone would come into this room and see what I was playing. I was terrified they’d think I’d spent too much time on Tumblr and developed some new kink for anime waifus with ridiculous tits. But once I’d finished the game, I immediately wanted everyone else to play it too, ridiculous tits and all. It’s shockingly clever and cleverly shocking, pushing its engine (<a href="https://www.renpy.org/">RenPy</a>) to its limits and breaking the fourth wall like I’ve never seen it broken before. And it’s completely free, so give it a go.</p> <h2 id="legend-of-zelda-breath-of-the-wild">Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild</h2> <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2017/games/zelda.jpg" alt=""></p> <p>If I even have to explain to you why this is on my list, then I guess we don’t know each other at all, do we? (Also, remember, Zelda is the name of the boy).</p> <div class="footnotes" role="doc-endnotes"> <hr> <ol> <li id="fn:1"> <p>I’m playing it now though, and I can say that, three hours in, it probably wouldn’t have made this list for 2017&#160;<a href="#fnref:1" class="footnote-backref" role="doc-backlink">&#x21a9;&#xfe0e;</a></p> </li> </ol> </div> The Polybius Conspiracy → https://www.radiotopia.fm/showcase/the-polybius-conspiracy/ Wed, 22 Nov 2017 09:09:35 +0100 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/the-polybius-conspiracy/ <p>The Polybius Conspiracy is a series of podcasts from Radiotopia&rsquo;s <em>Showcase</em>, and it managed to tickle so many of my pleasure-points all at once. It&rsquo;s <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polybius_(urban_legend)">urban legend</a> meets conspiracy theory meets creepypasta. And it&rsquo;s terrifically well told.</p> I Love Spoilers → https://theoutline.com/post/2439/i-love-spoilers Tue, 14 Nov 2017 21:56:10 +0100 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/i-love-spoilers/ <p>I&rsquo;m genuinely bothered by the rise of spoiler culture, where any talk about a piece of pop culture &ndash; even just mentioning the name &ndash; causes normally rational people to start shouting &ldquo;no spoilers!&rdquo; Personally speaking, I can think of at least three examples of where learning about a quote-unquote &ldquo;spoiler&rdquo; has caused me to actually check out something I otherwise wouldn&rsquo;t (the most recent of these would be <em>The Good Place</em>, a show that hadn&rsquo;t even hit my radar until I heard someone talking about the final episode of the first season, which made me want to watch the entire thing. And a good thing too because that&rsquo;s one of the best shows on telly right now).</p> <p>Although I almost choked on my cornflakes when I read this part:</p> <blockquote> <p>Sebastian Starcevic, a journalist living in Australia, has written about his passion for spoilers as well. “I was actually sitting in the movie theater the other day watching a horror movie. I initially decided I wouldn&rsquo;t spoil the movie for myself so I could enjoy it the way it was intended,” he told me over email. “By the first jump scare, though, I was skimming the Wikipedia page to find out who the serial killer was.“</p> </blockquote> <p>Good grief Sebastian. Using your phone in a cinema?! Haven&rsquo;t you read the Wittertainment code of conduct?</p> David Foster Wallace on Attention https://lowbrowculture.com/post/dfw-on-attention/ Tue, 14 Nov 2017 21:54:49 +0100 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/dfw-on-attention/ <p>Here’s David Foster Wallace being interviewed on German TV in 2003</p> <iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/8juL7cdGj40" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> <p>This sentence stood out for me:</p> <blockquote> <p>It’s true that in the US, every year the culture gets more and more hostile — and I don’t mean hostile like angry — it becomes more and more difficult to ask people to read or to look at a piece of art for an hour or to listen to a piece of music that’s complicated and that takes work</p> </blockquote> <p>Remember that DFW died shortly after the first iPhone debuted, before the birth of Twitter and Instagram and all that.</p> <p>I have basically given up on going to the cinema at anything approaching what could generously be called a reasonable hour. Now I like to go to the cinema as early as possible — most recently, I went to see It at 12pm on a Sunday — not just because I’m a grumpy misanthrope, and not because I’m the father of a two year old and am exhausted in the evenings. I go at these stupid times because I don’t want to be surrounded by crowds when I see a film. Because, on the whole, multiplex cinema crowds are incapable of sitting through a two-hour film without checking their phones multiple times.</p> <p>And I’m pretty sure it’s only going to get worse.</p> My Favourite Podcasts https://lowbrowculture.com/post/my-favourite-podcasts/ Tue, 14 Nov 2017 21:43:47 +0100 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/my-favourite-podcasts/ <p>I wanted to make a list of my favourite podcasts, but I realised that&rsquo;s probably too much of a movable feast. So let&rsquo;s just say these are my favourite podcasts <em>right now</em>.</p> <p>And you know what? Fuck it, I&rsquo;m opening the comments on this in case anyone has any recommendations for things I should be listening to.</p> <p><a href="https://gimletmedia.com/reply-all/">Reply All</a><br> Podcasts about technology and the internet are a dime a dozen, but what makes <em>Reply All</em> special is that it seems to come from a place of genuine curiosity. They want to cover every corner of a story. Their most recent season-ender was a great example of this: one of the hosts received one of those Indian hoax &ldquo;we are a Microsoft support partner and your computer has a virus&rdquo; calls, and rather than just belittling the caller, they <em>went to India to meet them</em> and find out more about their business. This show jumps to the top of my to-play list every time it comes out.<br> <strong>Good place to start</strong>: <a href="http://pca.st/6anz">The Cathedral</a>. An episode about the background of the game <em>That Dragon Cancer</em>. It was first broadcast just days before my daughter was born and, not kidding, it almost <em>broke</em> me.</p> <p><a href="http://99percentinvisible.com/">99% Invisible</a><br> 99% Invisible is mostly about design and architecture, but you don&rsquo;t have to be a design or architecture nerd to enjoy the podcast. Every single episode teaches me something cool I didn&rsquo;t know about the world and gives me a dozen or so Wikipedia holes to fall down.<br> <strong>Good place to start</strong>: <a href="http://pca.st/UcG9">Ten Thousand Years</a>, where they explore the various suggestions people have given for designing a warning sign that will last ten thousand years, not knowing if language or symbols as we understand them will be around.</p> <p><a href="https://stownpodcast.org/">S-Town</a><br> This was NPR&rsquo;s semi-followup to <em>Serial</em>, released shortly after they realised that, actually, no-one really cared about the second season of that show. It&rsquo;s about a rural town &ndash; Shittown &ndash; in Alabama and it has the most amazing, almost unbelievably eccentric cast of characters you&rsquo;ll ever hear. Yes, it&rsquo;s slightly problematic (and gets even more so towards the end), but it&rsquo;s still a <em>great</em> piece of long-form radio storytelling.<br> <strong>Good place to start</strong>: <a href="http://pca.st/jS2q">The first episode</a>, obviously.</p> <p><a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00lvdrj">Kermode and Mayo&rsquo;s Film Review</a><br> There are a lot of film podcasts I could recommend (Filmspotting is good, I guess? The Slashfilmcast is okay?) but none of them have the unique blend of film reviews and hearing two men argue and banter like a couple who have been married for forty years. This is genuine comfort-listening.<br> <strong>Good place to start</strong>: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uHeQeHstrsc">Mark&rsquo;s Sex and the City 2 review</a>, in full flappy-handed glory.</p> <p><a href="http://www.dancarlin.com/common-sense-home-landing-page/">Dan Carlin&rsquo;s Common Sense</a>/<a href="http://www.dancarlin.com/product-category/hardcore-history/">Hardcore History</a><br> I&rsquo;m bunching these together because they&rsquo;re both pretty essential. Dan Carlin is a really smart ex-newsman with a love of history. And this is what he channels into his Hardcore History shows - meticulously researched multi-hour, multi-part episodes dealing with historical periods or events. They&rsquo;re as good as any audiobook and history text as you can find. His Common Sense show is about (American) politics, but again coming from a meticulously researched, erudite and insightful starting point.<br> <strong>Good place to start</strong>: <a href="http://pca.st/p7Aw">Blueprint for Armageddon Pt 1</a>. Part 1 of a six-part, twenty-five hour series of podcasts about the first world war. Move fast, because after a while, he pulls the episodes off the RSS feed and charges people for them (if you want to drop a few dollars, <a href="http://www.dancarlin.com/product/hardcore-history-43-wrath-of-the-khans-i/">his series on Genghis Khan</a> is <em>amazing</em>)</p> <p><a href="http://www.tilldeathdousblart.com/">Til Death Do Us Blart</a><br> The podcast&rsquo;s own description: <em>&ldquo;Once a year, every year at American Thanksgiving the five men will watch Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2 and record their thoughts, feelings and opinions. These personal expressions will be broadcast as a free, annual podcast. Should a member of the quintet pass away, protocol dictates that his baton must be passed to another, thus fulfilling the promise of five people watching and podcasting Paul Blart 2 from now till the end of linear time.&rdquo;</em> If this concept doesn&rsquo;t immediately sound <em>amazing</em> to you then, yeah, maybe skip this one.<br> <strong>Good place to start</strong>: They started in 2015, so <a href="http://pca.st/CPTs">listen to that episode first</a>, so you can really pick up and appreciate the subtle ways their spirits start to break in 2016.</p> <p><a href="http://www.wnyc.org/shows/radiolabmoreperfect">Radiolab Presents: More Perfect</a><br> Maybe it&rsquo;s just me, but the most recent Radiolab episodes have been a little duff (&ldquo;I prefer their earlier stuff&rdquo; says the hipster dickhead). But that&rsquo;s okay, because their recent limited-run series about the U.S. Supreme Court was <em>fascinating</em>. Now I&rsquo;ll admit, this isn&rsquo;t a subject I thought I&rsquo;d ever give a shit about, but they brought along their great Radiolab storytelling ability and I binged the entire thing in a couple of days.<br> <strong>Good place to start</strong>: <a href="http://pca.st/1GE1">Adoptive Couple v. Baby Girl</a>. This is the story that inspired Radiolab to create <em>More Perfect</em>. And it&rsquo;s one of the most heartbreaking podcast episodes I&rsquo;ve heard.</p> <p><a href="https://art19.com/shows/the-daily">The Daily</a><br> This is the <em>New York Times</em> daily news podcast. It&rsquo;s a short podcast &ndash; about 15 minutes each &ndash; and it their format is usually to cover a single story in more depth than other news podcasts (e.g. <a href="http://www.npr.org/podcasts/510318/up-first">NPR&rsquo;s Up First</a>, which is also pretty great). For example, while everyone was going on about how there&rsquo;s some bad shit going down in Burma, The Daily actually went into a decent amount of detail, giving the entire background, laying out who the major players are etc.<br> <strong>Good place to start</strong>: It&rsquo;s a daily news show - grab whatever is most recent?</p> <p><a href="http://www.blogtalkradio.com/junkfoodcinema">Junk food cinema</a><br> I get it. There&rsquo;s no shortage of podcasts where a group of friends sit around and watch films and talk about them later. It could be its own category in iTunes. But where most of these (e.g. <a href="https://www.flophousepodcast.com/">The Flophouse</a>) come from a place of detached irony, the guys behind Junkfood Cinema <em>genuinely love</em> the films they talk about. They recently did a &ldquo;Summer of 87&rdquo; season, covering films from, yep, the summer of 1987, and their enthusiasm for <em>every single film</em> was so strong, it made me want to watch the films too.<br> <strong>Good place to start</strong>: <a href="http://www.blogtalkradio.com/junkfoodcinema/2016/12/23/pump-up-the-volume">Pump Up the Volume</a> is a perfect example of this happening. My wife and I listened to this episode on a drive home from her mother&rsquo;s house and immediately settled in to watch the film when we got home.</p> <p><a href="http://www.maximumfun.org/shows/my-brother-my-brother-and-me">My Brother, My Brother and Me</a><br> <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LlVzSPKIXow">Lin-Manuel Miranda is a fan</a>. That&rsquo;s good enough for me.<br> <strong>Good place to start</strong>: <a href="http://www.maximumfun.org/my-brother-my-brother-and-me/mbmbam-369-bros-better-bros-best-ch-122-133">MBMBaM 369: Bro&rsquo;s Better, Bro&rsquo;s Best Ch. 122 - 133</a> - a collection of the best bits from the 10 most recent episodes.</p> How to decode the images on the Voyager Golden Record → https://boingboing.net/2017/09/05/how-to-decode-the-images-on-th.html Tue, 14 Nov 2017 21:43:04 +0100 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/decode-voyager/ <p>Ever fancied pretending you were an alien decoding this weird golden disc that&rsquo;s travelled billions of miles of space to reach you? Well, with Audacity, you can! This is seriously cool.</p> The mysterious Voynich manuscript has finally been decoded → https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/09/the-mysterious-voynich-manuscript-has-finally-been-decoded/ Tue, 14 Nov 2017 21:40:34 +0100 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/voynich-decoded/ <blockquote> <p>After looking at the so-called code for a while, Gibbs realized he was seeing a common form of medieval Latin abbreviations, often used in medical treatises about herbs. &hellip; So this wasn&rsquo;t a code at all; it was just shorthand. The text would have been very familiar to anyone at the time who was interested in medicine.</p> </blockquote> <p>Yay for solving the mystery and all, but it&rsquo;s such a mundane solution that I can&rsquo;t help feel a little sad. <strong>Update:</strong> via <a href="http://twitter.com/macdara">MacDara Conroy on Twitter</a> - <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/09/has-the-voynich-manuscript-really-been-solved/539310/">Has a Mysterious Medieval Code Really Been Solved?</a> (I&rsquo;ll save you a click: no)</p> Dear David → https://web.archive.org/web/20180327020233/https://storify.com/moby_dickhead/dear-david Tue, 14 Nov 2017 21:39:25 +0100 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/dear-david/ <p>Comic artist David Ellis is in the process of creating an amazing twenty-first century ghost story. One that&rsquo;s told across weeks of tweets and incorporating videos, soundcloud clips and audience participation. It&rsquo;s so simple, so well done and I couldn&rsquo;t be more impressed.</p> It Me https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/it-me/ Mon, 13 Nov 2017 12:39:41 +0100 https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/it-me/ <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/it-me.png" alt=""></p> 17776 - What football will look like in the future → https://www.sbnation.com/a/17776-football/ Thu, 06 Jul 2017 19:40:06 +0100 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/17776/ <p>Holy crap, this is impressive. From Jon Bois, who brought us the equally incredible <a href="https://www.sbnation.com/2014/1/30/5351052/breaking-madden-super-bowl-broncos-seahawks">Breaking Madden series</a>.</p> The Apprehension Engine https://lowbrowculture.com/video/apprehension-engine/ Wed, 28 Jun 2017 08:32:21 +0100 https://lowbrowculture.com/video/apprehension-engine/ <iframe src="https://player.vimeo.com/video/184366394" width="640" height="360" frameborder="0" webkitallowfullscreen mozallowfullscreen allowfullscreen></iframe> <p><a href="https://vimeo.com/184366394">The Apprehension Engine</a> from <a href="https://vimeo.com/user3424223">Mark Korven</a> on <a href="https://vimeo.com">Vimeo</a>.</p> <p>The composer of The VVitch designed an analogue instrument designed to create disturbing sounds. And I&rsquo;m so jealous - this looks like so much fun. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1lTYPvArbGo">More about the background of the instrument</a>.</p> 4D Toys: a box of four-dimensional toys → http://marctenbosch.com/news/2017/06/4d-toys-a-box-of-four-dimensional-toys/ Sat, 03 Jun 2017 08:28:26 +0100 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/4D-toys/ <p>This is incredible. Marc Ten Bosch wrote a really fun game about playing with 4D objects. But his video describing how the game works is also the best primer on how the 4th dimension works that I&rsquo;ve ever seen.</p> Fury Road themed Cozy Coupe → https://www.buzzfeed.com/mikespohr/this-amazing-dad-made-toddler-sized-mad-max-fury-road-cars Thu, 04 May 2017 10:22:03 +0100 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/fury-road-cozy-coupe/ <p>My daughter <em>loves</em> her cozy coupe. I <em>love</em> <em>Mad Max: Fury Road</em>. Okay little baby, let&rsquo;s do this.</p> The best homemade cacio e pepe https://lowbrowculture.com/post/best-homemade-cacio-e-pepe/ Tue, 02 May 2017 19:25:10 +0100 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/best-homemade-cacio-e-pepe/ <p>One of the things I miss most about living in Rome (apart from the awesome friends we had to leave behind) is not having steady access to decent cacio e pepe. I&rsquo;ve <a href="https://lowbrowculture.com/post/cooking-italian-food/">written</a> <a href="https://lowbrowculture.com/post/roma-sparita/">before</a> about my love for this dish, how it completely changed the way I think about food. And it&rsquo;s the first thing I order whenever I&rsquo;m in Italy.</p> <p>To make things worse, I&rsquo;ve never been able to successfully recreate the dish at home. The versions I make are always too gloopy, or it&rsquo;s too wet, or it&rsquo;s too flavourless.</p> <p>Until Kenji.</p> <p>In my house, Kenji Lopez-Alt is to food what Mark Kermode is to films. Nothing gets made without first asking &ldquo;how would Kenji make this?&rdquo; and consulting his book, <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Food-Lab-Cooking-Through-Science/dp/0393081087/">The Food Lab</a> (which might be my favourite cookbook). So, on a whim, I checked out what he had to say about homemade cacio e pepe. And he&rsquo;s got a video about it. I made his version tonight and it was, without a doubt, the best cacio e pepe I&rsquo;ve ever made.</p> <iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/wxIfa4Qc2Rw?ecver=1" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> <p>A couple of notes about his recipe:</p> <ol> <li>Don&rsquo;t use fresh pasta for this. The timings are for dry pasta and they&rsquo;re relatively precise - if you use fresh pasta, your pasta will be done before the oil has had time to cool down, so your butter won&rsquo;t emulsify with it. Plus, this is just a personal thing, but I think fresh pasta is kinda wanky anyway. If you&rsquo;re trying to impress someone with this dish, you&rsquo;re much better of spending your money on better quality cheese.</li> <li>Maybe use normal olive oil to fry the pepper at the start. Even being as gentle as possible, the extra virgin just has a sharpness to it that can overpower the cheese. Drizzling extra virgin at the end is plenty.</li> </ol> The Raiders of the Lost Ark 1-Page Film School → http://vashivisuals.com/raiders-of-the-lost-ark-1-page-film-school/ Tue, 02 May 2017 09:04:17 +0100 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/raiders-1-page-film-school/ <p>Vashi Nedomansky has put together a great collection of videos and PDFs about the making of <em>Raiders of the Lost Ark</em>. There goes today&rsquo;s productivity.</p> Day of the Tentacle: Dependency Graph Analysis → http://thewebsiteisdown.com/twidblog/day-of-the-tentacle-dependency-graph/ Fri, 28 Apr 2017 12:13:28 +0100 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/day-of-the-tentacle-graph/ <p><em>Day of the Tentacle</em> was such a huge part of my childhood, seeing the entire game laid out like this fills me with warm fuzzies.</p> Binging with Babish: Kevin's Famous Chili from The Office https://lowbrowculture.com/video/binging-with-babish/ Wed, 15 Mar 2017 09:41:07 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/video/binging-with-babish/ <iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/eQ9eY0_DoEk?ecver=1" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> <p>Andrew Rea&rsquo;s <a href="https://www.youtube.com/user/bgfilms/">Binging With Babish</a> is my new obsession. He&rsquo;s a filmmaker and amateur chef who deadpans his way through recreating dishes from films and TV. Like, I was tempted to share <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vjZXcapkFEU">the video where he made the &ldquo;Moistmaker&rdquo; Thanksgiving leftovers sandwich from Friends</a>, where he went out and cooked an entire 20lb turkey just for ONE sandwich. Instead, I&rsquo;m highlighting the video where he recreates Kevin&rsquo;s chili from The Office and serves it authentically: on a sheet of cheap office carpet.</p> ‘He Will Not Divide Us’ Livestream Placed in Middle of Nowhere, but 4chan Still Found Way to Troll It → https://heatst.com/tech/he-will-not-divide-us-livestream-placed-in-middle-of-nowhere-but-4chan-still-found-way-to-troll-it/ Tue, 14 Mar 2017 16:29:20 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/4chan-troll/ <blockquote> <p>Finally when three planes flew over the area, 4channers were able to triangulate an approximate location of the flag.<br> This area was too large to search unfortunately. The 4channers began looking to the stars, using ancient astronomy to help map the direction of the camera and pinpoint a more precise location.</p> </blockquote> <p>4chan has some of the best minds of our generation and I honestly believe that they could probably find a cure for cancer if they would only use their powers for good instead of just for being racist trolls and looking at anime titties.</p> Building the Ikea Bike Is a Pain Worth Suffering Through → http://gizmodo.com/building-the-ikea-bike-is-a-pain-worth-suffering-throug-1792804502 Fri, 10 Mar 2017 22:16:27 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/ikea-bike/ <p>The Ikea Bike (the &ldquo;Sladda&rdquo;) is an interesting proposition. It&rsquo;s a relatively cheap, low maintenance bike with some fancypants pluses (e.g. belt drive, disc brakes, and a modular ecosystem so you can get <a href="http://www.ikea.com/ie/en/products/ikea-family-products/bicycle-bicycle-accessories/sladda-bicycle-bag-rear-black-art-40339631/">panniers</a> and a <a href="http://www.ikea.com/ie/en/products/ikea-family-products/bicycle-bicycle-accessories/sladda-bicycle-trailer-art-50345641/">trailer</a> for your new bike). This is the first time I&rsquo;ve actually heard of anyone&rsquo;s hands-on experiences with one. And I was totally sold until this line:</p> <blockquote> <p>What isn’t easy to modulate are the gears on the Sladda. It only has two gears, and you can’t even choose which one you’re in. It runs on automatic transmission, meaning it adjusts between harder or softer gears based on your pedaling.</p> </blockquote> <p>Dublin isn&rsquo;t even a particularly hilly city, but the idea of <em>not being in control of your gears</em> sounds <em>insane</em> to me.</p> Michael Shannon Says No https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/michael-shannon-says-no/ Sat, 04 Mar 2017 11:25:54 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/michael-shannon-says-no/ <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/tumblr/157979421041_0.jpg" alt=""></p> <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/tumblr/157979421041_1.jpg" alt=""></p> <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/tumblr/157979421041_2.jpg" alt=""></p> <p><a href="http://edwardaldersin.tumblr.com/post/157869912926/i-fucking-love-him-jfc">edwardaldersin</a></p> <blockquote> <p>I FUCKING LOVE HIM JFC</p> </blockquote> Behind the Scam: What Does It Take to Be a ‘Best-Selling Author’? $3 and 5 Minutes. – The Mission → https://medium.com/the-mission/behind-the-scam-what-does-it-take-to-be-a-best-selling-author-3-and-5-minutes-ec05cee1749a#.vikidgbud Mon, 06 Feb 2017 11:07:48 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/what-does-it-take-to-be-a-best-selling-author/ <p>Have you browsed Amazon&rsquo;s &ldquo;best seller&rdquo; lists recently? Noticed they&rsquo;re basically useless? Brent Underwood shows why there&rsquo;s so much useless junk on there (tl;dr people are exploiting the system to bolster their personal brand).</p> <blockquote> <p>A while ago, I put up a fake book on Amazon. I took a photo of my foot, uploaded to Amazon, and in a matter of hours, had achieved “№1 Best Seller” status, complete with the orange banner and everything.</p> <p>How many copies did I need to sell to be able to call up my mother and celebrate my newfound authorial achievements? Three. Yes, a total of three copies to become a best-selling author. And I bought two of those copies myself!</p> </blockquote> Setapp launches an 'App Subscription Service' → https://setapp.com/ Thu, 26 Jan 2017 21:11:34 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/app-subscription-service/ <p>I&rsquo;ve mentioned before about <a href="https://lowbrowculture.com/link/versioning-licensing-and-sketch-4-0/">how individual app subscription is becoming the norm</a>, and how this could potentially be consumer-unfriendly. Well, Setapp have launched what could be described as &ldquo;Netflix for apps&rdquo;. You pay $9.99 and you get access to all of their apps. <a href="https://setapp.com/apps">There are 61 apps right now</a>, a handful of which I actually use on a daily basis (Marked, Numi, Pixa, Sip and Ulysses - but that last one is a <em>big</em> one).</p> <p>This seems like a great consumer and business friendly solution. Really hope this catches on.</p> Resilient Web Design → https://resilientwebdesign.com/ Thu, 05 Jan 2017 21:57:36 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/resilient-web-design/ <p>Jeremy Keith has written a <em>terrific</em> primer on the importance of embracing the web we have and designing with open standards (&ldquo;material honesty&rdquo;) and, more importantly, <em>content</em> in mind. It&rsquo;s a great read, even (especially?) for non-designers.</p> <p>Coincidentally, over the last week or so, I&rsquo;ve been making some changes to my personal websites (here and <a href="http://johnke.wtf">johnke.wtf</a>) to make them more responsive and behave nicely on different devices. So this has come along at just the right time for me.</p> Indie Microblogging: owning your short-form writing → https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/manton/indie-microblogging-owning-your-short-form-writing Mon, 02 Jan 2017 22:07:23 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/indie-microblogging/ <p>Manton Reece wants to make a microblogging site for the open web and he&rsquo;s running a Kickstarter to help fund that. I don&rsquo;t know if another microblog can actually take on or even compete with Twitter (has anyone checked to see if app.net is still breathing?) but I&rsquo;m supporting this because I refuse to lose hope in the idea of the open web.</p> Films I Watched in 2016 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/films-i-watched-in-2016/ Mon, 02 Jan 2017 08:38:54 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/films-i-watched-in-2016/ <p>For the last few years, I&rsquo;ve been using <a href="http://letterboxd.com">Letterboxd</a> to keep a track of every film I watch. According to <a href="http://letterboxd.com/johnke">my Letterboxd profile</a>, I watched a total of 92 films in 2016. Which is the same number of films as I watched in 2015, which isn&rsquo;t bad, considering my wife and I had a child in early January, which severely limited our trips to the cinema.</p> <p>I also scored each film I watched, with a maximum score of five. Which lets me pull out some statistics<sup id="fnref:1"><a href="#fn:1" class="footnote-ref" role="doc-noteref">1</a></sup>!</p> <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/films-2016.jpg" alt="My year in film"></p> <p>The average score across all films was 3.1 / 5, which is pretty good<sup id="fnref:2"><a href="#fn:2" class="footnote-ref" role="doc-noteref">2</a></sup>! The lowest score I gave a film was 1 / 5 (actually, I gave it to two films: <em>Camino</em> and <em>Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse</em>). The highest score this year was 4.5 / 5. The films I rated the highest this year were <em>Rogue One</em> (which I saw twice), <em>Hunt for the Wilderpeople</em>, <em>Green Room</em> and <em>Steve Jobs</em>.</p> <p>92 films averages to 1.8 films a week. The graph of <em>when</em> these films were watched tells a bit of a story of the year. First week of the year, when my wife was heavily pregnant and ready to pop, we watched five films. Then, the entire month of April, when my baby was waking four or five times a night? One film.</p> <p>I only reviewed 43 of the 92 films I watched in 2016, which is a shame, because my little reviews are more helpful to me in remembering why I gave a film a particular score. I could barely remember watching <em>Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse</em>, but my review &ndash; my little note to amuse no-one but myself &ndash; reminded me why I gave it 1 / 5.</p> <div class="footnotes" role="doc-endnotes"> <hr> <ol> <li id="fn:1"> <p>For context on the scoring, <a href="http://letterboxd.com/johnke/films/diary/rated/5/">I have given nine films a perfect score of 5/5</a>.&#160;<a href="#fnref:1" class="footnote-backref" role="doc-backlink">&#x21a9;&#xfe0e;</a></p> </li> <li id="fn:2"> <p>Last year, the average score was 2.8 / 5, so either films are getting better or I&rsquo;m doing a better job of avoiding bad ones, I guess?&#160;<a href="#fnref:2" class="footnote-backref" role="doc-backlink">&#x21a9;&#xfe0e;</a></p> </li> </ol> </div> Best Games I Played in 2016 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/best-games-i-played-in-2016/ Thu, 29 Dec 2016 09:23:31 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/best-games-i-played-in-2016/ <p><em>Every year, I do a roundup of my favourite games that I played throughout the year. Previous years: <a href="https://lowbrowculture.com/post/best-games-i-played-in-2013/">2013</a>, <a href="https://lowbrowculture.com/post/the-best-games-i-played-in-2014/">2014</a>, <a href="https://lowbrowculture.com/post/best-games-i-played-in-2015/">2015</a></em></p> <h2 id="everybodys-gone-to-the-rapture">Everybody&rsquo;s Gone to the Rapture</h2> <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2016/games/egttr.jpg" alt=""> Okay, so technically this game came out in 2015, which is a great start to a year-end list for 2016. I played it when it first came out and it just didn&rsquo;t click with me. I&rsquo;m not sure why. I knew going in that it fell under the ‘walking simulator’ umbrella. But I guess I was expecting more of a <em>Gone Home</em> style experience, where the game gives you an environment to explore and examine and a story that you uncover — or flesh out — for yourself. Except, as I found out, <em>EGTTR</em> is not that type of game. It&rsquo;s more like a radio play crossed with a heavy dose of <a href="http://sleepnomorenyc.com/#share">Sleep No More</a>. So, last month, I went back and played it like that, like it was a play that I was witnessing rather than actually being any part of, and the game bowled me over. It&rsquo;s poetic and beautiful without ever being mawkish and it&rsquo;s one of a handful of games to have ever made me cry.</p> <h2 id="rise-of-the-tomb-raideruncharted-4">Rise of the Tomb Raider/Uncharted 4</h2> <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2016/games/uncharted4.jpg" alt=""> I don&rsquo;t think it&rsquo;s cheating to put both of these games on here. They&rsquo;re both really fun games that are great at different things. <em>Uncharted</em> had a great, grown-up story (a hero trying to settle down and re-adjust his priorities) and had the best free-flowing combat of any game I&rsquo;ve played this year. In the previous <em>Uncharted</em> games, I&rsquo;d hide behind cover and pick off the baddies one-by-one. In this, I was finally whizzing around the levels like the badass the game <em>wanted</em> me to be. <em>Tomb Raider</em>, on the other hand, had better, uh, tombs. Better puzzles that took advantage of the environment. The Baba Yaga DLC (which comes loaded on the PS4 disk) is <em>stunning</em> and a wild departure from what you&rsquo;d expect from a triple-A blockbuster game.</p> <h2 id="tis-100quadrilateral-cowboy">TIS-100/Quadrilateral Cowboy</h2> <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2016/games/tis-100.jpg" alt=""> Look, if I can put <em>Uncharted</em> and <em>Tomb Raider</em> together on this list because of a thematic link, I can definitely put <em>TIS-100</em> and <em>Quadrilateral Cowboy</em> together. In <em>TIS-100</em>, you have to solve a series of programming puzzles by writing assembly. Assembly! It&rsquo;s frustrating and you spend most of your play-time just staring at the screen, not typing anything. And oh my God, it&rsquo;s so rewarding when you finally figure it out. Just like real programming! Best part is that when you solve it, it shows you a leaderboard of how you did compared to your steam friends. If you&rsquo;ve got nerdy programming friends, this is a huge pissing contest and it&rsquo;s <em>great</em>.</p> <p>On the other hand, <em>Quadrilateral Cowboy</em> is about hacking to pull off elaborate heists. William Gibson meets <em>Oceans Eleven</em>. The game&rsquo;s action is more physical than <em>TIS-100</em>. You type your commands into your &lsquo;deck&rsquo; in the game. For example, you program a door to open for five seconds, which should be just enough time for you to grab your deck and run through before the door shuts but not so long that the alarm will trigger. The real fun comes in stringing together a series of commands so that things will happen in sequence and allow you to steal the maguffin. Get that timing <em>just right</em> and you felt like you’re in <em>Mission Impossible</em> or something. But like, one of the <em>good</em> ones.</p> <h2 id="the-witness">The Witness</h2> <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2016/games/thewitness.jpg" alt=""> Stop me if you&rsquo;ve heard me tell this story before. When I was in my early twenties, I taught myself how to juggle. And the hardest part, I found, was just getting my brain to learn to let go of that third ball when two were already in flight. I spent <em>weeks</em> trying to throw that third ball in the air. I just couldn&rsquo;t do it. My hand wouldn&rsquo;t release it. Then, one day, something clicked &ndash; and I mean <em>clicked</em>, like I felt a physical sensation in my brain &ndash; and I could suddenly do it, no problem.</p> <p><em>The Witness</em> was that feeling again and again and again. Puzzles you think you&rsquo;ll never be able to do, then suddenly, something clicks and you&rsquo;re able to solve them. And then you build on that knowledge when you encounter the next thing you think you&rsquo;ll never be able to do. Rewarding and beautiful.</p> <h2 id="firewatch">Firewatch</h2> <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2016/games/firewatch.jpg" alt=""> <em>Firewatch</em> starts with a strong emotional flourish every bit as powerful as the opening of Pixar&rsquo;s <em>Up</em>. And the genius of this bit of storytelling is that it completely affects the way you play the game, the choices you make. It&rsquo;s a walking simulator &ndash; a nice hike in the woods simulator, really &ndash; with a deep undercurrent of melancholy and loss. The development team has a pedigree that meant I was at least expecting something interesting. I wasn&rsquo;t expecting something so mature, so confident and so emotionally resonant.</p> <h2 id="hitman">Hitman</h2> <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2016/games/hitman.jpg" alt=""> This year&rsquo;s <em>Hitman</em> got so many things right. The slow roll-out of episodes meant that you didn’t feel that compulsion to just finish one level as quickly as possible so you could move onto the next one. You had time to get comfortable with each level and slowly ease yourself into the game’s mechanics. It also meant you were encouraged to explore, to try different things, try <em>absurd</em> things. But the thing I loved most about it was how <em>ridiculous</em> it allowed itself to be. It embraces the silliness of the game, from the opening training level set on a soundstage with a cardboard helicopter, right through to the Christmas DLC <a href="http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/169042-Hitman-Holiday-Elusive-Target-is-the-Wet-Bandits-from-Home-Alone">where your targets are the burglars from <em>Home Alone</em></a>. This was the first <em>Hitman</em> game I truly enjoyed.</p> <h2 id="anatomy">Anatomy</h2> <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2016/games/anatomy.jpg" alt=""> There were a lot of quote-unquote &lsquo;horror&rsquo; games in 2016 (I feel like the world reached peak &lsquo;survival&rsquo; game this year), but these were mostly of the quiet-quiet-LOUD jump-scare variety. That&rsquo;s fun and all, but it&rsquo;s so one-note, it gets a little repetitive. Only one game genuinely chilled me this year and it was Kitty Horrorshow&rsquo;s <em>Anatomy</em>. A short, brutally efficient horror experience, which gives you the most mundane environment &ndash; a suburban home &ndash; then changes that out from underneath you on subsequent playthroughs. This is the simplest game on this list but it’s the one that’s stuck with me the most.</p> <h2 id="overwatch">Overwatch</h2> <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2016/games/overwatch.jpg" alt=""> I&rsquo;m <em>terrible</em> at shooting games. Just terrible. I&rsquo;ve got old man hands, slow reactions and poor situational awareness. Oh, and I panic really easily. But here&rsquo;s what I loved about <em>Overwatch</em>: none of this matters. You can have all of these things and still contribute to you team&rsquo;s success.</p> <h2 id="inside">Inside</h2> <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2016/games/inside.png" alt=""> Stylistically, this is kind of reminiscent of the developer&rsquo;s previous game, <em>Limbo</em>. But while Limbo was a cold, austere game with beautiful visuals, there&rsquo;s something warm and human<sup id="fnref:1"><a href="#fn:1" class="footnote-ref" role="doc-noteref">1</a></sup> about <em>Inside</em>. A few minutes into the game, you&rsquo;re followed by a gang of chicks. It&rsquo;s one of the cutest things you&rsquo;ll see. Tiny chirping pixels following you around. A little while later, a puzzle involves you sucking these chicks into a machine so they get spat out the top to hit a block and knock it where you can use the block. Then the chicks all run off. Except one. A chick — a tiny group of pixels — doesn&rsquo;t move. And it’s <em>devastating</em>.</p> <blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en-gb"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Possibly the most heartbreaking thing in a game in 2016 <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/PS4share?src=hash">#PS4share</a> <a href="https://t.co/lUjT0BTqYC">pic.twitter.com/lUjT0BTqYC</a></p>&mdash; John Kelly (@johnke) <a href="https://twitter.com/johnke/status/777566662161735680">18 September 2016</a></blockquote> <script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script> <h2 id="the-last-guardian">The Last Guardian</h2> <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2016/games/lastguardian.png" alt=""> For the first couple of hours with <em>The Last Guardian</em>, I was worried. I was <em>finally</em> playing the game I&rsquo;d been waiting almost nine years for. The game whose original announcement had me rushing out to buy a PS3 the next day. The game that was the spiritual sequel to two of my favourite games of all time. And I wasn&rsquo;t enjoying it. It was cold and clunky. Was this what I&rsquo;d been waiting for? But then I got to the part they&rsquo;d shown in countless trailers. Jumping from bridge to bridge. And when Trico reached out to catch me with his mouth but missed and then swung his tail around for me to catch, I found myself holding my breath. <em>Even though I&rsquo;d seen this happen before</em>. And I knew the game had worked its magic and got its hooks in me, hard.</p> <div class="footnotes" role="doc-endnotes"> <hr> <ol> <li id="fn:1"> <p>And sub-human - that little mermaid girl still gives me nightmares&#160;<a href="#fnref:1" class="footnote-backref" role="doc-backlink">&#x21a9;&#xfe0e;</a></p> </li> </ol> </div> Vice gets rid of comments → https://web.archive.org/web/20170120072535/https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/were-getting-rid-of-comments-on-vice Tue, 20 Dec 2016 19:34:18 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/vice-gets-rid-of-comments/ <p>Vice is getting rid of the comments from its articles</p> <blockquote> <p>Unfortunately, website comments sections are rarely at their best. Without moderators or fancy algorithms, they are prone to anarchy. Too often they devolve into racist, misogynistic maelstroms where the loudest, most offensive, and stupidest opinions get pushed to the top and the more reasoned responses drowned out in the noise.</p> </blockquote> <p>I predict that lots more websites will be doing the same in 2017.</p> GQ's Oral History of Prince → http://www.gq.com/story/prince-stories Thu, 08 Dec 2016 22:39:21 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/an-oral-history-of-prince/ <p>There were a <em>lot</em> of celebrity deaths in 2016, but none hit me quite as hard as Prince. My sister was a huge Prince fan, which meant I was basically a fan from birth. If there&rsquo;s one comfort to be taken from his death it&rsquo;s that &ndash; more than any of the other celebrities that died &ndash; Prince was incredibly private. Secretive, almost. Which means all we&rsquo;re left with is everyone else&rsquo;s stories of Prince. And this is a much more beautiful way to remember him, as a series of impossible-seeming, almost contradictory legends. Like this one from Van Jones, the political activist.</p> <blockquote> <p><strong>Van Jones</strong>: He was very interested in the world. He wanted me to explain how the White House worked. He asked very detailed kind of foreign-policy questions. And then he&rsquo;d ask, &ldquo;Why doesn&rsquo;t Obama just outlaw birthdays?&rdquo; [laughs] I&rsquo;m, like, &ldquo;What?&rdquo; He said, &ldquo;I was hoping that Obama, as soon as he was elected, would get up and announce there&rsquo;d be no more Christmas presents and no more birthdays—we&rsquo;ve got too much to do.&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;Yeah, I don&rsquo;t know if that would go over too well.&rdquo;</p> </blockquote> David Ehrlich's 25 best films of 2016 https://lowbrowculture.com/video/david-ehrlich-25-films-of-2016/ Tue, 06 Dec 2016 17:43:49 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/video/david-ehrlich-25-films-of-2016/ <iframe src="https://player.vimeo.com/video/302872174" width="640" height="360" frameborder="0" allow="autoplay; fullscreen" allowfullscreen></iframe> <p><a href="https://vimeo.com/302872174">THE 25 BEST FILMS OF 2016</a> from <a href="https://vimeo.com/user92154201">david ehrlich</a> on <a href="https://vimeo.com">Vimeo</a>.</p> <p>This is SO good. A great list, in a really great video.</p> <p>SO good.</p> Inside the Halley VI Research Station → https://halley360.antarcti.co/ Thu, 01 Dec 2016 14:41:17 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/inside-halley-vi/ <p>Really cool 360˚ tour of <a href="https://www.bas.ac.uk/polar-operations/sites-and-facilities/facility/halley/">Halley VI</a>, which houses up to 70 research staff in the summer and 16 in the winter. Fascinating.</p> Tom Waits for No One https://lowbrowculture.com/video/tom-waits-for-no-one/ Tue, 29 Nov 2016 12:54:39 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/video/tom-waits-for-no-one/ <iframe width="800" height="450" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/jCNDZY4vXPs" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> <p>In 1979, Tom Waits made a music video for &ldquo;The One That Got Away&rdquo;. 5,000 rotoscoped frames of animation. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIBRDvLK3O0">Here&rsquo;s one of the live-action videos</a> they used to make the animation, proving that in the 70s, Tom Waits was as close to a horny cat from a Looney Tunes cartoon as any human would be.</p> <p><a href="http://tomwaitsfornoone.squarespace.com/">You can read more about the production (and buy an illustrated scrapbook) from the director</a>.</p> Holiday Hole → https://holidayhole.com/ Fri, 25 Nov 2016 22:19:37 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/holiday-hole/ <p>Cards Against Humanity are crowdfunding the digging of a huge hole in the Earth. And livestreaming it.</p> <blockquote> <p><strong>Why aren’t you giving all this money to charity?</strong><br> Why aren’t YOU giving all this money to charity? It’s your money.</p> </blockquote> <p>So far, people have paid almost $50,000 to dig a hole.</p> a good bundle → https://itch.io/b/149/a-good-bundle Wed, 23 Nov 2016 17:29:57 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/a-good-bundle/ <p>$20 for 151 of some of the best indie games on itch.io, with all the proceeds going to the ACLU and Planned Parenthood. Personal favourites: <a href="http://lowbrowculture.com/post/best-games-i-played-in-2013/">Proteus</a>, <a href="http://lowbrowculture.com/post/best-games-i-played-in-2013/">Gone Home</a>, <a href="https://dreamfeel.itch.io/curtain">Curtain</a> (by Irish developer <a href="http://dreamfeel.org/">Dreamfeel</a>), <a href="https://crowscrowscrows.itch.io/the-temple-of-no">The Temple of No</a>. Oh look, it’s just a great bunch of games for a really great cause. Just buy it.</p> A Platform for Trolls (continued) https://lowbrowculture.com/post/platform-for-trolls-ctd/ Wed, 23 Nov 2016 16:05:31 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/platform-for-trolls-ctd/ <p>I&rsquo;ve been thinking a little more on the problem of [giving a platform to trolls][1].</p> <p>On the same day that Donald &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t settle&rdquo; Trump settled his Trump university lawsuit, he also tweeted his disapproval at the way Mike Pence was addressed by the cast of Hamilton. One of these was an enormous story with long-ranging implications, the other was someone being pissy about hurt feelings. Which of these was the main news story on lots of newspapers (including hte New York Times)? The tweet, obviously.</p> <p>During the summer, Twitter took the extraordinary step of issuing a lifetime ban on “@nero&quot; &ndash; Milo Yiannopolis &ndash; for directing hate speech. This almost instantly decimated the &ldquo;gamer gate&rdquo; movement on Twitter<sup id="fnref:1"><a href="#fn:1" class="footnote-ref" role="doc-noteref">1</a></sup>. It was like someone opened the windows and let in some air. Twitter briefly became a <em>slightly nicer place</em>.</p> <p>Now, imagine twitter banned Donald Trump. I don’t know why, but you could easily argue “hate speech” too. Imagine the effect that would have on the news cycle. Non-issues would be avoided. “Rich white man has hurt feelings” wouldn’t generate pages and pages of think-pieces. [We could focus on <em>issues</em> instead of imaginary ‘scandals’][2]. <em>Imagine how much less toxic the world would be</em>.</p> <p>Sure, Twitter&rsquo;s investors would have a goddamn heart attack and never let it happen, but still, it&rsquo;s nice to imagine, isn&rsquo;t it?</p> <div class="footnotes" role="doc-endnotes"> <hr> <ol> <li id="fn:1"> <p>It&rsquo;s not entirely dead, but without anyone actually driving or <em>directing</em> the clown car, its effect has been dramatically reduced. [1]: <a href="http://lowbrowculture.com/post/platform-for-trolls/">http://lowbrowculture.com/post/platform-for-trolls/</a> [2]: <a href="https://www.engadget.com/2016/10/20/climate-change-took-a-backseat-to-scandal-at-the-presidential-de/">https://www.engadget.com/2016/10/20/climate-change-took-a-backseat-to-scandal-at-the-presidential-de/</a>&#160;<a href="#fnref:1" class="footnote-backref" role="doc-backlink">&#x21a9;&#xfe0e;</a></p> </li> </ol> </div> Choice and achievements https://lowbrowculture.com/post/rise-of-the-tomb-raider/ Mon, 21 Nov 2016 10:52:12 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/rise-of-the-tomb-raider/ <p>I&rsquo;ll make a bet with you: you give me a game that presents the player with a quote-unquote &ldquo;moral choice&rdquo; &ndash; who you fuck/marry/kill &ndash; and I&rsquo;ll bet you cash money that there&rsquo;s a trophy or an achievement for <em>at least one</em> of your choices.</p> <p>Games like <em>Mass Effect</em> (the classic whipping boy for “choice” in games) have a black and white sense of morality. You’re either a saint to everyone you meet or you’re a complete asshole. These games have achievements for playing exclusively in one way or the other, which just encourages the player to <a href="http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=min-max">min-max</a> their moral compass and not necessarily make the decisions they actually want to.</p> <p>This is what I loved about the recent <em>Rise of the Tomb Raider</em>. The bad guy is a total dick to your character throughout the game, so when you finally beat him (spoiler alert: you beat the baddie at the end of the game), you&rsquo;re given the choice to either walk away and leave him to die or walk up to him and straight-up merc that prick.</p> <p>By the time I reached this part of the game and I had to decide what to do, I followed my typical first instinct in these situations. I paused the game, then went online to find out if there was a hidden trophy for either decision, because if so, <em>that’s the choice I’d make</em>. Games had conditioned me to expect my choice to be rewarded, one way or the other. &ldquo;Ding! You took the moral high ground, here&rsquo;s a trophy!&rdquo;</p> <p>With the final bad guy in <em>Rise of the Tomb Raider</em>, there&rsquo;s no trophy. No extrinsic reward telling you that you did a good job. So, unusually for a game in 2016, you&rsquo;re free to do whatever feels right for <em>you</em>.</p> <p>And that’s so refreshing.</p> A Platform for Trolls https://lowbrowculture.com/post/platform-for-trolls/ Tue, 15 Nov 2016 16:05:31 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/platform-for-trolls/ <p>Last Friday, Ireland’s national broadcaster, RTÉ, <a href="http://www.irishexaminer.com/ireland/fury-as-katie-hopkins-to-appear-on-late-late-show-430009.html">invited professional troll Katy Hopkins to be a guest on its flagship light entertainment show</a>, The Late Late Show.</p> <p>Although it’s subsidised by license fees, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20170517103622/http://www.rte.ie/annualreport/PDF/Financial_Review.pdf">RTÉ gets almost half its funding from advertising</a>. Meaning its revenue is directly affected by the number of viewers it gets.</p> <p>And this is how we end up with people like Katy Hopkins on the Late Late Show. Someone that no-one wanted to see, no-one wanted to listen to, someone whose appearance drew an enormous 1,300 complaints. She ends up on their prime time chat show because <em>it got people talking</em>.</p> <p>Reasonable opinions don’t go viral. People don’t tweet <em>en masse</em> when a guest on a TV show says something sensible.</p> <p>Sensible people — people who care about things like acceptance and inclusion — were complaining about Katy Hopkins being on the show. They talked about how they weren’t going to watch the show, and everyone inside the same echo chamber of opinions repeated the same thing, over and over again.</p> <p>Meanwhile, the people who were insulated from the uproar, the people who don’t know who Katy is (or worse, the people that agree with her) just watched the show anyway. Along with, I&rsquo;ll bet, a lot of the people who said they wouldn&rsquo;t. And then come the complaints to RTÉ and the cycle continues.</p> <p>On a similar note, Mark Zuckerberg released a statement last week <a href="#">denying that fake news stories on Facebook had any impact on the US election</a>. A site that relies on advertising revenue saying that content on that site can&rsquo;t influence people? Bullshit, right?</p> <p>Well, <a href="https://www.buzzfeed.com/sheerafrenkel/renegade-facebook-employees-form-task-force-to-battle-fake-n">if the group in Facebook working to fight back against these fake news stories</a>, it’s totally bullshit. Quoting one anonymous Facebooker “to highlight fake news articles in the news feed, to promote them so they get millions of shares by people who think they are real, that’s not something we should allow to happen. Facebook is getting played by people using us to spread their bullshit.”</p> <p>In chasing controversy — for views, clicks or whatever — media outlets like RTÉ, Facebook and Twitter are <em>directly responsible</em> for a lowering of the standard of general discourse. They’re normalising hatred and intolerance. They give a platform to trolls because it’s profitable <em>for them</em>, and they ignore the wider social impact. And I don’t think that’s good enough any more.</p> <p>I don’t really a solution for any of this. I’ve just been feeling really demoralized for the last week and wanted to get this off my chest. So, in lieu of a conclusion, here’s a photo of Christoph Waltz eating a hamburger to cheer us all up.</p> <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/5649d9acc6fb0.jpg" alt=""></p> <p><strong>Update 20161130:</strong> Gizmodo recently ran an article about <a href="http://gizmodo.com/reddit-is-tearing-itself-apart-1789406294">Reddit tearing itself apart</a>. tl;dr the /r/The_Donald subreddit is driving lots of pro-Trump engagement (in all its hate-spreading glory) while driving other traffic away and alienating moderators.</p> An abandoned US satellite has started transmitting again → https://www.thevintagenews.com/2016/10/31/abandoned-in-space-in-1967-a-us-satellite-has-started-transmitting-again/ Wed, 02 Nov 2016 10:48:24 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/abandoned-satellite-transmits-again/ <p>I&rsquo;m filing this one under &ldquo;creepy shit that would make a great setup for a film&rdquo;.</p> BMW Films: The Escape https://lowbrowculture.com/video/bmw-films-the-escape/ Tue, 25 Oct 2016 10:25:24 +0100 https://lowbrowculture.com/video/bmw-films-the-escape/ <p>In 2001, BMW hired a bunch of <em>amazing</em> directors like John Frankenheimer and Tony Scott to create some short films for them. Branded content. The two common threads in each film were the make of car (obviously) and Clive Owen as &ldquo;The Driver&rdquo;</p> <p>Fifteen years later, we&rsquo;ve got a new one. This time it&rsquo;s been directed by <em>District 9</em>&rsquo;s Neill Blomkamp and starring Dakota Fanning and Jon Bernthal.</p> <div class="embed video-player"> <iframe class="youtube-player" type="text/html" width="640" height="385" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/jzUFCQ-P1Zg" allowfullscreen frameborder="0"> </iframe> </div> <p>In case you missed it, here&rsquo;s Tony Scott&rsquo;s one from the original series, starring Gary Oldman as the Devil. It&rsquo;s mid-career Tony Scott in all his most bonkers.</p> <div class="embed video-player"> <iframe class="youtube-player" type="text/html" width="640" height="385" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/IayM-DpUm5w" allowfullscreen frameborder="0"> </iframe> </div> Joseph Gordon-Levitt Needs to Quit It With the Accents → https://theringer.com/joseph-gordon-levitt-snowden-accents-6d8f27228ea4#.xt5qj3hmq Tue, 20 Sep 2016 09:59:26 +0100 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/joseph-gordon-levitt-accents/ <p>The Ringer nails it:</p> <blockquote> <p>Here is an abridged list of things that Joseph Gordon-Levitt almost, but not quite, sounds like in Oliver Stone’s <em>Snowden</em>, out last week:</p> <ul> <li>Three kids stacked on top of each other inside of a trench coat</li> <li>The moment in a 2000s comedy when the third male lead realizes he’s been shot with a tranquilizer gun</li> <li>A prank caller whose heart just isn’t in it</li> <li>Someone Shailene Woodley would waste her early 20s on</li> <li>A short story where an old frog teaches a young frog how to build a boat, and then dies</li> <li>An outtake from a YouTube review of the iPhone voice changer app</li> <li>Edward Snowden</li> </ul> </blockquote> Ten Bullets https://lowbrowculture.com/video/ten-bullets/ Wed, 31 Aug 2016 10:29:13 +0100 https://lowbrowculture.com/video/ten-bullets/ <div class="standard"> <iframe src="https://player.vimeo.com/video/34901903" title="vimeo video" webkitallowfullscreen mozallowfullscreen allowfullscreen></iframe> </div> <p>I have a bit of an obsession with Casey Neistat. Or rather, I&rsquo;m obssessed with Casey Neistat&rsquo;s <em>process</em>. He&rsquo;s messy but organised, chaotic but meticulous. Watching this video made in 2010 about the 10 rules for Tom Sachs&rsquo; studio (Casey Neistat was one of Tom Sachs&rsquo; studio assistant), you can really see where he got a lot of his ideas.</p> What's Making me Happy - Week of August 22nd https://lowbrowculture.com/post/making-me-happy-aug-22/ Mon, 22 Aug 2016 07:28:04 +0100 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/making-me-happy-aug-22/ <h2 id="these-mysterious-symbols-have-been-in-19-video-games-and-no-one-knows-whyhttpswwwvicecomen_usarticleyvw3kjthese-mysterious-symbols-have-been-in-19-video-games-and-no-one-knows-why"><a href="https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/yvw3kj/these-mysterious-symbols-have-been-in-19-video-games-and-no-one-knows-why">These Mysterious Symbols Have Been in 19 Video Games and No One Knows Why</a></h2> <p>A strange sigil has been cropping up in (mostly indie) games and, thanks to some amazing detective work on the part of some redditors, it appears to be pointing to some kind of ARG. Is this <a href="https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/475057068/frog-fractions-2">Frog Fractions 2</a>? Is lowbrowculture.com Frog Fractions 2? If you want to get deeper down the rabbit hole of this, I can recommend the <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedetectives/">/r/gamedetectives</a> subreddit which consumed a lot of my productivity last week, especially their work on <a href="http://wiki.gamedetectives.net/index.php?title=Sombra_ARG">Overwatch&rsquo;s apparent &ldquo;Sombra ARG&rdquo;</a>, where it&rsquo;s perfectly reasonable to take a random line of source code from a web page, run it through a Vigenére cipher (using the passphrase gained from a previous bit of detective work) and then diff&rsquo;ing the resulting &ldquo;datamoshed&rdquo; image with an original image to get even more clues. I love this stuff. (Incidentally, this is the second week in a row an article from Patrick Klepek has been making me happy. He&rsquo;s doing amazing work at Vice.)</p> <h2 id="fake-human-sacrifice-filmed-at-cern-with-pranking-scientists-suspectedhttpswwwtheguardiancomscience2016aug18fake-human-sacrifice-filmed-at-cern-with-pranking-scientists-suspected"><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/science/2016/aug/18/fake-human-sacrifice-filmed-at-cern-with-pranking-scientists-suspected">Fake human sacrifice filmed at Cern, with pranking scientists suspected</a></h2> <p>Let&rsquo;s just take a look at the lede to this story:</p> <blockquote> <p>Spokeswoman at high temple of particle physics suggests ‘scientific users’ of the Geneva facility ‘let their humour go too far’ with staging of occult rite</p> </blockquote> <p>Holy shit. Something about the phrase &ldquo;pranking scientists suspected&rdquo; doesn&rsquo;t fill me with confidence.</p> <h2 id="disneys-practical-guide-to-path-tracing">Disney&rsquo;s Practical Guide to Path Tracing</h2> <div class="embed video-player"> <iframe class="youtube-player" type="text/html" width="640" height="385" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/frLwRLS_ZR0" allowfullscreen frameborder="0"> </iframe> </div> <p>Walt Disney Animation studios have put up a primer on a super-technical high-tech subject presented as if it was a 1950s documentary. It&rsquo;s really informative and really charming. See also <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z4e9i0sCX7c">Disney&rsquo;s Practical Guide to Snow Simulation</a>.</p> <h2 id="how-much-faster-would-it-be-to-render-toy-story-in-2011-compared-to-how-long-it-took-in-1995httpswwwquoracomhow-much-faster-would-it-be-to-render-toy-story-in-2011-compared-to-how-long-it-took-in-1995"><a href="https://www.quora.com/How-much-faster-would-it-be-to-render-Toy-Story-in-2011-compared-to-how-long-it-took-in-1995">How much faster would it be to render Toy Story in 2011 compared to how long it took in 1995?</a></h2> <p>Speaking of Pixar, Quora has some real gems hidden away deep in its belly. Like this fascinating 2011 answer from Craig Good, Pixar boffin, about the render times for the original cinema release of <em>Toy Story</em> vs the 2010 remaster.</p> <h2 id="all-mapped-outhttppopbitchcomhome20160814all-mapped-out"><a href="http://popbitch.com/home/2016/08/14/all-mapped-out/">All Mapped Out</a></h2> <p>Popbitch goes <em>deep</em> into the Yeah Yeah Yeah&rsquo;s <em>Maps</em>, digging into the music theory behind what makes it so unique and why it turns up under so many pop songs. Why did the Black Eyed Peas sample the intro? Let&rsquo;s take a look at the drum tab to find out, shall we?</p> What's Making me Happy - Week of August 15th https://lowbrowculture.com/post/making-me-happy-aug-15/ Mon, 15 Aug 2016 09:33:06 +0100 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/making-me-happy-aug-15/ <h2 id="spaceplanhttpjhollandscoukspaceplan-game"><a href="http://jhollands.co.uk/spaceplan/">Spaceplan</a> (game)</h2> <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/spaceplan.png" alt="Spaceplan"></p> <p>I&rsquo;ve got a real soft spot for &lsquo;clicker&rsquo; games. Things like <a href="http://orteil.dashnet.org/cookieclicker/">Cookie Clicker</a> and <a href="http://candies.aniwey.net/">Candy Box</a> just hoover up my productivity (honestly, I went to look up the URLs for these and I just lost 20 minutes to Cookie Clicker again). Spaceplan does nothing new with the formula, but it&rsquo;s very slickly done and, unlike most other games of the genre, this one actually has a well-written story.</p> <h2 id="no-mans-sky-game">No Man&rsquo;s Sky (game)</h2> <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/no-mans-sky.jpg" alt="No Man&rsquo;s Sky"></p> <p>No Man&rsquo;s Sky is a peaceful, colourful slice of sci-fi. When people ask me what it&rsquo;s like, I say it&rsquo;s very Minecrafty. You travel to galaxies to collect resources that allow you to travel to more galaxies and collect more resources. And you do this again and again until you&rsquo;ve explored the universe. The act of doing this is so serene and calming, it&rsquo;s a lovely refresher from the usual hyperkinetic games that come out this time of year. Also, there&rsquo;s a lovely story doing the rounds of people <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20160918102007/http://www.vice.com/en_uk/read/people-are-using-no-mans-sky-to-memorialize-lost-relatives">naming the planets they find after dead relatives</a> as a way to remember them. Pull-quote: &ldquo;It&rsquo;s one of 18 quintillion planets now and no one else may ever find it but I know it&rsquo;s there and it has her name on it. That&rsquo;s good enough for me.&rdquo;</p> <h2 id="hikea-video">Hikea (video)</h2> <p>Web series where people take drugs assemble Ikea furniture. In the first episode, Giancarlo and Nicole take acid and build a chest of drawers and it&rsquo;s actually super sweet.</p> <div class="embed video-player"> <iframe class="youtube-player" type="text/html" width="640" height="385" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/856TBCokG3U" allowfullscreen frameborder="0"> </iframe> </div> <h2 id="a-burglars-guide-to-the-cityhttpswwwamazoncoukburglars-guide-city-geoff-manaughdp0374117268refsr_1_1ieutf8qid1471261210sr8-1-book"><a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Burglars-Guide-City-Geoff-Manaugh/dp/0374117268/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1471261210&amp;sr=8-1">A Burglar&rsquo;s Guide to the City</a> (book)</h2> <p>Geoff Manaugh (BLDGBLOG) is one of my favourite writers. In his book A Burglar&rsquo;s Guide to the City, he talks about how burglars have used architecture to plan their robberies. If, like me, your favourite parts of heist films like <em>Ocean&rsquo;s Eleven</em> are the bits where they construct elaborate recreations of the places they&rsquo;re about to rob, then this book is right up your street.</p> <h2 id="phone-sex-operatorshttpwwwthemorningnewsorggalleryphone-sex-operators-article"><a href="http://www.themorningnews.org/gallery/phone-sex-operators">Phone Sex Operators</a> (article)</h2> <p>A series of portraits of the people on the other end of phone sex lines. Their stories are fascinating</p> <blockquote> <p>“My first night was on a Saturday at midnight. It was a gentleman who I believe called himself Bob. He told me about his first experience with a glory hole. He explained that he had no one he felt comfortable telling this to, and I felt a strange intimacy between us, though it was rooted in a fantasy. I think it’s easier to release repressed desires to a non-judgmental, fictional person, because there are no consequences in the outside world.”</p> </blockquote> Trailer for Rogue One https://lowbrowculture.com/video/star-wars-rogue-one/ Fri, 12 Aug 2016 07:12:43 +0100 https://lowbrowculture.com/video/star-wars-rogue-one/ <div class="embed video-player"> <iframe class="youtube-player" type="text/html" width="640" height="385" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/frdj1zb9sMY" allowfullscreen frameborder="0"> </iframe> </div> <p>No more <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wji-BZ0oCwg">teaser trailers</a> or <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2BDyeARyIkw">trailer teases</a>, this is the real thing. And here&rsquo;s my HOT TAKE, basically my thoughts as they happened watching the trailer:</p> <ol> <li>Forrest Whitaker doing a weird breathy accent is <em>super</em> distracting. Is that supposed to be a British accent?</li> <li>Oh God, what if they try to make Ben Mendelsohn do a British accent?</li> <li>This looks every inch a Gareth Edwards film.</li> <li>It looks like they&rsquo;re trying to set up K-2SO as the comic relief. If those are the best laughs they could pick out for the trailer, oh dear.</li> <li>Felicity Jones seems like she&rsquo;s stuck in the <em>Tomb Raider</em> school of action acting.</li> </ol> <p>Overall, I&rsquo;m cautiously optimistic about this one. It <em>looks</em> great, really nailing the 70s aesthetic with a cinéma vérité feel. But Edwards&rsquo; last film, <em>Godzilla</em>, was let down by its characters and nothing in this trailer suggests things have improved.</p> What's Making Me Happy - Week of August 1st https://lowbrowculture.com/post/making-me-happy-jul-25/ Mon, 01 Aug 2016 10:19:45 +0100 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/making-me-happy-jul-25/ <p>In an effort to <em>push out the jive</em> and <em>bring in the love</em>, I&rsquo;m going to more of an effort to talk about the things that are bringing me joy.</p> <h2 id="stranger-things">Stranger Things</h2> <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/Stranger-Things-poster-800.jpg" alt="Stranger Things"></p> <p>It never quite shakes off its influences (basically all of Spielberg&rsquo;s early 80s films - <em>Jaws</em>, <em>E.T.</em>, <em>Close Encounters</em> and <em>Poltergeist</em>), but as a piece of summer fluff, <em>Stranger Things</em> was surprisingly entertaining. It&rsquo;s less cliffhanger-y than the other Netflix original shows, but it&rsquo;s managed to achieve a pretty compelling <em>vibe</em> that draws you back for more. I&rsquo;m interested to see what they do for season 2 now that they&rsquo;ve basically tapped the 80s Spielberg well dry.</p> <h2 id="sleeping-giants-by-sylvain-neuvelhttpswwwamazoncomgpproductb015f0jsts"><a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B015F0JSTS/">Sleeping Giants by Sylvain Neuvel</a></h2> <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/sleeping_giants.jpg" alt="Sleeping Giants"></p> <p><em>Sleeping Giants</em> is a big dopey sci-fi thriller about the discovery of huge pieces of a statue from an ancient civilisation. And the whole thing is told in an epistolary manner, where each chapter is the transcript of an interview. So the information is drip-fed to the reader, increasing the tension. It&rsquo;s not going to win any literary awards, but it&rsquo;s <em>so</em> fast-paced and cinematic, it&rsquo;s a great summer read.</p> <h2 id="brie-larson-as-captain-marvel">Brie Larson as Captain Marvel</h2> <blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Call me Captain Marvel. <a href="https://t.co/IgqRIb9ijM">pic.twitter.com/IgqRIb9ijM</a></p>&mdash; Brie Larson (@brielarson) <a href="https://twitter.com/brielarson/status/757042695537774592?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 24, 2016</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script> <p>A lot of great news came out of Comic Con. We got a rad <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HSzx-zryEgM">Doctor Strange trailer</a>, a pretty decent <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5lGoQhFb4NM">Wonder Woman trailer</a>. But my absolute favourite news so far has been the announcement that Brie Larson will be playing Carol Danvers in the <em>Captain Marvel</em> film. This is some <em>perfect</em> casting.</p> <h2 id="films-youd-love-your-kids-to-see">Films You&rsquo;d Love Your Kids to See</h2> <p>The Lighthouse Cinema here in Dublin are running a <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20160816160213/http://www.lighthousecinema.ie/newsarticle.php?sec=NEWS&amp;_aid=8066">&ldquo;Films you&rsquo;d love your kids to see&rdquo; season</a>. Now, I question the logic of programming for kids and scheduling shows way too late for kids to actually attend. Still, I&rsquo;m not going to turn up an opportunity to see <em>The Goonies</em> in the cinema.</p> <h2 id="preacher">Preacher</h2> <p>If, four months ago, you had asked me about my expectations for AMC&rsquo;s adaptation of <em>Preacher</em>, I would have probably given you the vocal equivalent of the poop emoji. But the finale this week capped what turned out to be an unexpectedly great season of an unexpectedly great show. It&rsquo;s not a straight one-for-one adaptation of the comic, but they absolutely nailed the <em>tone</em> of the books. Definitely worth checking out.</p> Hello Hugo https://lowbrowculture.com/post/hello-hugo/ Tue, 19 Jul 2016 09:38:43 +0100 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/hello-hugo/ <p>Last week, I began the process of moving this site from <a href="http://jekyllrb.com/">Jekyll</a> to <a href="http://gohugo.io/">Hugo</a>. Jekyll is great. Really great, actually. It was my first real experiment with static sites and it was really fun and taught me a lot. But I&rsquo;ve been starting to feel its limits. I pumped in everything from the past iterations of my blog, through Wordpress and Tumblr, leaving me with over 1,400 posts. So building the site with Jekyll each time I wanted to update it was slowwwww. Jekyll&rsquo;s other big draw &ndash; its GitHub integration is amazing &ndash; is <em>great</em> if you&rsquo;re hosting your site there. But I&rsquo;m not. I&rsquo;m self-hosting. So I started looking at Hugo.</p> <p>I also had a look at <a href="https://middlemanapp.com/">Middleman</a>, which has some impressive names using it, but was just a deeply unpleasant experience as an end-user<sup id="fnref:1"><a href="#fn:1" class="footnote-ref" role="doc-noteref">1</a></sup>.</p> <p>So for funtimes, I wanted to see how long it would take a fresh, vanilla install of the three most popular static site generators &ndash; Jekyll, Middleman and Hugo &ndash; to render the 1,400+ individual markdown files that make up this blog.</p> <p><strong>Jekyll</strong><br> <code>35.35 real 31.04 user 2.50 sys</code></p> <p><strong>middleman</strong><br> <code>22.47 real 30.61 user 3.97 sys</code></p> <p><strong>hugo</strong><br> <code>8.12 real 8.96 user 1.45 sys</code></p> <p>It&rsquo;s hard to argue with this kind of performance improvement, but what sealed the deal was the fact they include a built-in <a href="http://gohugo.io/commands/hugo_import_jekyll/"><code>hugo import jekyll</code></a> command that can get you started migrating your site across. I had my entire site migrated across in less than an hour.</p> <div class="footnotes" role="doc-endnotes"> <hr> <ol> <li id="fn:1"> <p>Middleman feels as if it&rsquo;s been written for robots and not humans. To build your site in Jekyll, you type <code>jekyll build</code>, which is easy to remember. To build it in Hugo, you just type <code>hugo</code>, which is almost impossible to forget. To build your site in MM, you type <code>bundle exec middleman build</code>, which yes, is easy enough to remember after you&rsquo;ve done it a couple of times but my <em>God</em>, it&rsquo;s so clunky and basically tells you everything you need to know about what it&rsquo;s like to use Middleman.&#160;<a href="#fnref:1" class="footnote-backref" role="doc-backlink">&#x21a9;&#xfe0e;</a></p> </li> </ol> </div> pico 8 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/pico-8/ Sun, 03 Jul 2016 21:46:32 +0100 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/pico-8/ <p>Recently, I&rsquo;ve fallen in love with <a href="http://www.lexaloffle.com/pico-8.php">Pico-8</a>. It has completely replaced <a href="https://processing.org/">Processing</a> as my go-to tool for creating toys in code. If you&rsquo;re of the same vintage as me (i.e. you lived through the 8-bit era and your year of birth seems <em>distressingly</em> far down web forms), then you might get a kick out of it too. Here are some of the reasons I like it so much.</p> <h2 id="1-it-has-everything-you-need">1. It has everything you need</h2> <p>It&rsquo;s got a built-in editors for code, sound effects, music and levels. You can construct an entire game without ever leaving the application.</p> <h2 id="2-its-web-aware">2. It&rsquo;s web-aware</h2> <p>With the touch of a button<sup id="fnref:1"><a href="#fn:1" class="footnote-ref" role="doc-noteref">1</a></sup>, you can generate a gif of your program as it&rsquo;s running. A small, perfectly-sized gif that&rsquo;s perfect for tweeting. Speaking of which&hellip;</p> <h2 id="3--140-characters-to-do-cool-things">3. &lt; 140 characters to do cool things</h2> <p>The <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%23pico8&amp;src=tyah">#pico8 hashtag on Twitter</a> has some great examples of the things people are doing with Pico-8. In less than 140 characters, you can have an entire program.</p> <h2 id="4-it-reminds-me-of-the-good-old-days">4. It reminds me of the good old days</h2> <p>I still remember sitting in front of a Commodore 64 for hours and typing out a program from <a href="https://archive.org/details/commodoreuser-magazine">Commodore User Magazine</a>. It was a great way of learning a language and, looking back I realise, a great way of teaching patience. Well, the <a href="https://sectordub.itch.io/pico-8-fanzine-1">Pico-8 Fanzine</a> also has a</p> <div class="footnotes" role="doc-endnotes"> <hr> <ol> <li id="fn:1"> <p>or well, two. One to start the recording, one to stop it.&#160;<a href="#fnref:1" class="footnote-backref" role="doc-backlink">&#x21a9;&#xfe0e;</a></p> </li> </ol> </div> Versioning, Licensing, and Sketch 4.0 → https://blog.sketchapp.com/versioning-licensing-and-sketch-4-0-8ad98783e9ba#.gp2ylvv1q Thu, 09 Jun 2016 11:30:46 +0100 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/versioning-licensing-and-sketch-4-0/ <p>It seems like we&rsquo;re moving to the world where <a href="http://daringfireball.net/2016/06/app_store_subscription_uncertainty">app subscription models</a> are the norm and I&rsquo;m worried about what this means for the future of some of my favourite apps. In December, YNAB announced it was <a href="https://www.youneedabudget.com/blog/post/the-new-ynab-is-here">moving to a web-based, subscription model</a>. In January, it was forced to <a href="https://www.youneedabudget.com/blog/post/launch-update-day-five-your-frequently-asked-questions-answered">change its strategy a little</a> in the face of a severely negative response.</p> <p>But the Sketch model seems like a pretty great compromise. Buy a license and you&rsquo;ll receive a year&rsquo;s worth of free upgrades. After that, no more upgrades (besides bug-fix upgrades) but your software will <em>continue to work</em>. This seems like a really clever and consumer-friendly way of addressing this problem.</p> The Trailers for Ghostbusters (2016) and the Art of Editing Comedy → https://medium.com/@tonyszhou/the-trailers-for-ghostbusters-2016-and-the-art-of-editing-comedy-74a1433c3221#.wpqri0491 Fri, 27 May 2016 13:23:55 +0100 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/the-trailers-for-ghostbusters-2016-and-the-art-of-editing-comedy/ <p>Tony Zhou (of the excellent <a href="https://vimeo.com/channels/everyframeapainting">Every Frame a Painting</a>) takes a look at the difference between the US and UK trailers for the new Ghostbusters and how a few frames can make all the difference between a joke that hits and a joke that lands.</p> Interview With Lacey Noonan → http://www.boston.com/sports/new-england-patriots/2015/01/06/i-control-the-boners-a-qa-with-gronk-erotica-author-lacey-noonan Tue, 24 May 2016 17:08:09 +0100 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/interview-with-lacey-noonan/ <p>Boston.com&rsquo;s interview with Lacey Noonan, self-publishing superstar and author of niche erotica like <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Friends-Sasquatch-Taking-Because-Millennium-ebook/dp/B00MG2JEKM">I Don&rsquo;t Care If My Best Friend&rsquo;s Mom is a Sasquatch, She&rsquo;s Hot and I&rsquo;m Taking a Shower With Her Because It&rsquo;s the New Millennium</a> and its sequel <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Sasquatch-Exploding-Nothing-Rap-Rock-Millennium-ebook/dp/B01853GKWU/ref=pd_sim_351_1?ie=UTF8&amp;dpID=51S%2BQottb2L&amp;dpSrc=sims&amp;preST=_OU01_AC_UL480_SR300%2C480_&amp;refRID=AGH2WKMDAJ88DR8B1YAM">I Don&rsquo;t Care if My Sasquatch Lover Says the World is Exploding, She&rsquo;s Hot But I Play Bass and There&rsquo;s Nothing Hotter Right Now Than Rap-Rock Because It&rsquo;s the New Millennium</a>.</p> <blockquote> <p><strong>BDC</strong>: Do your friends and family know you write these novels, or is it private? You mention your husband in your bio, Does he know?</p> <p><strong>Lacey</strong>: My husband knows. Some friends know. That’s about it. He actually helped with some of the finer football details in the Gronkalish book. But I am the heat commander. I control the boners.</p> </blockquote> <p>This lady is <em>amazing</em>.</p> Write a tune. Fuckin' start with that https://lowbrowculture.com/video/write-a-tune/ Sat, 21 May 2016 16:23:43 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/video/write-a-tune/ <div class="embed video-player"> <iframe class="youtube-player" type="text/html" width="640" height="385" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/eo98wLez8dQ" allowfullscreen frameborder="0"> </iframe> </div> <p>I&rsquo;ve said it before, but Noel Gallagher gives the <em>best</em> interviews.</p> A Brief History of John Baldessari https://lowbrowculture.com/video/a-brief-history-of-john-baldessari/ Fri, 08 Apr 2016 14:24:29 +0100 https://lowbrowculture.com/video/a-brief-history-of-john-baldessari/ <div class="embed video-player"> <iframe class="youtube-player" type="text/html" width="640" height="385" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/eU7V4GyEuXA" allowfullscreen frameborder="0"> </iframe> </div> <p>Four little words that guarantee I&rsquo;ll drop whatever I&rsquo;m doing to make time for: &ldquo;narrated by Tom Waits&rdquo;.</p> <p>John Baldessari was Tumblr before the internet was ever a thing, and this is a <em>terrific</em> introduction.</p> <p>Drop whatever you&rsquo;re doing and make time for this.</p> Ta-Nehisi Coates on Writing https://lowbrowculture.com/video/ta-nehisi-coates-on-writing/ Fri, 01 Apr 2016 14:18:02 +0100 https://lowbrowculture.com/video/ta-nehisi-coates-on-writing/ <div class="embed video-player"> <iframe class="youtube-player" type="text/html" width="640" height="385" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/6voLZDYgPzY" allowfullscreen frameborder="0"> </iframe> </div> <p>This is <em>so good</em>. And I feel like a lot of what Ta-Nehisi Coates says in this video is applicable to <em>any</em> sort of creative work.</p> Let's Play: The Shining → http://www.pippinbarr.com/games/letsplaytheshining/ Mon, 07 Mar 2016 09:48:39 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/lets-play-the-shining/ <p>Pippin Barr&rsquo;s note-perfect recreation of <em>The Shining</em> as an 8-bit game.</p> Mattel Update the ThingMaker as a 3D Printer → http://www.theverge.com/2016/2/15/10995090/mattel-childrens-3d-printer-thingmaker Tue, 16 Feb 2016 11:59:16 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/mattel-update-the-thingmaker-as-a-3d-printer/ <p>Cheap, easy to use, surprisingly decent resolution. I think I&rsquo;m going to be picking one up myself. For my kid, of course.</p> Wyclef Jean Does an AMA, Gets Destroyed → https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/45m1hl/i_am_3x_grammy_awardwinning/ Mon, 15 Feb 2016 11:02:10 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/wyclef-jean-does-an-ama-gets-destroyed/ <p>I&rsquo;ve never seen an AMA go so badly that the celebrity answered nothing and deleted their reddit account. Example question:</p> <blockquote> <p>Are you the same guy that started a charity for his country then stole that money?</p> </blockquote> The Art of the Witness → http://www.artofluis.com/3d-work/the-art-of-the-witness/ Tue, 09 Feb 2016 17:08:09 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/the-art-of-the-witness/ <p><em>The Witness</em> is a frustrating game. Not just because the puzzles are hard, but because the game demands so much of your time (I&rsquo;ve spent <em>hours</em> on individual puzzles) and because the world hints at so much but appears to deliver (from where I&rsquo;m standing, at least) so little apart from more puzzles for you to bash your head against. So it&rsquo;s nice to step back and just appreciate the beauty of the world they created.</p> Best Games I Played in 2015 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/best-games-i-played-in-2015/ Thu, 31 Dec 2015 00:00:00 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/best-games-i-played-in-2015/ <p>2015 is the year that open-world games <em>broke</em> me. Remember a few years ago, when everyone was complaining about &ldquo;shooter fatigue&rdquo; because it seemed like every game we played was the same thing where you shot at things and the only thing that changed were the things that you shot at? That&rsquo;s how I&rsquo;m feeling about open-world games right now. They&rsquo;re great if you want to spend days and days in the world of a game, but that just sounds like <em>work</em> to me. Personally, I&rsquo;d prefer a short, authored experience. Anyway, this explains why there are some high-profile games that aren&rsquo;t on this list<sup id="fnref:1"><a href="#fn:1" class="footnote-ref" role="doc-noteref">1</a></sup> - they were probably open-world games that just didn&rsquo;t get their teeth into me.</p> <h2 id="rocket-league">Rocket League</h2> <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2015/games/rocketleague.jpg" alt="Rocket League"></p> <p>This is an unranked list, but if I was going to rank it, <em>Rocket League</em> would be the clear winner. It&rsquo;s a football game, you hit the ball into the opponent&rsquo;s net. But instead of controlling a player, you&rsquo;re driving a car. A car with a rocket on the back of it. It sounds like a joke, right? Well, <em>Rocket League</em> was the most fun I&rsquo;ve had in any video game all year. The local multiplayer is great fun, screaming laughing with your pals as one of you pulls off some ridiculous goal. Which is great by itself, but it&rsquo;s also got a real depth to it. Watch some high-level videos and it&rsquo;s like a whole different game. What I love most is that it&rsquo;s genuinely the best football game I&rsquo;ve played. All the other games, like <em>FIFA</em>, are trying to recreate the experience of <em>watching</em> football. <em>Rocket League</em> is recreating the experience of <em>playing</em> football. Favourite game of 2015.</p> <h2 id="her-story">Her Story</h2> <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2015/games/herstory.jpg" alt="Her Story"></p> <p>This is only the second ever video game (after <em>Silent Hill 2</em>) that my wife has ever played to completion. FMV is back!</p> <h2 id="the-witcher-3">The Witcher 3</h2> <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2015/games/thewitcher3.jpg" alt="The Witcher 3"></p> <p>Okay, so I realise it was only just a minute ago that I was complaining about open-world games. And here&rsquo;s an open-world game on my list. What the hell, John? Listen, my main complaint with open-world games is that it&rsquo;s a way for the developers to artificially stretch out a game, to make it seem bigger than it actually is. And they can use it to hide a lot of the cruft in their actual narrative writing, going &ldquo;ooh, but isn&rsquo;t the <em>environmental</em> storytelling so good?&rdquo; <em>The Witcher 3</em> had actually great writing underpinning it. It&rsquo;s dense, but accessible. There are quests here that I&rsquo;m still thinking about, months after I put the game down. The open-world nature of it was incidental to the actual game. I haven&rsquo;t enjoyed being in a game&rsquo;s world this much since <em>Red Dead Redemption</em>.</p> <h2 id="panoramical">Panoramical</h2> <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2015/games/panoramical.jpg" alt="Panoramical"></p> <p>It seems like every year I make these lists, there&rsquo;s at one entry that could be accused of not really being a game. This year it&rsquo;s <em>Panoramical</em>. And sure, it&rsquo;s not very game-like. It&rsquo;s more like a peaceful, meditative toy. There&rsquo;s no win-state to the game. You&rsquo;re just presented with a series of landscapes with different visual and audio tracks, and you control the levels of these tracks. That&rsquo;s it. That&rsquo;s the whole game. Play away. You finish when you&rsquo;ve had enough. There&rsquo;s some real beauty here, if you&rsquo;re into that kind of thing. I really am.</p> <h2 id="the-beginners-guide">The Beginner&rsquo;s Guide</h2> <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2015/games/beginnersguide.png" alt="The Beginner&rsquo;s Guide"></p> <p>For the first hour or so of <em>The Beginner&rsquo;s Guide</em>, I was in awe at the inventiveness of the game. It seemed like creator Davey Wreden was just showing off. At the very end of the game, there&rsquo;s a revelation. And this completely upended everything I&rsquo;d just experienced. I immediately played through it again and, even though it was the exact same content, I had a totally different experience. That someone can do something ambitious like this and just fucking <em>nail it</em> so hard is pretty impressive. When you know the back-story and realise this game is actually about something so deeply personal? Yeah, maybe he <em>is</em> showing off.</p> <h2 id="sunless-sea">Sunless Sea</h2> <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2015/games/sunlesssea.jpg" alt="Sunless Sea"></p> <p>Even though the two are nothing alike, playing <em>Sunless Sea</em> triggers the same part of my brain that is triggered when I play board games like <em>HeroQuest</em>. There&rsquo;s this wonderful, tactile feeling to the game, like you&rsquo;re playing with lovely hand-crafted miniature pieces in a world where anything can happen and there are million stories to tell. I&rsquo;ve played a few different games of <em>Sunless Sea</em> now and they&rsquo;ve always gone in different directions. I have a feeling I&rsquo;ll still be coming back to this in 2016.</p> <h2 id="super-mario-maker">Super Mario Maker</h2> <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2015/games/mariomaker.jpg" alt="Super Mario Maker"></p> <p>Okay, let&rsquo;s say you&rsquo;re not interested in making any levels yourself. And let&rsquo;s say you&rsquo;re not completely won over by the most charming presentation in any game ever. Then there&rsquo;s these three words: infinite Mario levels. You can just download other peoples&rsquo; creations and have an almost limitless supply of Mario levels for you to play and enjoy. If this <em>still</em> isn&rsquo;t enough for you, then I just don&rsquo;t know what to say to you.</p> <h2 id="star-wars-battlefront">Star Wars Battlefront</h2> <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2015/games/starwarsbattlefront.jpg" alt="Star Wars Battlefront"></p> <p>For a game that got fairly mediocre reviews, I had a fucking blast with <em>Star Wars Battlefront</em>. It&rsquo;s not trying to be the deepest game ever made. It&rsquo;s just trying to be a fast, casual, fun, and really, really ridiculously good-looking <em>Star Wars</em> game. And that&rsquo;s exactly what it is.</p> <div class="footnotes" role="doc-endnotes"> <hr> <ol> <li id="fn:1"> <p>e.g. <em>Metal Gear Solid V</em>, which I have played enough of to appreciate was a really well-made game, just not one of my favourites&#160;<a href="#fnref:1" class="footnote-backref" role="doc-backlink">&#x21a9;&#xfe0e;</a></p> </li> </ol> </div> They're Terrorists. They're Organized. They're Americans. → https://storify.com/SecretGamerGrrl/they-re-terrorists-they-re-organized-they-re-ameri Tue, 01 Dec 2015 09:43:27 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/theyre-terrorists-theyre-organized-theyre-americans/ <p>Long one, but completely worth your time. The point SecretGamerGrrl makes about the shared language of hate groups nails what I found so troubling about the recent anti-feminist posts by <a href="http://blog.dilbert.com/post/133406477506/global-gender-war">Scott Adams</a> and <a href="http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=6907">Eric S. Raymond</a>. It&rsquo;s easy to dismiss them and say that we should just expect these kinds of posts from white, cis, middle-age men, but it shows that they&rsquo;re just a hop, skip and a jump away from something <em>really</em> dangerous.</p> 'Homeland Is Racist' → http://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2015/oct/15/homeland-is-racist-artists-subversive-graffiti-tv-show?CMP=fb_gu Thu, 15 Oct 2015 09:46:48 +0100 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/homeland-is-racist/ <p>The producers of <em>Homeland</em> hired a bunch of street artists to graffiti the sets, to make it seem &lsquo;authentic&rsquo;. The artists used the opportunity to write a load of anti-Homeland slogans in Arabic and no-one noticed. Just wonderful.</p> When Amazon Dies https://lowbrowculture.com/post/when-amazon-dies/ Thu, 08 Oct 2015 21:47:45 +0100 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/when-amazon-dies/ <p>Siva Vaidhyanathan, media studies professor at the University of Virginia, talking about the worst-case scenario in an all-digital world:</p> <blockquote> <p>“Amazon has done so much to bully both readers and publishers. And yet if it were to collapse, it would cause chaos.”</p> <p>At the root of that chaos would be the immense loss of media, and the wholesale disappearance of works—not just from personal collections, but altogether. “At the start of the 22nd century, we are going to find ourselves in a situation with huge gaps in knowledge and culture. Because none of these companies will be around.”</p> </blockquote> <p>P.T., an online-only game and <a href="https://lowbrowculture.com/post/the-best-games-i-played-in-2014/">one of my favourite games of last year</a>, was removed from the PlayStation store by its publisher. You can’t download it again. If you want to play it now, your only option is to <a href="http://www.ebay.ie/sch/i.html?_odkw=playstation+PT&amp;_osacat=0&amp;_from=R40&amp;_trksid=p2045573.m570.l1313.TR0.TRC0.H0.X%22playstation+4%22+PT.TRS0&amp;_nkw=%22playstation+4%22+PT&amp;_sacat=0">buy a second-hand PlayStation 4 with the game already installed on it</a>. And once the hard drives die in these machines? That’s it, no-one will ever be able to play PT again.</p> Aaron Draplin on Logo Design https://lowbrowculture.com/video/aaron-draplin-on-logo-design/ Thu, 08 Oct 2015 09:17:19 +0100 https://lowbrowculture.com/video/aaron-draplin-on-logo-design/ <iframe src="https://player.vimeo.com/video/113751583?color=c9ff23" width="800" height="450" frameborder="0" webkitallowfullscreen mozallowfullscreen allowfullscreen></iframe> <p>Old one, but still fantastic. Always amazing to see the process of someone who is just <em>great</em> at their job.</p> The decline of ebooks https://lowbrowculture.com/post/the-decline-of-ebooks/ Mon, 05 Oct 2015 00:00:00 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/the-decline-of-ebooks/ <p><a href="http://aeon.co/magazine/technology/why-have-digital-books-stopped-evolving/">Craig Mod has some theories</a> surrounding the apparent <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/23/business/media/the-plot-twist-e-book-sales-slip-and-print-is-far-from-dead.html?_r=0">decline in ebook sales</a>. TL;DR: he reckons it’s mostly to do with the physical experience of reading on ereaders (and let’s be clear, when we say ‘ereaders’, there’s really only one player in town, the Kindle). For me, he borders too much on the fetishisation of the physical form of the book. For example, here&rsquo;s his description of the travel guide <em>City Secrets</em></p> <blockquote> <p>Bound in rust-coloured cloth, rough against the skin, with jet-black foil‑stamped lettering and a small key on the cover, City Secrets was skinny. The trim size was non‑standard, much taller than wide. It bent easily, fit handily into my jacket pocket, and was made with cover boards that had a reassuring springy resilience. The combination of the size and the cloth cover made it feel like a travel companion – a book that could take a beating, be dragged around the world, stored for years, and returned to, again and again.</p> </blockquote> <p>It’s like Nigella-style food erotica for the lit crowd.</p> <p>But I sort of agree with some of what he’s saying. As I mentioned before (and I’ll continue to mention at any available opportunity), <a href="http://lowbrowculture.com/2015/08/22/on-reading.html">I recently — finally! — finished <em>Infinite Jest</em></a>. Now, <em>Infinite Jest</em> is a goddamn doorstop. A thousand pages of some of the densest prose you&rsquo;ll find. It should be the perfect candidate for Kindle-reading. But I read the entire thing on a physical book. I hauled that monster in and out of the city every day on my commute, even though it took up most of the space in my bag, simply because it was just a more pleasant experience than reading on the Kindle.</p> <p>The worst part is that a lot of the things that keep the Kindle from being a genuinely great reading experience (as opposed to an entirely passable one) are fairly minor. They&rsquo;re not insurmountable. They&rsquo;re mostly niggly details like shitty font options and character spacing that could most charitably be described as ‘schizophrenic’. And these issues <em>are</em> getting addressed, albeit at a glacial pace. This June, almost eight years after the first Kindle was first released and seven generations into the Kindle product line, Amazon released firmware that <a href="http://www.thebookdesigner.com/2015/06/kindle-new-bookerly-font-and-typography-features/">finally fixed its shitty hyphenation and layout engine</a>.</p> <p>So the changes are slowly coming, but Amazon’s reluctance to release any information or suggestions of where they plan to take the Kindle is baffling to me. Especially when it’s their mealticket item. Apple called the Apple TV their &ldquo;hobby&rdquo; and said nothing about its roadmap (until they finally did). Amazon seem to be treating the Kindle in the same way. Is it any wonder people are returning to books? I&rsquo;m sure they&rsquo;ll be back to the Kindle when something dramatically enhance the experience on there, but who knows how long that will be?</p> <p>Personally, there are two things I would love to see that would improve my relationship with the Kindle. First, release an updated <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_Kindle#Kindle_DX">Kindle DX</a>. You know, the bigger Kindle. The &ldquo;Kindle Pro&rdquo;. My neighbour in Rome, an editor, used to have one and it was the cadillac of readers even then. The resolution of the Kindle Voyage is finally at a print-like level, but the size of the actual screen means it’s useless for anything but imitating cheap paperbacks. A slightly larger physical screen would open the device up to so much more.</p> <p>Second, and this is a cheap, simple win - I’d love to see the Kindle display the cover of the book I’m currently reading instead of the Kindle’s shitty generic screensavers. When I read a physical book, I am greeted by its cover every time I look at it. I know the name of the author, I know the name of the book. On the Kindle, this stuff is hidden away from everyday view, so it’s possible to read a book and have no idea of its title or who wrote it. You’re cut off from a relationship with the <em>book</em> in favour of a relationship with <em>its content</em>. The cover, that singular piece of design that, let’s face it, we almost always base our initial judgement of a book on, is completely removed on the Kindle. Without it, a book is just a collection of photocopied pages held together with sticky-tape.</p> John Waters RISD Commencement Speech https://lowbrowculture.com/video/john-waters-risd-commencement-speech/ Mon, 28 Sep 2015 09:26:40 +0100 https://lowbrowculture.com/video/john-waters-risd-commencement-speech/ <div class="embed video-player"> <iframe class="youtube-player" type="text/html" width="640" height="385" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Hl05XGifKb4" allowfullscreen frameborder="0"> </iframe> </div> Judge Rules Happy Birthday is an Orphan Work → https://boingboing.net/2015/09/22/after-80-years-happy-birthday.html Wed, 23 Sep 2015 14:26:50 +0100 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/judge-rules-happy-birthday-is-public-domain/ <p>For a great summary of the whole situation regarding the copyright of Happy Birthday, check out <a href="http://www.infiniteguest.org/reasonably-sound/2015/09/hbd/">the most recent episode of the Reasonably Sound podcast</a>. Because whoa, this is huge.</p> Oysterbooks Is Shutting Down → http://blog.oysterbooks.com/ Tue, 22 Sep 2015 22:18:45 +0100 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/oysterbooks-is-shutting-down/ <blockquote> <p>As we continue on, we couldn’t be more excited about the future of ebooks and mobile reading.<br> …<br> With that, we will be taking steps to sunset the existing Oyster service over the next several months.</p> </blockquote> <p>This is a real shame. Their product (Netflix for ebooks) was pretty good, but their <a href="https://review.oysterbooks.com/">Oyster Review</a> was one of the best-curated sources of book recommendations on the internet. For proof of this, check out their list of the <a href="https://review.oysterbooks.com/p/CsJZWweDo3pnr3cFHXfu9k/100-best-books-of-the-decade-so-far">100 best books of the decade so far</a>. Can anyone suggest a replacement?</p> Camera Restricta → http://philippschmitt.com/projects/camera-restricta Wed, 16 Sep 2015 09:57:44 +0100 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/camera-restricta/ <blockquote> <p>Camera Restricta is a speculative design of a new kind of camera. It locates itself via GPS and searches online for photos that have been geotagged nearby. If the camera decides that too many photos have been taken at your location, it retracts the shutter and blocks the viewfinder. You can&rsquo;t take any more pictures here.</p> </blockquote> <p>When I go to a concert (lol, like that&rsquo;s a thing I still do) and I see hundreds of cameraphones shooting up to take a photo of the lead singer, I wonder: what&rsquo;s the point of that? There&rsquo;s nothing tying you to that photo. <em>Anyone</em> could have taken it, so why not just go into Twitter or something and grab someone else&rsquo;s photo? Maybe even someone shooting with better equipment than you?</p> <p>I don&rsquo;t think the Camera Restricta will catch on. People care too much about their fitness selfies. But I still love the idea of it.</p> An Introduction to Cult Movies → http://www.metafilter.com/118562/An-introduction-to-cult-movies Wed, 09 Sep 2015 09:41:06 +0100 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/an-introduction-to-cult-movies/ <p>Some kind soul on Metafilter has collected together all of Alex Cox and Mark Cousins&rsquo; introductions to <em>Moviedrome</em>. You could do a lot worse with your day than to spend a few hours watching these. They&rsquo;re like a complete film education in short, 10-minute burts. Warning: watching these will make you despair about the fact we don&rsquo;t have a show like this today.</p> The Importance of Donuts → http://larahogan.me/donuts/ Sat, 29 Aug 2015 10:27:33 +0100 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/the-importance-of-donuts/ <blockquote> <p>&hellip; I decided to be deliberate about marking achievements by eating one donut. Well, sometimes more than one, if it’s a really big deal. The act of donut-eating has actually helped me feel like I’m accomplishing my career goals.</p> </blockquote> <p>This lady has the right idea.</p> On Reading https://lowbrowculture.com/post/on-reading/ Sat, 22 Aug 2015 00:00:00 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/on-reading/ <h2 id="1">1.</h2> <p>We&rsquo;re in the middle of getting a terrifying amount of work done to our house in Marino, so we&rsquo;ve temporarily decamped out to my mother-in-law&rsquo;s house in Greystones<sup id="fnref:1"><a href="#fn:1" class="footnote-ref" role="doc-noteref">1</a></sup>. My commute into work has switched from a 15-20 minute cycle each way to a 50-minute train ride each way. As a result of this new-found extra (dead) time, my reading has gone through the goddamn roof in the seven weeks since I&rsquo;ve been out here. Instead of just the few minutes of reading I can snatch before falling asleep, I&rsquo;ve got these huge swathes of time in my day where there is almost nothng else to do but read. Here&rsquo;s a graph of my reading, based on <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/2162036-john-kelly">what I&rsquo;ve logged to Goodreads</a>:</p> <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/reading_aug2015.png" alt=""></p> <p>I&rsquo;m finishing books I&rsquo;d previously started and given up on (e.g. <em>A Wrinkle in Time</em><sup id="fnref:2"><a href="#fn:2" class="footnote-ref" role="doc-noteref">2</a></sup>), and books I&rsquo;d been too terrified to even begin (e.g. Radley Balko&rsquo;s <em>Rise of the Warrior Cop</em>).</p> <p>As a result of this, I&rsquo;ve decided there will probably never be a better time to tackle <em>Infinite Jest</em>.</p> <h2 id="2">2.</h2> <p><em>Infinite Jest</em> will be the eleventh book I&rsquo;ve read in the seven weeks I&rsquo;ve been out in Greystones. In this time, no-one has ever come up and commented to me about the book I&rsquo;m reading. Even when I&rsquo;m reading stuff that I secretly <em>want</em> people to come and talk to me about (e.g. John Darnielle&rsquo;s <em>Wolf in White Van</em><sup id="fnref:3"><a href="#fn:3" class="footnote-ref" role="doc-noteref">3</a></sup>), nothing.</p> <p>On Friday evening, as the train came into the station in Greystones, after I&rsquo;d packed my copy of <em>Infinite Jest</em> into my coat and got my coat on, a complete stranger came over and sat down beside me. &ldquo;Sorry, I couldn&rsquo;t help but notice the book you&rsquo;re reading there. How are you getting on with it?&rdquo; I told him how I was really happy - I&rsquo;m enjoying it because I&rsquo;m actually making significant progress in the book (currently on page 305, which is the first time I&rsquo;ve even got past page 100). &ldquo;Yeah, stick with it. There&rsquo;ll be parts in there that will make you want to give up, but stick with it, it&rsquo;s totally worth it&rdquo;, he said.</p> <p>&ldquo;Oh, I don&rsquo;t intend to, I&rsquo;ve also got a non-fiction book going at the same time to keep me sane&rdquo;, I said.</p> <p>&ldquo;Good idea! Well&hellip;&rdquo;</p> <p>And then, awkward silence, because what else is there to say?</p> <p>Now I feel awkward. Does this interaction mean I&rsquo;m part of the problem, <a href="http://nymag.com/thecut/2015/08/david-foster-wallace-beloved-author-of-bros.html">a pretentious DFW lit-bro</a>? Do I now need to give up on <em>Infinite Jest</em> entirely, just in case I fall into some stereotype?</p> <h2 id="3">3.</h2> <p>I get home and I tell the above story to my wife. She says &ldquo;yeah, that&rsquo;s weird!&rdquo; She knows this isn&rsquo;t my first time trying to make my way through <em>Infinite Jest</em>. and asks me how many pages I&rsquo;ve read of it this time. I tell her just over three hundred.</p> <p>&ldquo;How many pages are in the book?&rdquo;</p> <p>&ldquo;Nine hundred and something, not including footnotes. So I&rsquo;m about a third of the way through. I&rsquo;m pretty happy with my progress!&rdquo;</p> <p>&ldquo;Yeah, but you&rsquo;re not <em>halfway</em> through.&rdquo;</p> <p>Marriage.</p> <div class="footnotes" role="doc-endnotes"> <hr> <ol> <li id="fn:1"> <p>There&rsquo;s an entire blog post to be written about the differences between living in Greystones vs living in Marino, but this is not that blog post.&#160;<a href="#fnref:1" class="footnote-backref" role="doc-backlink">&#x21a9;&#xfe0e;</a></p> </li> <li id="fn:2"> <p>Which I gave up on previously because it felt like it was dull and overrated and which, having now finished it, I can confirm, is indeed, dull and overrated.&#160;<a href="#fnref:2" class="footnote-backref" role="doc-backlink">&#x21a9;&#xfe0e;</a></p> </li> <li id="fn:3"> <p>If you&rsquo;ve read this book, please hit me up on Twitter. I&rsquo;d love to find more people (read: literally anyone) to talk to about it.&#160;<a href="#fnref:3" class="footnote-backref" role="doc-backlink">&#x21a9;&#xfe0e;</a></p> </li> </ol> </div> The Unofficial Lord Mayor of Ballymun https://lowbrowculture.com/video/the-unofficial-lord-mayor-of-ballymun/ Thu, 20 Aug 2015 09:35:48 +0100 https://lowbrowculture.com/video/the-unofficial-lord-mayor-of-ballymun/ <p>A couple of weeks ago, <a href="https://www.facebook.com/thehumansofdublin/photos/pb.249815928550443.-2207520000.1440014575./369674679897900/?type=3&amp;theater">Jamie Harrington appeared on Humans of Dublin talking about how he helped save a suicidal man</a> by just asking if he was okay.</p> <blockquote> <p>I was just on my way to the American sweet shop to buy some Gatorade, when I saw this guy in his 30s sitting on the ledge of the bridge. I just thought, &ldquo;wow&hellip;&rdquo; I stopped and asked him if he was okay, but I knew from the look in his eyes he wasn&rsquo;t, and he didn&rsquo;t say anything either, but I saw tears coming from his eyes. I pleaded with him for a while to come down and sit on the steps, and eventually he did. We sat on the sidewalk on the south side of the Liffey and talked for about 45 minutes, about what was happening to him, why was he feeling that way…</p> </blockquote> <p>(If you&rsquo;d rather hear him <em>tell</em> the story, he was on the <a href="https://player.fm/series/rt-playback/playback-8th-aug-2015">August 8th edition of RTÉ&rsquo;s Playback</a> - skip to ~30'00)</p> <div class="embed video-player"> <iframe class="youtube-player" type="text/html" width="640" height="385" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/ZtYEqkpODlc" allowfullscreen frameborder="0"> </iframe> </div> Trailer for the Hateful Eight https://lowbrowculture.com/video/trailer-for-the-hateful-eight/ Thu, 13 Aug 2015 12:31:39 +0100 https://lowbrowculture.com/video/trailer-for-the-hateful-eight/ <div class="embed video-player"> <iframe class="youtube-player" type="text/html" width="640" height="385" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/gnRbXn4-Yis" allowfullscreen frameborder="0"> </iframe> </div> <p>From the <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3460252/trivia?ref_=tt_ql_2">IMDB&rsquo;s trivia page for <em>The Hateful Eight</em></a>:</p> <blockquote> <p>According to Quentin Tarantino, this show is inspired by the Western television shows Bonanza (1959), The Virginian (1962) and The High Chaparral (1967): &ldquo;Twice per season, those shows would have an episode where a bunch of outlaws would take the lead characters hostage. I love it in a Western, where you would pass halfway through the show to find out if they were good or bad guys, and they all had a past that was revealed. Just a bunch of nefarious guys in a room, all telling backstories that may or may not be true. Trap those guys together in a room with a blizzard outside, give them guns, and see what happens!&rdquo;</p> </blockquote> <p>I wasn&rsquo;t crazy about <em>Django Unchained</em>, but I&rsquo;m pretty sold on this.</p> <p>(Also, it&rsquo;s hard to believe this is only Tarantino&rsquo;s <em>eighth</em> film.)</p> The New Devils' Dictionary → http://www.theverge.com/a/new-devils-dictionary Thu, 06 Aug 2015 12:48:40 +0100 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/the-new-devils-dictionary/ <blockquote> <p><strong>Google (n.):</strong> The kind of fun, colorful name you stick with to conceal the fact that your mega-corporation has become objectively terrifying.</p> </blockquote> <p>Perfect.</p> How to Get Rid of Clutter and Live Abundantly → http://the-toast.net/2015/02/24/get-rid-clutter-live-abundantly/ Thu, 06 Aug 2015 11:05:13 +0100 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/how-to-get-rid-of-clutter-and-live-abundantly/ <blockquote> <p>Have you ever owned anything? This is why you cannot forgive any of your former lovers. Things like “having chairs” is preventing you from living your best life, and also you should throw away any item of clothing you’re not currently wearing. If it’s not on your skin, you don’t really love it, do you?</p> </blockquote> Archive page https://lowbrowculture.com/archive/ Mon, 03 Aug 2015 14:46:11 +0100 https://lowbrowculture.com/archive/ <p>Blog archive</p> Hello! https://lowbrowculture.com/about/ Mon, 03 Aug 2015 14:46:11 +0100 https://lowbrowculture.com/about/ <p>If you’ve reached this page, it’s probably because you’re wondering who’s writing this blog. My name is John Kelly and I’m really terrible about writing my own biographies like this, mainly because I never know where to start. In the last five years, I’ve been a systems administrator, a student, a web developer, a designer, an actor, and a journalist. Where do you start with that? Right now, I&rsquo;m a swashbuckling devops engineer at a scrappy startup in Dublin, Ireland.</p> <p>I blog very infrequently, but you can also find me on Twitter at <a href="http://twitter.com/johnke">@johnke</a>, where I tweet even more infrequently. I like to keep track of the films I&rsquo;ve been watching over on <a href="https://letterboxd.com/johnke/">letterboxd</a>.</p> <p>As you may have already noticed, I don’t have comments enabled on my blog. If you’re interested, <a href="https://lowbrowculture.com/post/no-comment/">you can read why here</a>. If you would like to comment or tell me I’m wrong about anything, you can do it the old-fashioned way, <a href="mailto:johnke+lbc@gmail.com">by sending me a goddamned email</a>.</p> The Good Dinosaur https://lowbrowculture.com/video/the-good-dinosaur/ Thu, 23 Jul 2015 11:30:30 +0100 https://lowbrowculture.com/video/the-good-dinosaur/ <div class="embed video-player"> <iframe class="youtube-player" type="text/html" width="640" height="385" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/O-RgquKVTPE" allowfullscreen frameborder="0"> </iframe> </div> <p>Pixar are pretty great at pulling at my heartstrings, but this is the first time they&rsquo;ve made me cry during the <em>trailer</em>.</p> <p>This looks <em>amazing</em>.</p> Authenticity https://lowbrowculture.com/post/authenticity/ Wed, 22 Jul 2015 00:00:00 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/authenticity/ <p>Casey Neistat just launched his new social network, Beme. It&rsquo;s probably easiest if I just link to Casey&rsquo;s video so he can describe it himself.</p> <iframe width="800" height="450" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/mixsze6uJPg" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> <p>I really love the <em>idea</em> of Beme. I mean, is there anyone genuinely advocating for these awful, fake, rigidly curated lives on Facebook and Instagram? When these perfectly-composed, perfectly-filtered shot appears in my timeline, I get the <em>worst</em> fomo. The consolation, the thing that prevents me spiraling into a full-on, god-what-am-I-doing-with-my-life depression is realising that for someone to take the time to line up the shot, crop it, choose the right filter, and upload it - this all means that they weren&rsquo;t actually <em>engaged</em> in the moment they&rsquo;re depicting <sup id="fnref:1"><a href="#fn:1" class="footnote-ref" role="doc-noteref">1</a></sup>. So I understand the problem Beme is trying to solve.</p> <p>So here&rsquo;s another one of his videos, where he climbs a theater in Belgium.</p> <iframe width="850" height="478" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/A20psRLmAYo" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> <p>This is the moment when I realised that even Casey Neistat is guilty of not being engaged in the moment. At 4'00 in that video, you can see him scrambling up a near-vertical wall. God, I haven&rsquo;t <em>ever</em> climbed up a Belgian theater - the fomo is starting to set in! But hang on a second. To get that shot, he had to climb up the wall, set up the shot, climb down again and then climb up again. And then later on, he had to edit out the first two parts of that<sup id="fnref:2"><a href="#fn:2" class="footnote-ref" role="doc-noteref">2</a></sup>.</p> <p>Casey Neistat made a name for himself through his youtube videos. And his youtube videos are so watchable partly because of his enormous, planet-sized personality. But they&rsquo;re also watchable because they&rsquo;re <em>really well made</em>. They&rsquo;re tightly edited, and they&rsquo;re shot with a filmmaker&rsquo;s eye. None of which are available with Beme - you get a potentially wonky shot (apparently worse if you have boobs), with no way to correct it. And since you don&rsquo;t know what you uploaded, there&rsquo;s no way for you to improve your skills. Chances are you&rsquo;ll always be shooting wonky junk.</p> <p>I really would like Beme to succeed, but I worry that heavy users of social media (i.e. <em>not me</em>) aren&rsquo;t going to like the limitations, so we&rsquo;ll just be left with videos like this one. Authentic as fuck, but that&rsquo;s pretty much all you can say about it.</p> <iframe width="800" height="600" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/xMBZP2k5xGk" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> <div class="footnotes" role="doc-endnotes"> <hr> <ol> <li id="fn:1"> <p>One of my biggest personal achievements of the last year is when I climbed Croagh Patrick. But would you know I&rsquo;d done it by <a href="https://instagram.com/johnke">looking at my Instagram</a> or my Facebook timeline? Would you fuck.&#160;<a href="#fnref:1" class="footnote-backref" role="doc-backlink">&#x21a9;&#xfe0e;</a></p> </li> <li id="fn:2"> <p>He addresses this in his vlog, where he often posts videos of him running in New York and he says his runs end up taking three times as long because he has to set up the shot, go back, run past the camera, then go back for the camera.&#160;<a href="#fnref:2" class="footnote-backref" role="doc-backlink">&#x21a9;&#xfe0e;</a></p> </li> </ol> </div> Thank You, Mr Iwata https://lowbrowculture.com/post/thank-you-mr-iwata/ Fri, 17 Jul 2015 00:00:00 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/thank-you-mr-iwata/ <p>Remember when video games were fun? Remember when they were about <em>colour</em> and <em>happiness</em>? Watching E3 2015 a few months ago, you&rsquo;d be forgiven for thinking that these were things that video games had grown out of. It was dour, brown, post-apocalyptic shooters as far as the eye could see. <em>Bombast</em> and <em>spectacle</em> were the order of the day. The thing that drew one of the biggest cheers from the Microsoft crowd was when <a href="http://cdn.phys.org/newman/csz/news/800/2015/11-thelatestmic.jpg">they lowered a fucking Ferrari from the roof</a>. A fucking <em>Ferrari</em>.</p> <p>Here&rsquo;s what Nintendo did for their E3.</p> <iframe width="800" height="450" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/QPDPSezEkcY" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> <p>They teamed up with the Jim Henson Company to make puppets of their corporate team and made the most adorable, dorky video imaginable. And it was lovely.</p> <p>It was a uniquely Nintendo way of approaching the industry. It was showing that video games could still be about colour and happiness and fun. And it&rsquo;s largely because of this man, Satoru Iwata.</p> <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/iwata-puppet.jpg" alt=""></p> <p>When someone asks me to picture the president of one of the three largest video game companies in the world, this is exactly what I want to imagine. Not someone in a blazer and jeans with a focus-tested number of shirt buttons opened. I want a person who understands why we play games. I want a person who knows that games are about bringing people together, not just about shooting people in the face. I want someone who <em>gets it</em>.</p> <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/iwata.jpg" alt=""></p> <p>Iwata <em>got it</em>. And the world feels a little less joyful now that he&rsquo;s left it.</p> <p>Thank you, Mr Iwata.</p> Guardian profiles Amy Poehler → http://www.theguardian.com/culture/2015/jul/11/amy-poehler Sat, 11 Jul 2015 16:23:43 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/guardian-profiles-amy-poehler/ <blockquote> <p>“I see life as like being attacked by a bear,” she says. “You can run, you can pretend to be dead or you can make yourself bigger. So, if you’re my stature, you stand on a chair and bang a pan and scream and shout as if you’re going to attack the bear. This is my go-to strategy. I really liked being pregnant, for example, because I got to take up more space.”</p> </blockquote> Is Kickstarter covering up a scam? → http://joanielemercier.com/is_kickstarter_covering_up_a_scam/ Thu, 09 Jul 2015 16:23:43 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/is-kickstarter-covering-up-a-scam/ <p>I smelled a rat with the Holus early on - in the original pitch, <a href="https://i1.wp.com/joanielemercier.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/CGI_6.jpg">they showed a video conference using a side angle</a>, which would require a super-fancy camera on the other end. Joanie Mercier really dug into the project and showed what a goddamn mess this is. Strangest discovery: the &ldquo;staff pick&rdquo; badge means absolutely <em>nothing</em> on Kickstarter.</p> Slate's review of Armada → http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/books/2015/07/armada_by_ernest_cline_follow_up_to_ready_player_one_reviewed.single.html Tue, 07 Jul 2015 16:23:43 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/slates-review-of-armada/ <p>I hated Ernest Cline&rsquo;s previous book, <em>Ready Player One</em>. I genuinely hated it with a burning passion. It was one of the worst books I read last year. And the fact that everyone else (even the New York Times!) loved it made me wonder if it was just something broken in me. Which is why Laura Hudson&rsquo;s review of his new book, <em>Armada</em> (and by extension, her critique of <em>RPO</em>), has cheered me up no end.</p> <blockquote> <p>Armada often feels like it&rsquo;s being narrated by that one guy in your group of friends who never stops quoting the Simpsons, a tic that feels increasingly tiresome and off-putting in the face of the novel’s supposedly apocalyptic stakes. On more than one occasion, soldiers salute each other en route to world-ending battles by solemnly swearing that “the Force” will be with them, and one character flies to his supposedly tragic and moving death while screaming quotes from Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. This is a book that ends with someone unironically quoting Yoda.</p> </blockquote> <p>See also <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20150327220447/http://www.idontevenownatelevision.com/ready-player-one-w-mike-sacco">I don&rsquo;t even own a television&rsquo;s review of <em>Ready Player One</em></a>.</p> Paul Ford's What is Code? → http://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2015-paul-ford-what-is-code/ Mon, 11 May 2015 16:23:43 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/paul-fords-what-is-code/ <p>I&rsquo;ve said before that Paul Ford is one of my internet heroes. If you didn&rsquo;t understand or remained unconvinced as to why I said this, you need to read his latest piece for Bloomberg Businessweek - a spectacular 38.000-word article about programming and computers. Which in the hands of most technology writers would be dry and boring, but this is why I love Paul Ford so much. He&rsquo;s incredibly smart and intelligent, but he approaches everything from an extremely <em>human</em> point of view, so it&rsquo;s a <em>wonderful</em> read.</p> Cards Against Humanity https://lowbrowculture.com/post/cards-against-humanity/ Thu, 07 May 2015 16:23:43 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/cards-against-humanity/ <p><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20160505061905/http://www.shutupandsitdown.com/blog/post/review-cards-against-humanity/">Shut Up &amp; Sit Down has reviewed Cards Against Humanity</a>. Spoiler: they don&rsquo;t like it.</p> <p>Which is great because I&rsquo;m not a fan of it either. It almost always comes out at parties and my heart absolutely sinks. Maybe I&rsquo;m just going to the wrong parties.</p> <p>The main reason I don&rsquo;t like it is because playing it reminds me of this scene from Nathan Barley:</p> <iframe width="800" height="600" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/aLAm21GwfXw" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> <blockquote> <p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve seen <em>idiots</em> playing this, yeah? They don&rsquo;t realise it&rsquo;s not good cos it&rsquo;s rude, yeah?&rdquo;<br> &ldquo;Yeah, it&rsquo;s good cos it <em>looks</em> like it&rsquo;s good because it&rsquo;s rude?&rdquo;</p> </blockquote> <p>It&rsquo;s not transgressive. It&rsquo;s not shocking. It&rsquo;s boring. But it gets trotted out at parties because pretty much everyone already knows the rules (it&rsquo;s Apples to Apples, except where half the answers are &lsquo;big black dick&rsquo;) and for people who don&rsquo;t know the rules, it&rsquo;s easy for them to pick it up. But guys, it doesn&rsquo;t have to be this way! There are lots of party games that are more hilarious and more chaotic and more creative and more <em>fun</em>.</p> <p>So here are some party games I&rsquo;d recommend instead:</p> <p><a href="http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/33604/say-anything">Say Anything</a><br> If you&rsquo;re looking for an immediate replacement for CAH, <em>Say Anything</em> is top of the list. It&rsquo;s basically the same thing: one person reads the question, other players have to fill in the blanks. Except with <em>Say Anything</em>, you write down your answer. Whatever you like. Rather than allowing the game to be funny/shocking for you, you get to be as funny and as shocking as you can be. And it all comes from <em>you</em>, which makes it all the more rewarding and enjoyable. Trust me, ditch CAH and get this instead.</p> <p><a href="http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/113289/snake-oil">Snake Oil</a><br> In <em>Snake Oil</em>, one player draws a customer card with a particular role on it and the other players have to combine two cards in their hands to create an object to &lsquo;sell&rsquo; to the customer&rsquo;s role. So, for example, if the customer is a caveman, you might combine your &lsquo;fur&rsquo; card with your &lsquo;whip&rsquo; card to create a &ldquo;fur whip&rdquo;, which will whip the fur straight off an animal, meaning your cave will be nice and toasty and clean as a whistle. OH LOOK, I DON&rsquo;T KNOW. The point of this game is that there is no &lsquo;right&rsquo; answer here and the whole fun of the game is in the ridiculous stories people will come up with to sell things. I played this with my mother (who is in her seventies now) and she had a blast.</p> <p><a href="http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/41114/resistance">The Resistance</a><br> <em>The Resistance</em> is sort of like Werewolf, where some people in a group are spies and they have to make it through five rounds without getting caught. What&rsquo;s so great about this game is that it will have you and your friends talking analysing everything and talking and re-analysing everything and then talking and over-analysing everything. This is probably my absolute favourite game of all time just because it always leads to chats and shouts and laughter.</p> <p><a href="http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/156546/monikers">Monikers</a><br> At the risk of coming across like a SU&amp;SD fanboy, just go <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20160516185817/http://www.shutupandsitdown.com/blog/post/review-monikers/">check out their review</a>. If this doesn&rsquo;t immediately make you want to go out and play this game, maybe &lsquo;fun&rsquo; isn&rsquo;t really your thing and yeah, maybe you should just stick with CAH.</p> <p><a href="http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/92415/skull">Skull and Roses</a><br> You know in poker, they say you don&rsquo;t play the cards, you play the player? <em>Skull and Roses</em> is an even more concentrated example of this. It&rsquo;s serious bluffing where you have look all the other players in the eyes before you make your decision. The only problem I have with this game is that it&rsquo;s about elimating other people, which means if you&rsquo;re eliminated early, there&rsquo;s a lot of sitting around watching other people play. Which is still fun! Just not as much fun as, you know, actually playing.</p> The Greatest Kanye West Song of All Time → https://medium.com/matter/what-s-the-greatest-kanye-west-song-of-all-time-you-re-wrong-3cdd59cf78a4 Sat, 02 May 2015 16:23:43 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/a-yeezy-for-all-seasons/ <p>Casey Johnston goes deep to find the best Kanye song, pitting them against each other. Even if you don&rsquo;t like Kanye or you think brackets are a bad methodology to finding the best anything, the writing here is just <em>great</em>.</p> Aggregation is Broken https://lowbrowculture.com/post/aggregation-is-broken/ Mon, 20 Apr 2015 00:00:00 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/aggregation-is-broken/ <p>A few days ago, there was a bit of a kerfuffle between Vox and 538 (Nate Silver&rsquo;s blog) over <a href="https://twitter.com/NateSilver538/status/587646527855849472">Vox posting some of 538&rsquo;s content without &lsquo;proper attribution&rsquo;</a>. Vox put up a poor mouth semi-apology in the way of a statement on vox.com called &lsquo;<a href="http://www.vox.com/2015/4/13/8405999/how-vox-aggregates">How Vox Aggregates</a>&rsquo;. Here&rsquo;s a bit of that:</p> <blockquote> <p>I started as a blogger in the pre-social web, when the only way to build an audience was to have other sites quote or link to your work. Those links didn&rsquo;t drive a ton of traffic back to the original site, but they drove some, and sometimes you would get a new regular reader out of the deal. And that was basically how my career began. Everything I wrote, I wrote in the hopes that someone else would take it and try to use it on their site, with a link back to my site.</p> <p>The lesson of that, to me, was that writing on the internet is a positive-sum endeavor: I was creating content that helped other people make their sites better, and in using that content, they were helping me grow my site.</p> <p>Vox&rsquo;s approach to aggregation — which Nate Silver criticized today on Twitter— is informed by that.</p> </blockquote> <p>There have been lots of Hot Takes on this. Here&rsquo;s mine.</p> <p>I firmly believe that in a <em>post</em>-social web, aggregation is completely broken. People aren&rsquo;t looking to diversify their reading. If they see an image on Tumblr that&rsquo;s been shared across dozens, even hundreds of sites, are they going to untangle that rat&rsquo;s nest of attribution and find the original creator of that image? Are they fuck. At <em>best</em>, they&rsquo;ll follow the last person to share it - they&rsquo;ll follow the aggregator. Balls to the creator.</p> <p>Gamification of the internet is only making it worse. And by this, I mean sites that award points to people based on the content they post. See something interesting or funny on the internet? Post it to Reddit under your name and you get all the glory! Win-win.</p> <p>Back in February, I posted something on Twitter that accidentally went semi-viral, with a few thousand retweets and favourites.</p> <blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p>Born before 1990? Whatever. We don’t care. Tell us about the war or something, grandpa. <a href="http://t.co/FiWXo36JBl">pic.twitter.com/FiWXo36JBl</a></p>&mdash; John Kelly (@johnke) <a href="https://twitter.com/johnke/status/566570679123058688">February 14, 2015</a></blockquote> <script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script> <p>I was bored the other day, so for shits and giggles, I googled the text of this tweet and found that <a href="http://www.buzzfeed.com/rossalynwarren/chrome-is-better-anyway#.pa09aQWPK">I&rsquo;d made it to Buzzfeed</a>. I had no idea about this because I received <em>no</em> noticable bump in followers from them, even <em>with</em> their attribution. But I also found that someone on Reddit had lifted the text and image from my tweet and <a href="http://www.reddit.com/r/funny/comments/2vzmd7/born_before_1990_whatever_we_dont_care_tell_us/">used it to score 47 points on /r/funny</a> (I have a Reddit link score of 1. Yes, <strong>one</strong>).</p> <p>Now I&rsquo;m just a minor player in this whole thing. What about the people producing genuinely great and funny content? Last week, <a href="https://twitter.com/mallelis">Mallory Ortberg</a> (one of my favourite people on the internet) discovered that some of her work had been lifted by thepoke.co.uk.</p> <blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p>Hi! You have copied my piece (<a href="http://t.co/lQXtN0DZYi">http://t.co/lQXtN0DZYi</a>) in full without crediting me. Mind taking it down? <a href="https://twitter.com/ThePoke">@ThePoke</a></p>&mdash; Mallory Ortberg (@mallelis) <a href="https://twitter.com/mallelis/status/585481236593905664">April 7, 2015</a></blockquote> <script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script> <p>To be fair, The Poke <em>had</em> attributed it to where they found it - <a href="http://imgur.com/gallery/brwgR">an imgur gallery</a> (later itself updated with proper attribution after its creator received a twitter backlash), which in turn came from a <a href="http://www.reddit.com/r/funny/comments/31nbsg/two_monks_inventing_paintings_album_on_imgur/">thread on /r/funny</a> (4618 points, btw). This thread also included <a href="http://www.reddit.com/r/funny/comments/31nbsg/two_monks_inventing_paintings_album_on_imgur/cq3zpl8?context=3">one hilarious comment that serves to emphasise my point</a>: &ldquo;atleast give credit to the person who made them, stolen from front page funnyjunk&rdquo;.</p> <p>Ugh.</p> <p>Seriously, aggregation on the internet is a fucking joke.</p> 79 Theses on Technology. For Disuptation → http://iasc-culture.org/THR/channels/Infernal_Machine/2015/03/79-theses-on-technology-for-disputation/ Fri, 27 Mar 2015 16:23:43 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/79-theses-on-technology-for-disuptation/ <p>Alan Jacobs wrote seventy-nine theses on technology and how it affects and informs our world.</p> <blockquote> <ol> <li>Everything begins with attention.</li> </ol> </blockquote> <ol start="2"> <li>It is vital to ask, “What must I pay attention to?”</li> <li>It is vital to ask, “What may I pay attention to?”</li> <li>It is vital to ask, “What must I refuse attention to?”</li> <li>To “pay” attention is not a metaphor: Attending to something is an economic exercise, an exchange with uncertain returns.</li> </ol> <p>The whole thing is wonderful. But just as wonderful are <a href="http://iasc-culture.org/THR/channels/Infernal_Machine/tag/79-theses-on-technology/">some of the responses they have invited</a>. And the responses to the responses. Oh listen, just go read the whole thing, will you?</p> Flying Through an Eclipse https://lowbrowculture.com/video/flying-through-an-eclipse/ Fri, 27 Mar 2015 16:23:43 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/video/flying-through-an-eclipse/ <div class="standard"> <iframe src="https://player.vimeo.com/video/122893870" title="vimeo video" webkitallowfullscreen mozallowfullscreen allowfullscreen></iframe> </div> Recent Film Reviews https://lowbrowculture.com/post/film-reviews/ Thu, 19 Mar 2015 00:00:00 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/film-reviews/ <p><em>(I try to post reviews of all the films I watch over on <a href="http://www.letterboxd.com/johnke/">letterboxd</a>. Here are some of my most recent reviews)</em></p> <p><strong>Black Sea ★½</strong></p> <p>When you&rsquo;re making a submarine film, I&rsquo;m sure it&rsquo;s really tempting to default to autopilot and cross off the tickboxes of all the scenes you expect to see in these films. The near-miss collision, the accident that sends the sub to below crush-depth where they just barely survive. Etc. etc.</p> <p>So it&rsquo;s not enough for <em>Black Sea</em> to lazily trot out the same hackneyed bullshit we&rsquo;ve seen countless times in films like this while claiming to be different because <em>this time</em> it&rsquo;s all in service of a story that&rsquo;s really just a commentary on the exploitation of the working class.</p> <p>Plus, it has Jude Law (with the <em>worst</em> Scottish accent since Christopher Lambert) saying &ldquo;the shit is fighting back&rdquo;. Honestly, that&rsquo;s an <em>actual</em> line from this film.</p> <p>Good grief.</p> <p><strong>Predators ★★★</strong></p> <p><em>Predators</em> isn&rsquo;t a bad film. In fact, it&rsquo;s got some really great bits in it: the smash opening; the reveal they&rsquo;re on an alien planet; any time Walton Goggins is on the screen. In fact, it&rsquo;s a good enough film that you&rsquo;ll actually overlook the fact that they cast (lol) Adrien Brody (lol) as a badass soldier (lol).</p> <p>But if there&rsquo;s a complaint to be made about the film, it&rsquo;s that it&rsquo;s just <em>too goddamn bleak</em>. For the entire 107 minute run-time, there&rsquo;s not a single moment of hope to be found in this film.</p> <p>Exhausting.</p> <p><strong>Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith ★</strong></p> <p>Honestly, the next time some dickbag comes along and tries to tell me that <em>Episode III</em> is the best of the prequels, I&rsquo;m going to smack that person in the goddamn nose.</p> <p><strong>White God ★★</strong></p> <p>I know <em>White God</em> is supposed to be a parable, but I’ll be damned if I know exactly what it’s supposed to be. Current list of theories:</p> <ul> <li>Social Exclusion</li> <li>Teenage Angst</li> <li>Immigration</li> <li>The prison system</li> <li>The oppression of the Jews before and during WWII (what dog pounds have such prominent chimneys?!)</li> </ul> <p>It could be any one of these things. It could be all of them. I don’t know. And I’m not sure the film itself actually warrants the kind of time it would take to develop these theories. It’s 100 minutes of a dull, emotionless domestic drama with 20 minutes of interesting images tacked onto the end. Seeing 200 dogs running through Budapest dishing out vigilante justice like some canine <em>Mr Majestyks</em> was at least something I hadn’t seen before. The rest of the film was just filler.</p> <p><strong>Groundhog Day ★★★★</strong></p> <p>For most of this film, it&rsquo;s all very clever and enjoyable and even if it doesn&rsquo;t sweep you off your feet, you think &ldquo;I&rsquo;m so clever, I can see all the mechanics of this plot at work and I can <em>appreciate</em> on an <em>intellectual</em> level what the film is trying to do. Yes, very clever.&rdquo;</p> <p>And then the last scene rolls up and hits you like an ton of bricks. Even if you&rsquo;ve seen the film before, it&rsquo;s still a gut-punch of emotion.</p> <p><em>That&rsquo;s</em> the real genius of this film.</p> <p><strong>Force Majeure ★★★½</strong></p> <p><em>Force Majeure</em> is an interesting reflection on the ways that relationships can be affected and tested. There are the large, obvious events, like a father leaving his family to save his own life under the threat of an avalanche. But these are just the sparks that ignite the fuel that’s already there: the years of insecurity and resentment. And those are the things that really test relationships.</p> <p>I guess it says something about my own marriage that we chose to watch this on Valentine’s Day.</p> <p><strong>Wild Card ★★★</strong></p> <p>Jason Statham IS Nick Wild in WILD CARD.</p> <p>If this sentence doesn&rsquo;t make you want to immediately run out and watch this film, forget it, this is not the film for you.</p> Photos from the Blade Runner Model Shop → http://imgur.com/a/mv8qf#141 Sun, 15 Mar 2015 16:23:43 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/models-of-blade-runner/ <p>It may not be a great film, but these photos at least give you some idea of why it&rsquo;s such an amazing <em>achievement</em>. The amount of care and craft that went into something that would appear on screen for a second or two. So impressive.</p> RIP Terry Pratchett https://lowbrowculture.com/post/rip-terry-pratchett/ Fri, 13 Mar 2015 00:00:00 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/rip-terry-pratchett/ <p>I am a nerd.</p> <p>I spent an entire weekend <a href="https://lowbrowculture.com/hello-jekyll">migrating my blog from Wordpress to Jekyll</a> and I fucking loved it. I have a board game collection that&rsquo;s out of control. And just this week, I&rsquo;ve had not one, but two arguments about the ending of <em>Battlestar Galactica</em> (one of these turned into a standing-up, shouting kind of argument)<sup id="fnref:1"><a href="#fn:1" class="footnote-ref" role="doc-noteref">1</a></sup>.</p> <p>In fact, I&rsquo;m going to revise up and describe myself as a <em>huge</em> nerd.</p> <p>Despite this, I have not enjoyed a single Terry Pratchett book that I&rsquo;ve read.</p> <p>It&rsquo;s not like I haven&rsquo;t tried. I&rsquo;ve asked my nerd friends where I should start and I&rsquo;ve gotten different suggestions from each of them. And I&rsquo;ve tried each one that&rsquo;s been suggested. Even Metafilter, the closest we&rsquo;ll get to an internet version of a Borg hive-mind <a href="http://www.metafilter.com/143031/Terry-Pratchett-isnt-jolly-Hes-angry">can&rsquo;t settle on any one starting point</a>. The closest I&rsquo;ve come has been <em>Good Omens</em>, but I&rsquo;m dismissing this because of Neil Gaiman. Oh, and I played a lot of <em>The Colour of Magic</em> on the Commodore 64. But again, I&rsquo;m not counting this because it&rsquo;s, you know, <em>not a book</em>.</p> <p>All the same, I&rsquo;m going to pour one out for Terry Pratchett for two reasons.</p> <p>First, even though I can only handle him in small doses, even I can recognise he was capable of some beautiful writing. Like this passage from <em>Wings</em></p> <blockquote> <p>&lsquo;Come to think of it,&rsquo; he said. &lsquo;it wasn&rsquo;t frogs exactly. It was the <em>idea</em> of frogs. She said there&rsquo;s these hills where it&rsquo;s hot and rains all the time, and in the rain forests there are these very tall trees and right in the top branches of the trees there are these like great big flowers called &hellip; bromeliads, I think, and water gets into the flowers and makes little pools and there&rsquo;s a type of frog that lays eggs in the pools and tadpoles hatch and grow into new frogs and these little frogs live their whole lives in the flowers right at the top of the trees and don&rsquo;t even know about the ground and once you know the world is full of things like that your life is never the same.&rsquo;<br> He took a deep breath.<br> &lsquo;Something like that, anyway,&rsquo; he said.</p> </blockquote> <p>I mean, wow. This is just marvellous. (For the record, I gave up on <em>Wings</em> after 50-odd pages.)</p> <p>But I&rsquo;ll mostly be pouring one out because even though he&rsquo;s not my cup of tea, his writing touched &ndash; deeply touched &ndash; a lot of my friends. His writing, his irreverence, his entire outlook on life - these had a profound influence on an entire subculture. A subculture I count myself part of.</p> <p>Godspeed, Sir Terry.</p> <blockquote> <p>“DON&rsquo;T THINK OF IT AS DYING,&quot; said Death. &ldquo;JUST THINK OF IT AS LEAVING EARLY TO AVOID THE RUSH.”</p> </blockquote> <div class="footnotes" role="doc-endnotes"> <hr> <ol> <li id="fn:1"> <p>For the record, I think the ending to <em>Battlestar Galactica</em> is totally fine. I have no problem at all mixing spiritualism with sci-fi.&#160;<a href="#fnref:1" class="footnote-backref" role="doc-backlink">&#x21a9;&#xfe0e;</a></p> </li> </ol> </div> Everyday Carry interviews Jason Rohrer → http://everydaycarry.com/posts/5123/Interview-Jason-Rohrer-Video-Game-Designer Wed, 04 Mar 2015 16:23:43 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/jason-rohrer-edc/ <p>This is so good. I could use any one of his answers as a pull-quote here, but this answer hit one of my weak spots:</p> <blockquote> <p><strong>Why do you EDC?</strong></p> <p>I like the idea of finding the very best version of some otherwise mundane object, settling on it, having that problem solved well, and then using that object for the rest of my life. This is my watch. This is my pen. This is my wallet.</p> </blockquote> Don't believe his lies https://lowbrowculture.com/post/rock-paper-shotgun/ Thu, 26 Feb 2015 00:00:00 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/rock-paper-shotgun/ <p>Have you read that interview <a href="http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2015/02/13/peter-molyneux-interview-godus-reputation-kickstarter/">Rock Paper Shotgun did with Peter Molyneux</a>? If not, you should go read it now. And not just because it&rsquo;s relevant to what I&rsquo;m about to talk about, but because it&rsquo;s an absolutely <em>fascinating</em> interview. It&rsquo;s an interview that starts off with John Walker asking Peter Molyneux &ldquo;Do you think that you’re a <em>pathological</em> liar?&rdquo;</p> <p>I mean, holy shit, that&rsquo;s something, right?</p> <p>It&rsquo;s a tough interview. It was sharp around the edges. But that&rsquo;s a <em>good</em> thing. Most developer interviews are polite affairs. Even developers that really deserve to have the boot laid in get the soft treatment. Microsoft released the <em>Halo: Master Chief Collection</em>, whose multiplayer (arguably the main draw of the collection) was unplayably broken and the hardest question most games press ask is &ldquo;when will it be fixed?&rdquo; It&rsquo;s press-as-PR bullshit.</p> <p>Remember back when <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20070516074722/http://www.1up.com/do/feature?cId=3147131&amp;did=1">Dan Hsu laid into Peter Moore</a> about all the issues that plagued the Xbox 360 at launch? Remember how that was greeted? Everyone cheered and welcomed this as a new frontier: the moment when the games <em>press</em> seemed like they could actually be <small>(whisper it)</small> games <em>journalists</em>.</p> <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/penny-arcade-testicles.jpg" alt="Their Fucking Testicles"></p> <p>Which brings us to the Molyneux interview. Rather than being heralded as another great moment in games journalism &ndash; when a developer who has lied to consumers for years was finally held accountable &ndash; the reaction from most of the games industry has been pretty disappointing. The latest episodes of <a href="http://5by5.tv/dlc/61">DLC</a>, <a href="https://www.idlethumbs.net/idlethumbs/episodes/missing-molyneux">Idle Thumbs</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20150306204351/http://www.gamerswithjobs.com/node/119867">Gamers With Jobs</a> and <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20150501000000*/http://5by5.tv/isometric/43">Isometric</a> all include some variation on the theme of &ldquo;poor Peter Molyneux, he didn&rsquo;t deserve that&rdquo;<sup id="fnref:1"><a href="#fn:1" class="footnote-ref" role="doc-noteref">1</a></sup> (Isometric_ even went so far as to say that the whole thing just demonstrated gamers&rsquo; &lsquo;sense of entitlement&rsquo;). A common thread across all four podcasts is that they described the interview as &ldquo;unprofessional&rdquo; for starting by asking Molyneux if he&rsquo;s a pathological liar.</p> <p>This has driven me absolutely fucking potty over the last couple of days. I feel like I&rsquo;m living in bizzaro-world, where up is down and down is up. Peter Molyneux is such a notorious liar that he&rsquo;s spawned a goddamn internet meme:</p> <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/molyneux-dont-believe-his-lies.png" alt="Dont Believe His Lies"></p> <p>(that image was stolen from <a href="https://www.idlethumbs.net/forums/topic/8252-project-godus-dont-believe-his-lies/">the Idle Thumbs forum</a>, by the way)</p> <p>&hellip; yet actually <em>saying</em> this to his face, actually <em>confronting</em> him about it is &ldquo;unprofessional&rdquo;? I just don&rsquo;t get it.</p> <p>Personally, I think that, if anything, the interview didn&rsquo;t go far enough. I want to know if Molyneux feels any guilt about taking people&rsquo;s money for <em>Curiosity</em> over the promise over a &rsquo;life-changing prize&rsquo; (for the record, Eurogamer ran an article about <a href="http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2015-02-11-the-god-who-peter-molyneux-forgot">how much the winner&rsquo;s life has changed</a>. Short answer: not at all). I want to know if he feels any remorse over putting out <em>Curiosity</em> in the first place, since it was nothing more than a shameless cash-grab helping in the race to the bottom of free-to-play games. I want to know if he feels bad about potentially having taken money and press from other potential God games that were on Kickstarter. Games that could potentially have been driven with more passion than he&rsquo;s shown <em>Godus</em>. And while we&rsquo;re at it, I want to know if he ever gives a second&rsquo;s thought to the people for whom <em>Godus</em> was the first game they&rsquo;ve backed on Kickstarter and they&rsquo;re now so wary of the process that they&rsquo;ll probably never back another project on there.</p> <p>These are just <em>some</em> of the questions I wished John Walker had asked Molyneux.</p> <div class="footnotes" role="doc-endnotes"> <hr> <ol> <li id="fn:1"> <p>The only thing I can think of is that the four podcasts I listed above all feature game developers as either main hosts or as special guests. I guess game developers would have a different reaction to the interview? Idk.&#160;<a href="#fnref:1" class="footnote-backref" role="doc-backlink">&#x21a9;&#xfe0e;</a></p> </li> </ol> </div> Oliver Sacks on Learning He Has Terminal Cancer → http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/19/opinion/oliver-sacks-on-learning-he-has-terminal-cancer.html?referrer=&_r=0 Thu, 19 Feb 2015 16:23:43 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/oliver-sacks/ <p>Based on his terrific books his occasional appearances on <a href="http://www.radiolab.org/">Radiolab</a>, Oliver Sacks seems like a really great guy: smart, funny, and curious. So it&rsquo;s pretty sad to hear that he&rsquo;s been dealt one last shitty hand. But at the same time, it sounds like he&rsquo;s totally at peace with it:</p> <blockquote> <p>It is up to me now to choose how to live out the months that remain to me. I have to live in the richest, deepest, most productive way I can.</p> </blockquote> <p>He&rsquo;ll be missed.</p> David Carr taking no shit from those Vice dickheads https://lowbrowculture.com/video/david-carr-takes-no-shit-from-those-vice-dickheads/ Fri, 13 Feb 2015 16:23:43 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/video/david-carr-takes-no-shit-from-those-vice-dickheads/ <p>:<div class="embed video-player"> <iframe class="youtube-player" type="text/html" width="640" height="385" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/92JCleCaCj4" allowfullscreen frameborder="0"> </iframe> </div> </p> <p>RIP.</p> Totally Fucking Mexico - How the Nathan Barley nightmare came true → http://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2015/feb/10/nathan-barley-charlie-brooker-east-london-comedy Tue, 10 Feb 2015 16:23:43 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/totally-fucking-mexico/ <p><em>Nathan Barley</em> is ten years old today and this is a great retrospective from The Guardian on how the show came about and why it&rsquo;s still so prescient. If you haven&rsquo;t actually seen the show yet, you owe it to yourself to check it out. And if you&rsquo;ve already seen it, you owe it to yourself to watch it again.</p> Eurogamer has dropped review scores → http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2015-02-10-eurogamer-has-dropped-review-scores Tue, 10 Feb 2015 00:00:00 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/eurogamer-has-dropped-review-scores/ <p>The optimistic side of me loves this. It puts the emphasis back on the words, rather than a semi-arbitrary number at the bottom.</p> <p>The pessimistic side of me can&rsquo;t help but notice that this is <a href="http://www.joystiq.com/2015/01/13/joystiq-isnt-scoring-reviews-anymore-and-heres-why/">exactly what Joystiq did</a> just a couple of weeks before <a href="http://www.joystiq.com/2015/02/03/there-is-no-end/">it was shut down</a>.</p> <p>But this also means that <a href="http://www.failbettergames.com/sunless/">Sunless Sea</a> got the <a href="http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2015-02-06-sunless-sea-review">last ever Eurogamer 10/10</a>. I can&rsquo;t think of a better way for review scores to go out.</p> Cards Against Humanity's Private Island → http://cah.tumblr.com/post/110099027175/cards-against-humanitys-private-island-by-jenn Thu, 05 Feb 2015 00:00:00 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/cards-against-humanitys-private-island/ <p>The amount of planning and effort that these guys put into their little jokes is impressive. Although I kind of wish they&rsquo;d gone with their previous idea of naming the island &ldquo;Fuck Mountain&rdquo;.</p> Dessie https://lowbrowculture.com/post/dessie/ Wed, 04 Feb 2015 00:00:00 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/dessie/ <p>I realise I&rsquo;ve mentioned him a couple of times on Facebook and Twitter and Instagram, but I&rsquo;ve never actually even mentioned it on my own personal blog. So let&rsquo;s fix that now.</p> <p>Ladies and gentlemen, this is Dessie.</p> <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/dessie/dessie-3.jpg" alt="Dessie"></p> <p>He&rsquo;s my dog and he&rsquo;s my best friend and I&rsquo;m going to tell you about him. But first, a story.</p> <p>My wife and I had wanted to rescue a dog for ages. We&rsquo;d been out to Dog&rsquo;s Trust a few times and, although there were a lot of lovely dogs out there that needed homes, a lot of them were &rsquo;troubled&rsquo; dogs. Actual conversation: &ldquo;Oh! You&rsquo;re interested in Solo? He&rsquo;s such a sweetheart. Just lovely. But tell me, are there ever any small children in your house because he <em>does</em> have a history of biting. Yeah, he&rsquo;s been returned to us a few times because of that.&rdquo; Stuff that just broke my heart. I wanted to adopt them all, but I&rsquo;ve never actually owned a dog before, so there&rsquo;s no possible way I could ever train one up to, you know, <strong>not</strong> bite small children. So we hadn&rsquo;t found the right dog for us. But we kept looking.</p> <p>A friend of mine was fostering dogs for A Dog&rsquo;s Life and just before Christmas 2013, she started fostering Dessie. Here are the pictures of him from A Dog&rsquo;s Life.</p> <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/dessie/dogs-life.jpg" alt="Dessie - Before"></p> <p>The minute we saw him, we said &ldquo;that&rsquo;s it, call of the search, this is the exact dog we want&rdquo;. He was so gentle and so sweet and we called up the charity the day after we met him to start the process. They don&rsquo;t actually allow people to adopt over Christmas (understandable, no?), so we had to wait a bit.</p> <p>We actually got him on February 14th last year. Honestly, that timing had absolutely nothing to do with grand romantic gestures and had everything to do with bureaucracy.</p> <p>Our lives have completely changed since then. In lots of ways, both obvious and non-obvious. Obviously, we have a lovely little creature to take care of now, so we have to arrange our lives differently. For example, we&rsquo;re meeting some friends for dinner next week and we&rsquo;re already talking about who&rsquo;s going to cycle home to walk the dog and cycle back into town before dinner. We have to plan things. We have to be more organised with things. No more leaving food on the table, for example. Also, before getting Dessie, I&rsquo;d never picked up a still-steaming pile of shit on a frosty winter&rsquo;s day. That&rsquo;s a line I can&rsquo;t un-cross.</p> <p>But there are also less obvious ways that things have changed. Like, we&rsquo;re part of the neighbourhood dog walking group that meet in the local park to walk their dogs. It&rsquo;s such a semi-formal group that they actually had a Christmas party, where everyone wrapped their dogs in tinsel and brought wine and brandy and cakes to the park and everyone had a merry old time. Before we had the dog, I had no idea this group was even a thing. Now I&rsquo;m one of them.</p> <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/dessie/dessie-lug.jpg" alt="He even climbed (most of) Lugnaquilla with us"></p> <p>It wasn&rsquo;t all smooth sailing though. For the first couple of weeks, he was absolutely <em>terrified</em> of me. I guess a handsome, burly man must have mistreated him before. We still keep getting these glimpses of what his life was like before he came to us. Snatches of his little neuroses that hint at some past trauma. Like, he&rsquo;s absolutely terrified of motorbikes. Even a parked motorbike on the street, he&rsquo;ll give it a wide bearth. And that was just the start.</p> <p>For the first couple of weeks we had him, it was tough going. He wouldn&rsquo;t settle. He&rsquo;d whine all night and then he&rsquo;d whine all day (we set up a webcam so we could check on him via our phones - <strong>that&rsquo;s</strong> how quickly we descended into being just awful dog-people). But that&rsquo;s something I really appreciated about A Dog&rsquo;s Trust: along with the dog, they give you access to a sort of a dog counsellor that you can email with your questions and they&rsquo;ll give you advice. So you can say &ldquo;my dog is doing $x&rdquo;, and they&rsquo;ll say &ldquo;your dog is doing $x because of $y, you should try to $z&rdquo;. Well &ndash; and I&rsquo;m not happy about this &ndash; when he hadn&rsquo;t settled after two weeks, I wanted to send him back. But the charity were lovely and answered all my questions and helped me get through it and I learned how to handle him much better because of them. That helped him become more comfortable with me and settle down.</p> <p>And here he is now.</p> <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/dessie/dessie-award.jpg" alt="Best in Show"></p> <p>In this photo, he&rsquo;d just won &ldquo;best rescue&rdquo;, came third in &ldquo;agility&rdquo; and won &ldquo;best in show&rdquo; at the Greystones dog show.</p> <p>So, things people should know:</p> <ol> <li>Sight hounds (whippets, luchers, greyhounds) are the <em>laziest</em> animals you&rsquo;ll ever meet. They sleep and they sleep. Here&rsquo;s a typical picture of Dessie: <img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/dessie/sleeping.jpg" alt="My dog likes to sleep"> I know everyone expects them to be really energetic and be a real handful, but if they can get just a couple of decent 20-30 minute walks a day where they can get off the lead and run fast, they&rsquo;re super-happy.</li> <li>The only issue with this is that they&rsquo;ve got a really strong prey instinct and that can be a real problem. If they see something small (and preferrably furry), they <em>must have it in their mouth</em>. If that small thing is across a busy road, they don&rsquo;t care. So they need to be trained out of this, which can be a slow, slow process. It&rsquo;s only in the last couple of weeks that Dessie has stopped running out of our local park. For a while there, he was strictly kept on the lead, which was frustrating to both him and me.</li> <li>Also, you wouldn&rsquo;t think it to look at them, but they&rsquo;re <em>incredibly affectionate</em>. They&rsquo;re all skinny and pointy and you&rsquo;d think they&rsquo;re not into the whole touching-feeling thing, but there&rsquo;s nothing Dessie loves more than to sit on the sofa with us. And he nearly always has to be touching us at all times. He&rsquo;ll be sitting beside you and just put a little paw on your leg. Adorbs. Again, another very typical photo of Des: <img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/dessie/sleeping-couch.jpg" alt="Again, sleeping"></li> </ol> <p>If you&rsquo;re ever thinking about adopting a dog (and you should! I can&rsquo;t think of a single person whose life wouldn&rsquo;t be improved by getting a dog), I&rsquo;d seriously encourage you to take a look at the whippets, lurchers and greyhounds. The pounds are full of them and they&rsquo;re just the <em>best</em>.</p> Monkey Island 2 Background Art → http://mixnmojo.com/media/galleries/Monkey-Island-2-LeChucks-Revenge-Concept-Art Tue, 03 Feb 2015 00:00:00 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/monkey-island-2-background-art/ <p><em>Monkey Island 2</em> had some of the best art of its time. The <em>colours</em>, the <em>character</em>. And nearly all done in <strong>marker</strong>? So impressive.</p> Hello Jekyll https://lowbrowculture.com/post/hello-jekyll/ Mon, 02 Feb 2015 11:55:00 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/hello-jekyll/ <p>One of the nice things about having a blog that no-one actually reads is that you can do silly, borderline reckless things with almost no fallout. For example, you can completely change your backend from <a href="http://wordpress.org">Wordpress</a> to <a href="http://jekyllrb.com">Jekyll</a> on a whim.</p> <p>So this weekend, that&rsquo;s exactly what I did.</p> <p>And I have to say, it&rsquo;s been an interesting experience. I moved from <a href="http://mekon.livejournal.com">Livejournal</a> to my own Wordpress blog, on my own domain (fuckcuntandbollocks.com - RIP) in 2004. Besides the general embarrassment that comes from reading stuff from your past, (especially when I moved away from the earnest, personal writing on Livejournal and I was trying <em>so hard</em> to be clever and articulate over here), there&rsquo;s also the sheer volume of cruft that&rsquo;s built up over time. I&rsquo;ve spent the weekend blowing the cobwebs off the darker corners of my Wordpress database and trying to extract this content into something that makes sense and will out-live Wordpress. Both of these have clarified exactly <em>why</em> I needed to move to something like Jekyll.</p> <p>Now my blog is written in text files that live in my Dropbox and I don&rsquo;t have to worry about the latest Wordpress 0-day exploit.</p> <p>But there&rsquo;s still a lot of work to be done. Broken images need to be found. Broken links need to be fixed. The migration is maybe 90% complete. So bear with me while I get it finished.</p> PT: The Movie https://lowbrowculture.com/video/pt-the-movie/ Mon, 02 Feb 2015 00:00:00 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/video/pt-the-movie/ <div class="embed video-player"> <iframe class="youtube-player" type="text/html" width="640" height="385" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/pK2fnVmbZbM" allowfullscreen frameborder="0"> </iframe> </div> <p>Someone put together all the best bits of PT (one of <a href="https://lowbrowculture.com/post/the-best-games-i-played-in-2014/">my favourite games of last year</a>) and cut them together as a &lsquo;found footage&rsquo; horror film. And you know what? It still scares the pants off me.</p> The matte paintings of the original Star Wars trilogy and their creators → http://sploid.gizmodo.com/the-amazing-matte-paintings-from-star-wars-and-their-cr-1680372651 Fri, 30 Jan 2015 08:57:28 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/the-matte-paintings-of-the-original-star-wars-trilogy-and-their-creators/ <p>When I was about ten years old, I saved up all my pocket money for months and bought myself a hardback copy of <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Industrial-Light-Magic-Special-Effects/dp/B0087DVSC6/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1422607959&amp;sr=8-2&amp;keywords=industrial+light+and+magic">Industrial Light and Magic: The Art of Special Effects</a>. And the thing I loved most about this book was all the matte paintings. Such a simple idea, but so powerful and so evocative. I&rsquo;d get lost in them for hours. And here we are, over twenty years later and they still draw me in, every time.</p> The Fleshlight Model Visits the Fleshlight Factory https://lowbrowculture.com/video/the-fleshlight-model-visits-the-fleshlight-factory/ Sun, 25 Jan 2015 21:23:42 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/video/the-fleshlight-model-visits-the-fleshlight-factory/ <iframe width="1280" height="720" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/z4DQCLhFIg4" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> <p>My favourite part of this video is where she&rsquo;s standing next to the owner of the fleshlight factory and the interviewer asks the owner &ldquo;have you ever used the fleshlight?&rdquo; and he&rsquo;s like &ldquo;of course!&rdquo; then realises he&rsquo;s standing next to the lady whose fake vagina he masturbated into. I haven&rsquo;t seen anything that awkward in ages.</p> Broad City Meets Sleater-Kinney → http://www.npr.org/event/music/378668756/we-cant-just-settle-broad-city-meets-sleater-kinney Thu, 22 Jan 2015 22:01:30 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/broad-city-meets-sleater-kinney/ <p>I don&rsquo;t know who in NPR thought it would be a good idea to invite the stars of <em>Broad City</em> (one of the best shows on tv right now, btw) to interview Sleater-Kinney, but that person should be given a massive promotion.</p> How PAPER Magazine’s web engineers scaled their back-end for Kim Kardashian → https://medium.com/message/how-paper-magazines-web-engineers-scaled-kim-kardashians-back-end-sfw-6367f8d37688 Wed, 21 Jan 2015 23:40:49 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/how-paper-magazines-web-engineers-scaled-their-back-end-for-kim-kardashian/ <blockquote> <p>One of the things nerds love to do is look at other people’s stacks and say, “what a house of cards!” In fact I fully expect people to link to this article and write things like, “sounds okay, but they should have used Jizzawatt with the Hamstring extensions and Graunt.ns for all their smexing.”</p> </blockquote> <p>I rarely link to articles that relate to the kinds of things I do at my day job because they&rsquo;re usually so <em>dry</em> and <em>boring</em>. But remember when I said <a href="https://lowbrowculture.com/2015/01/09/reply-all-anxiety-box.html">Paul Ford was one of my internet heroes</a>? Well, this shows why. So terrifically written.</p> An Oral History of the Poop Emoji → http://www.fastcompany.com/3037803/the-oral-history-of-the-poop-emoji-or-how-google-brought-poop-to-america Wed, 21 Jan 2015 00:21:50 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/an-oral-history-of-the-poop-emoji/ <p>Fun fact: the computer I&rsquo;m typing this on is called <img src="http://lowbrowculture.com/poop.png" alt=":poop:">. Every time I see this in a list of network devices, it cheers me up.</p> This is Water https://lowbrowculture.com/video/this-is-water-2/ Fri, 16 Jan 2015 22:22:01 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/video/this-is-water-2/ <p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKYJVV7HuZw">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKYJVV7HuZw</a></p> <p>A while ago, I went through a rough patch, both mentally and emotionally and this speech &ndash; specifically the audiobook version &ndash; helped get me through it. I&rsquo;d listen to it at night when I was more likely to be hit with a panic attack and it helped calm me and also helped me think outside of myself, which was exactly what I needed.</p> <p>God, I miss DFW.</p> Atropa https://lowbrowculture.com/video/atropa/ Fri, 16 Jan 2015 13:21:29 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/video/atropa/ <iframe src="//player.vimeo.com/video/77761436" width="500" height="208" frameborder="0" webkitallowfullscreen mozallowfullscreen allowfullscreen></iframe> <p><a href="http://vimeo.com/77761436">ATROPA -- Sci-fi Short</a> from <a href="http://vimeo.com/sasich">Eli Sasich</a> on <a href="https://vimeo.com">Vimeo</a>.</p> How to Season a Cast Iron Skillet → http://www.aftertastes.co/how-to-season-a-cast-iron-skillet Wed, 14 Jan 2015 10:00:48 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/how-to-season-a-cast-iron-skillet/ <blockquote> <p>Owning a cast iron skillet requires stability. It requires an ability to think in the long term. Can you live up to it? As you will see, this is not the kind of pan you can expect to cook with for a couple years and throw away once it starts to show signs of use. It’s not goddamn Teflon. Your cast iron skillet will outlive you, and your care is important, even crucial. More than anything, you should only have cast iron in your life if you love it. Now ask yourself, are you ready?</p> </blockquote> <p>I bought a cast iron skillet a couple of years ago and it was one of the best decisions I ever made. We live in a disposable world of planned obsolescence and to have something that you know will outlast you &ndash; well, that&rsquo;s a special feeling. Plus, it&rsquo;s an amazing tool to cook with. But this article is totally right: taking care of the skillet is something you have to take very seriously.</p> Reply All - Anxiety Box → http://gimletmedia.com/episode/the-anxiety-box/ Fri, 09 Jan 2015 12:32:17 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/reply-all-anxiety-box/ <p>Along with <a href="https://www.youtube.com/user/caseyneistat">Casey Neistat</a>, <a href="http://www.ftrain.com/">Paul Ford</a> is one of my internet heroes. They&rsquo;re both eloquent, creative and prolific. This is a great podcast about one of the things Paul Ford created and why. While you&rsquo;re at it, you should also check out Reply All&rsquo;s <em>amazing</em> <a href="http://gimletmedia.com/episode/6-one-direction-larry-shippers/">episode about Larry Shippers</a>.</p> Letterboxd's 2014 Year in Review → http://letterboxd.com/2014/ Fri, 09 Jan 2015 10:07:32 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/letterboxds-2014-year-in-review/ <p>Letterboxd is my second-favourite internet community (after <a href="http://www.metafilter.com/">Metafilter</a>) and this summary of 2014 shows why. It&rsquo;s a great snapshot of what the year was like for films. See also: <a href="http://letterboxd.com/2012/">2012</a>, <a href="http://letterboxd.com/2013/">2013</a>.</p> Neven Mrgan on Why Skeuomorphism Is Like a Classic Car https://lowbrowculture.com/video/neven-mrgan-on-why-skeuomorphism-is-like-a-classic-car/ Fri, 09 Jan 2015 08:15:55 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/video/neven-mrgan-on-why-skeuomorphism-is-like-a-classic-car/ <iframe src="//player.vimeo.com/video/116295698" width="500" height="281" frameborder="0" webkitallowfullscreen mozallowfullscreen allowfullscreen></iframe> <p><a href="http://vimeo.com/116295698">Neven Mrgan on Why Skeuomorphism Is Like a Classic Car</a> from <a href="http://vimeo.com/storyandpixel">Story &amp; Pixel</a> on <a href="https://vimeo.com">Vimeo</a>.</p> Whittier, Alaska → http://reedyoung.com/project/whittier-alaska/r-young-whittier-location-01/ Wed, 07 Jan 2015 11:40:27 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/whittier-alaska/ <blockquote> <p>Whittier, Alaska is a town of just under 200 people, nearly all of whom live in one fourteen-story high-rise, a former military barracks built by the US Army in the 1950s … The fourteen-story high-rise—called Begich Towers, or BTI—contains a post office, a police station, a grocery store, a Laundromat, a health clinic, and a church. (There once was a combination video rental store and tanning salon, but it’s been closed for a while now.)</p> </blockquote> <p>Maybe it&rsquo;s because I just finished reading <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Station-Eleven-Emily-John-Mandel/dp/0385353308">Station Eleven</a> (highly recommended, btw!), but this sounds like the perfect setting for a dystopian novel.</p> The Best Games I Played in 2014 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/the-best-games-i-played-in-2014/ Thu, 01 Jan 2015 13:02:43 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/the-best-games-i-played-in-2014/ <p>Before I crack into the list, I just want to give a bit of context for some of my choices. There are a load of games that are appearing in other peoples&rsquo; lists that I bought but just haven&rsquo;t gotten around to playing yet[^1]. So that&rsquo;s why it&rsquo;s really important that I stress that this is just a list of the best games I <em>played</em> this year. Are we all clear? Great! Let&rsquo;s crack on, so.</p> <h2 id="pt">PT</h2> <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2014/12/PT.jpg" alt="PT"></p> <p>I played <em>PT</em> in late at night during the summer. I was wearing shorts and at one point about an hour into playing the game, my dog brushed against my legs as he walked past. And it actually <em>hurt</em>. I was so tense my leg-hairs were standing on end so hard that they actually hurt to touch. That&rsquo;s never happened to me before. And all it took for <em>PT</em> to scare me more than I&rsquo;ve ever been scared in my life was just two perfectly-rendered corridors. Even the ridiculous sink-baby couldn&rsquo;t ruin this for me.</p> <h2 id="kentucky-route-zero">Kentucky Route Zero</h2> <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2014/12/kentuckyroutezero.jpg" alt="Kentucky Route Zero"></p> <p>The episodes in <em>Kentucky Route Zero</em> are coming trickling out of the developer, Cardboard Computer, like a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pitch_drop_experiment">pitch drop</a>. You couldn&rsquo;t accuse it of being an episodic game in the way that Telltale games are episodic. And that&rsquo;s a great thing. Once you&rsquo;ve played the first episode in a Telltale game, you&rsquo;ve pretty much seen everything the entire series is going to throw at you. What makes <em>Kentucky Route Zero</em> so special is that each episode has done something completely different, something completely surprising. In the second episode, you actually arrive at the titular Route Zero and it&rsquo;s a beautiful, twisted nightmare with its own dreamlike logic. The third episode&rsquo;s musical interlude was a brave, ballsy piece of gaming. Up until that point, the game had mostly been about making dialogue choices, but suddenly you take over a lounge-singer named Junebug and you&rsquo;re <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ufAUonsYhVU">constructing an entire <em>song</em> from your choices</a>. A gorgeous, haunting song straight out of <em>Twin Peaks</em>. It wouldn&rsquo;t work in any other game but <em>Kentucky Route Zero</em>. Loved it.</p> <h2 id="this-war-of-mine">This War of Mine</h2> <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2014/12/thiswarofmine.jpg" alt="This War of Mine"></p> <p>I actually haven&rsquo;t played that much of <em>This War of Mine</em> because it&rsquo;s a tough game. Not in the sense that it&rsquo;s <em>hard</em>, but rather it&rsquo;s an emotionally gruelling experience unlike anything else I&rsquo;ve played this year. It&rsquo;s a game where you control a group of survivors during a war (roughly based on the Siege of Sarajevo) and the entire game is just about keeping your group alive and together &ndash; both physically and emotionally &ndash; for as long as you can. Everything you do, every awful decision you&rsquo;re forced to make will affect your group in some way. If you break into an old man&rsquo;s house and steal his food, your group will survive a bit longer, but the character who did the actual stealing will be racked with guilt for the rest of the game.</p> <h2 id="the-talos-principle">The Talos Principle</h2> <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2014/12/talosprinciple1.png" alt="The Talos Principle"></p> <p>I already described this on Twitter as &ldquo;<em>Portal</em> with a philosophy degree&rdquo;. You could throw some <em>Myst</em> in there too for good measure. There&rsquo;s no combat. It&rsquo;s just a solidly-designed puzzle game, but it&rsquo;s also got a great story that unfolds in front of you as you play it. One layer peels back to reveal another, to reveal another and so on. And all this from the people behind <em>Serious Sam</em> - I know, right? It&rsquo;s probably not for everyone. I can imagine some people getting ticked off at the being questioned on their moral and ethical beliefs by a slightly dickish, super-patronising terminal. But that shit just worked for me. (Also, this will sound fierce wanky, but you know that first world, the one set in Roman ruins? No game has captured Italian <em>light</em> like that. Really small detail, but jesus, it felt great.)</p> <h2 id="mario-kart-8">Mario Kart 8</h2> <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2014/12/mariokart81.jpg" alt="Mario Kart 8"></p> <p>The best <em>Mario Kart</em> since the original.</p> <h2 id="wolfenstein-the-new-order">Wolfenstein: The New Order</h2> <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2014/12/wolfenstein1.jpg" alt="Wolfenstein: The New Order"></p> <p>If you&rsquo;d have said to me last year that <em>Wolfenstein: The New Order</em> would one of the best games I&rsquo;d play in 2014, I&rsquo;d have called you a fucking liar. I had no interest in the franchise and this particular iteration was completely off my radar. But here we are. Solid, visceral action and some of the best storytelling of the year. It basks in its B-movie, grindhouse roots (I mean, that scene on the train feels like it&rsquo;s lifted straight from Tarantino) without ever winking at the audience in a &ldquo;we&rsquo;re <em>actually</em> too cool for this shit&rdquo; kind of way.</p> <h2 id="desert-golfing">Desert Golfing</h2> <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2014/12/desertgolfing.png" alt="Desert Golfing"></p> <p>For a while there, <em>Desert Golfing</em> was <em>all I played</em>. I mean, for weeks on end. Remember I said I bought a load of games but haven&rsquo;t played them yet? It&rsquo;s probably because I was too busy playing <em>Desert Golfing</em> instead. I&rsquo;d say I&rsquo;ve sunk more time into this than probably any other game on here. It&rsquo;s also the smallest, quietest game on this list. There&rsquo;s a ball, a hole, and the landscape. For as far as you can go (there&rsquo;s no ending, as far as I know), that&rsquo;s all there is. Occasionally, you might come across something else - a cloud, a cactus, a vase &ndash; but for the most part, for the majority of the 2,500 holes I played before I finally deleted it, that&rsquo;s all there was. And that&rsquo;s all it needed. You could talk about how the game is like an interactive art installation, a commentary on futility and perception, with the background changing so slowly across hundreds of holes. You could shite on about this and I&rsquo;d listen and I&rsquo;d nod at the points you were making. But that&rsquo;s not why this game kept me playing. It kept me playing because it was near-<em>perfect</em>.</p> <h2 id="metal-gear-solid-ground-zeroes">Metal Gear Solid: Ground Zeroes</h2> <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2014/12/metal-gear-solid-ground-zeroes-extra-high.png" alt="Metal Gear Solid Ground Zeroes"></p> <p>Gather round kids, old man Kelly&rsquo;s got a story to tell. Back before <em>Metal Gear Solid</em> came out on the original Playstation, they released a demo of the game which was just the first area before you get onto the lift &ndash; the pre-credits introduction. I lost <em>days</em> to that demo. It was a short thing, and you could complete it in less than ten minutes, but I was absolutely obsessed with it and I played it every way I could. I wanted to milk every drop of entertainment out of that because, back then, it felt <em>perfect</em>. Ground Zeroes is does a great job of recreating that feeling of the original <em>Metal Gear Solid</em> demo. It&rsquo;s a small sliver of a game &ndash; an amuse-bouche to keep us entertained until the actual release of <em>Metal Gear Solid V</em> &ndash; that you could easily beat in ten minutes. But it&rsquo;s also the type of thing you could easily lose days to.</p> <h2 id="nidhogg-starwhal-just-the-tip-gang-beasts-sports-friends-tennes">Nidhogg, Starwhal: Just the Tip, Gang Beasts, Sports Friends, Tennes</h2> <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2014/12/nidhogg.jpg" alt="Nidhogg"></p> <p>One of my favourite things to come out of 2014, at least in the indie space, is a resurgence in local multiplayer games, so I&rsquo;m bundling some of my favourites together here. Or at least the ones that we&rsquo;ve had the most fun with in our office. Online multiplayer games can have 256 simultaneous players, and that has its own brand of chaotic fun. But there&rsquo;s something genuinely beautiful and special about being able to yell and laugh with the person (or people) you&rsquo;re in a room with. With all the gamergate shit this year making me feel more and more disconnected from gaming and gamers, it was really nice to be reminded of the feeling of two (or four, or with <em>Johann Sebastian Joust</em>, seven) people in a room having fun together.</p> <p>including <em>Dark Souls 2</em>, <em>Far Cry 4</em>, <em>Assassin&rsquo;s Creed Unity</em>, <em>Bayonetta 2</em>, <em>Super Smash Bros 4 Wii U</em>, <em>Alien Isolation</em>, <em>The Evil Within</em> ↩</p> Art of the Title’s Top 10 Title Sequences of 2014 → http://www.artofthetitle.com/feature/top-10-title-sequences-of-2014/ Tue, 30 Dec 2014 15:38:18 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/art-of-the-titles-top-10-title-sequences-of-2014/ <blockquote> <p>For our list of the top 10 title sequences released in 2014, Art of the Title’s editors chose from among film, television, video games, conferences, and whatever category <em>Too Many Cooks</em> fits into.</p> </blockquote> <p>Feeling pretty smug that I <a href="https://twitter.com/johnke/status/480368384430080000">called out Halt and Catch Fire&rsquo;s title sequence back in June</a>. Pity the show itself doesn&rsquo;t live up to its amazing titles.</p> El-P and Killer Mike discuss Steven Seagal → http://www.avclub.com/article/run-jewels-brutality-music-and-magic-steven-seagal-212268 Mon, 29 Dec 2014 15:59:13 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/el-p-and-killer-mike-discuss-steven-seagal/ <blockquote> <p><strong>El-P:</strong> Steven Seagal’s the kind of guy whose idea of morality is very clear. Like, when in Out For Justice, Steven Seagal is just this brutal guy who goes around smashing people’s teeth and breaking people’s arms and just shooting people, and then he’s driving and someone throws a puppy out of a car in a bag, and he stops and gets out of the car and gets the puppy, and that’s the moment where it’s like, Seagal is a good guy, because he gets the puppy, and he brings it with him. And then at the end of the movie he finds the guy who threw out the puppy and beats the shit out of him. This is the Seagal perspective on morality. “I’m a good guy, because I found a puppy, and it doesn’t matter that I literally just destroyed someone’s trachea with a pencil. The puppy is more important.” And, you know, I respect him and his delusions.</p> </blockquote> NPR's Best Books of 2014 → http://apps.npr.org/best-books-2014/ Mon, 08 Dec 2014 14:05:05 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/nprs-best-books-of-2014/ <p>I guess we&rsquo;re heading into that time of the year when every site publishes their &ldquo;best of the year&rdquo; list. NPR&rsquo;s list of books looks really tight though. My backlog of stuff to read is pretty terrifying now.</p> The Shape of Rome → http://www.exurbe.com/?p=2219 Wed, 03 Dec 2014 10:34:50 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/the-shape-of-rome/ <p>One of the things I loved about living in Rome was that it&rsquo;s a living history. If you wanted, you could stand on any street corner and unpack the layers of history and yell &ldquo;STOP EVERYTHING - THIS BELONGS IN A MUSEUM&rdquo;. But people <em>don&rsquo;t</em> because they&rsquo;ve got lives to live. And their lives will add another layer.</p> Raw Meat Radio - Chris Morris Retrospective - MP3 version https://lowbrowculture.com/post/raw-meat-radio-chris-morris-retrospective-mp3-version/ Wed, 03 Dec 2014 08:54:55 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/raw-meat-radio-chris-morris-retrospective-mp3-version/ <p>The BBC recently put out an amazing <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04sp5pq">three hour retrospective on Chris Morris</a>. I love Chris Morris but I absolutely hate being tethered to the iPlayer, so I created an MP3 version for offline listening.</p> <p>You can grab it here:<br> <a href="https://www.dropbox.com/s/z7j1gw3befsrk03/Raw%20Meat%20Radio%20-%20Chris%20Morris.mp3?dl=0">Raw Meat Radio - Chris Morris Retrospective</a></p> Best bits of Morning Ireland https://lowbrowculture.com/post/best-bits-of-morning-ireland/ Tue, 02 Dec 2014 22:55:28 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/best-bits-of-morning-ireland/ <p><a href="http://kiveat.tumblr.com/post/103992469423/lazy-persons-guide-to-current-affairs#103992469423">In her recent blog post</a>, my wife pointed out that the &ldquo;it Says in the Papers&rdquo; section of Morning Ireland is a really useful tool for giving you a super-condensed daily overview of the major stories in Irish media. And it&rsquo;s true. It&rsquo;s my favourite part of Morning Ireland (well, technically it&rsquo;s my second-favourite, right after Harem Lousch reading the weather forecast &ndash; honestly, nothing brightens your day quite like hearing a Dutch person saying &ldquo;schattered schowersch&rdquo;). So I was pretty happy when my wife said &ldquo;It Says in the Papers&rdquo; was downloadable as a podcast.</p> <p>Turns out that&rsquo;s not strictly true.</p> <p>It&rsquo;s actually only available as part of the <em>general</em> Morning Ireland podcast, which also includes the news bulletins, the sport, the weather, as well as miscellaneous stories broken out into their own individual podcast episodes. In other words, there&rsquo;s a whole load of shit there that I&rsquo;m not actually interested in and don&rsquo;t want to spend five minutes each morning deleting the extraneous crap from my feed just to get at the stuff I actually care about.</p> <p>So I&rsquo;ve created &ldquo;Morning Ireland - The Best Bits&rdquo;, which takes the Morning Ireland podcast firehose and filters it down to just the bits I care about &ndash; the news bulletin, It Says in the Papers (and Harem Lousch reading the weather).</p> <p>To subscribe to it, just add the following URL to whatever podcasting software you’re using:</p> <p><a href="http://lowbrowculture.com/podcast/morningireland.xml">http://lowbrowculture.com/podcast/morningireland.xml</a></p> <p>Obviously, the normal legal stuff applies &ndash; I don’t actually own the license for the media, this is for personal slash educational use only, caveat emptor &ndash; etc. etc. If you’re using it and you have any feedback, <a href="mailto:johnke+mibb@gmail.com">drop me an email</a>.</p> Lazy Person’s Guide to Current Affairs → http://kiveat.tumblr.com/post/103992469423/lazy-persons-guide-to-current-affairs#103992469423 Sun, 30 Nov 2014 20:32:58 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/lazy-persons-guide-to-current-affairs/ <p>I don&rsquo;t know about you, but I find it really hard to keep up with what&rsquo;s happening in the news (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newswipe_with_Charlie_Brooker">as Charlie Brooker describes it</a>, it&rsquo;s like &lsquo;wandering into episode 389 of the world&rsquo;s longest running and most complex soap opera&rsquo;). This isn&rsquo;t helped by the fact I&rsquo;m more likely to spend an entire day reading the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Rebo_Band#Droopy_McCool">biographies of minor <em>Star Wars</em> characters</a> than actually opening a newspaper. Helpfully, my wife has put together a sort of a bluffer&rsquo;s guide of podcasts and blogs to keep people like me in the loop without having to try too hard. Thanks, wife!</p> Pomplamoose 2014 Tour Profits → https://medium.com/@jackconte/pomplamoose-2014-tour-profits-67435851ba37 Tue, 25 Nov 2014 11:47:23 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/pomplamoose-2014-tour-profits/ <blockquote> <p>We have not “made it.” We’re making it.</p> </blockquote> <p>A great insight into the economics of taking an internet-famous band on the road.</p> Crossfit https://lowbrowculture.com/post/crossfit/ Tue, 25 Nov 2014 10:06:32 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/crossfit/ <p>A few days ago, I celebrated my one-year Crossfit anniversary. “Celebrated” is a bit of a weird word to use here, isn’t it? Would you say you “celebrated” being a year in a gym? I’ve never marked this in any of the gyms I’ve been a member of, so what makes Crossfit different?</p> <p>For me, going to the gym has always been a solitary thing. You go, you set yourself up at your little station, you work out and you don’t speak to anyone. You’re in the zone.</p> <p>Crossfit is different. Crossfit is about the sense of community. I go to <a href="http://www.ronincrossfit.org/">Ronin Crossfit</a> and, honestly, I’ve never found anywhere with such a consistently solid group of people. They don’t just make you feel welcome, they make you feel like you’re part of a team.</p> <p>I’ll give you an example.</p> <p>In February, they organised a sponsored 100 burpee challenge for Suicide or Survive (if you don’t know what a burpee is, consider yourself lucky). Lots of people said that one of the conditions of sponsoring me is that I had to make a video of me doing the burpees. I’m glad I did because it captured something I really love. Here’s that video:</p> <iframe src="//player.vimeo.com/video/87384329" width="800" height="450" frameborder="0" webkitallowfullscreen mozallowfullscreen allowfullscreen></iframe> <p>Now, as you can see from that video, I’m not an athlete. I found the 100 burpees really hard and I was so slow it’s kind of embarassing. But did you see that? At the end of the video, when people had finished and I was still struggling and wanted to give up, people — real athletes who had finished ages ago — came over to cheer me on. One guy had finished his hundred and did my last ten burpees with me. He wasn’t showing off, he was showing solidarity.</p> <p>Crossfit isn’t about being the strongest athlete in the room or beating other people, it’s about beating yourself. It’s about finding your own limits and pushing them. The other people are there to help you achieve this. And that’s the exactly what you see in that video. Without those people cheering me on, maybe I would have given up, I dunno, but I know I definitely would have taken much, much longer. And they’re celebrating with me because they know I hit a wall and kept going. And that’s not just reserved for special occasions. Even in our daily workouts, the person who lifts 40kg for the first time gets as big a cheer as the person who lifts 120kg for the first time.</p> <p>That’s what I love about Crossfit. Here’s to another year.</p> Marilyn https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/marilyn-2/ Thu, 20 Nov 2014 21:39:51 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/marilyn-2/ <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2014/11/1416519517_full.png" alt=""></p> <p>This is probably one of my favourite pictures ever. It&rsquo;s Bruce Davidson&rsquo;s photo of (l-r) Simone Signoret, Yves Montand, Marilyn Monroe and her husband at the time, Arthur Miller, at a dinner party in Montand’s apartment. The whole thing is like a Mexican standoff in glances.</p> Apple Ireland https://lowbrowculture.com/post/apple-ireland/ Wed, 29 Oct 2014 13:51:24 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/apple-ireland/ <p>Apple are famous for <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/details-that-make-apple-products-unique-2014-7?op=1">sweating the small stuff</a>. They pay attention to the tiniest details, the things that hardly anyone notices but make a huge difference to a user&rsquo;s experience of their product.</p> <p>Apple Ireland, on the other hand, appear to be a bunch of goddamn clowns. This could be a larger blog post about what it’s like to be an Apple consumer in Ireland (other possible topics: no TV shows in iTunes store, no visual voicemail on the iPhone etc. etc.), but let’s just limit it to one thing: the film section of the iTunes store</p> <p>One of the things I really like about the film section of the iTunes store is the ‘themed’ bundles. For example, during fashion week, they had a sale on 25 films about fashion. Now it’s Halloween and they’re doing a sale on 25 horror films.</p> <p><a href="http://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2014/10/1414580848_full.png"><img src="http://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2014/10/1414580848_thumb.png" alt=""></a></p> <p>Click into this and you’ll get this list of films:</p> <p><a href="http://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2014/10/1414580913_full.png"><img src="http://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2014/10/1414580913_thumb.png" alt=""></a></p> <p>Can you spot the obvious mistake? That’s right, in this list of 25 horror films, there are only 24 films.</p> <p>If you change iTunes store to United Kingdom, you’re presented with the full list of films. Apparently, we’re not getting <em>Cabin in the Woods</em> as part of this sale although it&rsquo;s still available in the Irish iTunes store for €16.99</p> <p>But the fuckery doesn’t stop there! Even in the Irish store, you can see that <em>The Blair Witch Project</em> is in the €6.99 sale. Except when you click into it…</p> <p><a href="http://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2014/10/1414581317_full.png"><img src="http://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2014/10/1414581317_thumb.png" alt=""></a></p> <p>(Again, in the UK store, this film is listed at the &lsquo;sale&rsquo; price.)</p> <p>Apple Ireland have definitely adopted the Irish attitude of “<a href="http://www.keepcalmandposters.com/posters/1843321.png">Ah sure it’ll be grand</a>”. I’m just not sure how well this works with Apple’s overall reputation as a company that sweats the small stuff.</p> EA Sports UFC https://lowbrowculture.com/post/ea-sports-ufc/ Mon, 20 Oct 2014 08:22:39 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/ea-sports-ufc/ <p><em>(This review first appeared on <a href="https://thumped.com/game-reviews/ea-sports-ufc.html">thumped.com</a>)</em></p> <p>I’m having real trouble trying to figure out who <em>EA Sports UFC</em> has been made for.</p> <p>Was it made for the hardcore fans of UFC as a sport? I mean, it’s got 97 current fighters all realistically modelled, animated and rendered. Their Conor McGregor even has <a href="http://vassets.ea.com/Assets/Resources/Image/eas-ufc-connor-mcgregor-01.jpg">that God-awful gorilla chest-tattoo</a> he got recently. This means that rather than just using a generic fighting model with a different ‘skin’ for each fighter, each fighter in <em>EA Sports UFC</em> moves and behaves like their real-life counterpart. They have the same strengths and weaknesses (or at least, they’re <em>supposed</em> to - lots of fans have been scratching their heads at some fighters’ stats, some of which seem wildly off-kilter). These are things that will mostly appeal to the hardcore UFC fighting fans, because they’re the only ones that will pick up on them. Plus the game copies the basic control scheme from the previous UFC games, so the hardcore fans who are familiar with THQ’s games will be able to hit the ground running with this game.</p> <p>Unfortunately, if they’re targeting the hardcore fan, I can’t imagine it being anything but a bit of a disappointment. UFC is a visceral, vicious sport that’s all about cracking heads. But the fighting in the game feels weightless and floaty. Despite the amazing graphics engine, blows never actually <em>feel</em> as if they’re connecting, so a lot of the fights are spent just watching health meters because they’re the only real indication of how you’re doing. Only a few years ago, this same development team introduced a HUD-less fighting game, where you could tell how tired/battered your player was just by looking at them. It’s hard not to see <em>EA Sports UFC</em> as anything but a step back.</p> <p>And it’s not just the floaty, toothless fighting game that will drive the hardcore fans bananas. The game’s transitions between the various stages of fighting (standing up, in the clinch and on the mat) are painfully disjointed and mechanical with no sense of grace or fluidity. The game is full of canned animations that bring everything to a standstill until the animations have completed. Then there’s also the fact that some of the sport’s more ‘simple’ moves actually require a fairly complex combination of inputs on the joystick, but some of the sport’s more difficult moves are just one or two button-presses. So it’s entirely possible to just spam flying knee kicks and win 90% of your matches (I tested this and won around half of my matches on ‘hard’ difficulty by just spamming the one move over again). In a sport that prioritises technique and finesse, this confusing mess of a control set-up is another of the game’s disappointments.</p> <p>So maybe the game wasn’t made for the hardcore UFC fan. Maybe it’s there for the more casual fighting fan. People like me, who think that the whole arcade fighting game genre peaked with <em>Rocky</em> on the Gamecube, or maybe <em>Fight Night Round 3</em> on the Xbox 360. In which case, EA have completely misjudged this game’s introduction. It starts by dropping you into an extended tutorial sequence that attempts to familiarise you with some of the basic controls before finally dumping you into an actual exhibition fight. But considering the <a href="http://vassets.ea.com/Assets/Resources/Image/eas-ufc-controls-ps4-01.JPG">sheer</a> <a href="http://vassets.ea.com/Assets/Resources/Image/eas-ufc-controls-ps4-02.JPG">number</a> <a href="http://vassets.ea.com/Assets/Resources/Image/eas-ufc-controls-ps4-03.JPG">of</a> <a href="http://vassets.ea.com/Assets/Resources/Image/eas-ufc-controls-ps4-04.JPG">controls</a>, it’s a bit like saying “Okay, press this button. Great. Press this lever. Great. Now these 200 other buttons. Great. Now fly this plane.” If you haven’t played a UFC game before, you’ll be overwhelmed by the controls and immediately left feeling frustrated as the game kicks your ass and asks if you want a rematch. And when you don’t know what you did wrong in the first place, a rematch is a grim, unappealing option.</p> <p>The short ‘career’ mode is where the game should open up for newcomers. You choose a fighter (or create one yourself) and take them through the various stages of <em>The Ultimate Fighter</em>, an actual reality TV show where contestants compete for a chance to enter into the UFC. Between fights, you practice the moves you briefly saw in the tutorial, running drills until you can actually use them in some sort of sensible way. Then you fight one-on-one against a computer opponent to progress to the next round. Repeat, repeat until you’ve won your ‘contract’. As a relative newcomer to UFC games, this is where the game finally started to make sense for me. It didn’t make it much more enjoyable – the complaints about the weak-ass fighting system still stand and the opponent AI was underwhelming – but at least I could say I finally started to get my head around what some of the buttons did and when I should use them.</p> <p>Being able to create my own fighter and bring him through career mode definitely helped with the enjoyment of the game. Rather than creating something sensible, I created a 300-lb man-child called “Dick ‘Jumbo’ Wang” from Bosnia and Herzegovina (the commentators actually use your nickname and surname in fights and having them say stuff like “Jumbo Wang is taking a heck of a beating” <em>never stopped</em> being funny for me), with easily the worst stats in the game.</p> <p><a href="http://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2014/10/1413793267_full.jpeg"><img src="http://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2014/10/1413793267_thumb.jpeg" alt=""></a></p> <p>As well as providing you with <em>just enough</em> customization options to make your fighter look like a mongoloid sex-pest like I did, you can give your fighter some tattoos. There are pages and pages of dragons and tribal patterns (no God-awful gorilla chest-tattoos, disappointingly). In amongst all these is, bizarrely, a “In Memory of Cheryl” tattoo. And because the game lets you spam the shit out of these tattoos, Dick Wang has an “In Memory of Cheryl” tattoo everywhere the game would allow it: on his head, on his back, three times on his chest, twice on each arm and twice on each leg. I have no idea who the fuck Cheryl is, but Dick Wang must really miss her. I guess this says a lot about how easily amused I am, but it also says a lot about the game. The thing that amused me most wasn’t the exhibition fights, it wasn’t the multiplayer and it wasn’t the career mode. It was creating Dick Wang.</p> <p>In the end, <em>EA Sports UFC</em> doesn’t really know what it wants to be. It doesn’t know who it’s trying to please, so it ends up not really pleasing anyone at all. It’s not engaging enough to be the essential next-gen UFC game the hardcore fans have been waiting for. And it’s so inaccessible for casual fans that they’ll be reduced to putting together hideous monsters in the character creation screen just to extract some entertainment from the game. I’ve no doubt that the next iteration of the game will be much better, but until then, this is definitely one to skip.</p> God Only Knows https://lowbrowculture.com/video/god-only-knows/ Wed, 08 Oct 2014 09:26:16 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/video/god-only-knows/ <iframe width="1280" height="720" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/XqLTe8h0-jo" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> <p>See also the <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x7ogV49WGco">barbershop quartet arrangement from <em>Bioshock Infinite</em></a></p> Guardians of the Galaxy Concept Art → http://www.atomhawk.com/gotg Mon, 06 Oct 2014 08:09:29 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/guardians-of-the-galaxy-concept-art/ <p>I <em>loved</em> Guardians of the Galaxy. I loved the <em>design</em> of it. And that design doesn&rsquo;t come from nowhere - it comes from amazing concept work like this. I can&rsquo;t wait for the Blu-Ray so I can pore over every frame.</p> The Eyes Of Alfred Hitchcock https://lowbrowculture.com/video/the-eyes-of-alfred-hitchcock/ Sun, 05 Oct 2014 20:39:50 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/video/the-eyes-of-alfred-hitchcock/ <iframe src="//player.vimeo.com/video/107270525" width="800" height="450" frameborder="0" webkitallowfullscreen mozallowfullscreen allowfullscreen></iframe> Elegy for a Dead World → https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/dejobaan/elegy-for-a-dead-world-a-game-about-writing-fictio Fri, 03 Oct 2014 10:20:20 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/elegy-for-a-dead-world/ <p>I try not to post about the kickstarter campaigns I support (because there’s not enough disk space in the world for that - sorry wife!), but I’m willing to make a huge exception for this. It’s such a great idea: a game where <em>you</em> write the story of what you’re seeing. And then you get to share your story with other people. And you can read other people’s stories! This sounds <em>amazing</em>. Insta-back.</p> Recent film reviews https://lowbrowculture.com/post/recent-film-reviews/ Thu, 02 Oct 2014 10:02:00 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/recent-film-reviews/ <p><em>(I try to post reviews of all the films I watch over on <a href="http://www.letterboxd.com/johnke/">letterboxd</a> Here are the most recent reviews I’ve written)</em></p> <p><strong>The Inbetweeners</strong> - ★½</p> <p>I’m not sure the makers of this movie meant to channel <em>Waiting for Godot</em>, but that’s exactly what it reminded me of in places. Someone said that the Beckett play was one in which nothing happens, twice. Well, <em>The Inbetweeners 2</em> is a film where nothing happens for forty-five minutes, then someone gets hit in the face with a lump of shit, then nothing happens again for another forty-five minutes.</p> <p>If it wasn’t for the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hj3qq-OS644">ten-second awob-a-bob-bob scene</a>, there’d be nothing redeeming about this film.</p> <p><strong>Chef</strong> - ★★</p> <p>Chef felt like Jon Favreau trying desperately to recreate the light, breezy feeling of <em>Swingers</em>. Instead, we get a film that breaks down halfway under the weight of its own self indulgence and we&rsquo;re left with a film where Favreau has Sophia Vergara as an ex-wife and Scarlett Johansson as a girlfriend and where it&rsquo;s apparently okay for two middle-aged men to sing &ldquo;Sexual Healing&rdquo; to a child they&rsquo;ve locked in a van.</p> <p><strong>Pride</strong> - ★★★★</p> <p>So the story of <em>Pride</em> might be told in broadest possible strokes, right down to the evil, cackling neighbour that bordered on panto-villain ridiculous. But despite this, it&rsquo;s still the most wonderful, joyful film I&rsquo;ve seen all year.</p> <p><em>(Update Wed, 8th October: As usual, <a href="http://kiveat.tumblr.com/post/99483821858/pride">my wife and I don’t agree</a>)</em></p> <p><strong>Dark Skies</strong> - ★★</p> <p>There’s hardly a single original thought in <em>Dark Skies</em>. Almost every scene has been lifted wholesale from other films. The usual suspects - a bit of <em>Close Encounters of the Third Kind</em>, a little of <em>Signs</em>, and even some of <em>The Exorcist</em> thrown in for good measure. This wouldn’t in itself be a bad thing except the film is just lifting them as if it’s ticking off a list of scenes it feels it needs to have. As a result, it tries to create an atmosphere of tension that climaxes about halfway through the film. Then, having painted itself into a corner, it then decides to lift from <em>Poltergeist</em> with J.K. Simmons in the Tangina role.</p> <p>Dull.</p> <p><strong>Dredd</strong> - ★★★★</p> <p>Watching this film again, I was impressed that they managed to take an off-the-shelf action setup AND YET make it into a great Judge Dredd film AND YET keep it true to its comic-book roots AND YET make it seem gritty and realistic and big-budget AND YET keep it spikey and not round off the edges to try and capture a large audience.</p> <p>I guess what I’m trying to say is: I really love this film.</p> Dirtbag Zeus → http://the-toast.net/2014/09/25/dirtbag-zeus/ Tue, 30 Sep 2014 14:40:35 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/dirtbag-zeus/ <blockquote> <p>ZEUS: what is this<br> i dont like this</p> <p>HERA: it’s our son<br> that’s our son, i’ve just given birth to him<br> i’ve named him Hephaestus–</p> <p>[Zeus flings the newborn off Olympus]</p> <p>ZEUS: what son<br> i dont see any son</p> </blockquote> <p>I think Mallory Ortberg might be my favourite person on the internet.</p> GIF's Visual Language In Music Videos https://lowbrowculture.com/video/gifs-visual-language-in-music-videos/ Tue, 30 Sep 2014 08:38:57 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/video/gifs-visual-language-in-music-videos/ <iframe width="1280" height="720" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/lwtCgSRGVSI" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> Madden NFL 15 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/madden-nfl-15-2/ Fri, 26 Sep 2014 12:53:00 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/madden-nfl-15-2/ <p><em>(This review first appeared on <a href="https://thumped.com/game-reviews/madden-nfl-2015-ps4.html">thumped.com</a>)</em></p> <p><a href="http://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2014/09/1411736055_full.jpeg"><img src="http://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2014/09/1411736055_thumb.jpeg" alt=""></a></p> <p>When Pete asked if I wanted to review <em>Madden NFL 15</em>, I initially said no. You see, I haven’t played a Madden game since the Megadrive, so I figured I’m in no position to talk about this game because I can’t tell you what makes this game better than the previous fifty-odd iterations. Plus I don’t think I’ve ever actually watched a game of American Football except one time when I was in New York over Thanksgiving and went to a friend’s house and the football came on and all the MEN went into the basement to watch the BIG GAME and I joined them because the idea of a man NOT watching the BIG GAME was kinda making everyone uncomfortable. Basically, I’m nowhere near an expert on this. I probably shouldn’t be reviewing this game.</p> <p>Besides which, if you’re the kind of person who is likely to buy <em>Madden NFL 15</em>, you’ll probably have bought it already. Likewise, if you’re not interested in either the game or the sport, I doubted anything I could say here would convince you. But Pete is nothing if not insistent, so I got ready to write a review based on the things I <em>did</em> know about, like the politics of the NFL surrounding the recent Ray Rice incident. Or maybe the <a href="http://online.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748704281204575002852055561406">study by the Wall Street Journal</a> which shows that although an average game of American Football lasts almost three hours, the ball is actually only on the field and in play for 11 minutes. I was going to talk about <em>Friday Night Lights</em>, a TV series about high school football in Texas and how it’s the most criminally underrated show ever made. I was ready to write <em>around</em> the game, rather than <em>about</em> the game. You know, the kind of review a real wanker would write.</p> <p>But then I actually played the game. And, you know what? It’s actually won me over. I really, really like it.</p> <p>It took a while to grow on me though. Like most EA Sports games these days, <em>Madden NFL 15</em> opens by dropping you into the middle of an actual game and expects you to fend for yourself. Since I haven’t touched a Madden game in 20-odd years, I hadn’t a fucking breeze as to what was going on and it demolished me. If I’m being honest, more than any other game in recent memory, these first five minutes in <em>Madden NFL 15</em> left me feeling a little alienated. It seemed to be a game shouting “THIS IS NOT FOR YOU. GO BACK TO <a href="http://desertgolfing.captain-games.com/">DESERT GOLFING</a> ON YOUR PHONE, YOU LAZY FUCK.” I was ready to throw in the towel and dust off that wanker-review.</p> <p>But something about the game made me want to persevere and figure it out. Along with <em>Call of Duty</em>, Madden is traditionally regarded as the game that the ‘core’ audience (whatever that means) tend to glom onto. And since I’ve already dabbled with a <em>CoD</em> addiction (300+ glorious, fun-filled hours in <em>Modern Warfare</em> multiplayer), I didn’t want to give up before I at least won my first game.</p> <p>So I fired up the ‘skills trainer’. This is a series of drills designed to familiarise players with the mechanics of the game, starting with passing and blocking and so on. I guess this is mostly intended for people who are entirely new to the game but it still presumed a level of knowledge that I just didn’t have. To make it worse, the game doesn’t do a great job of actually communicating any information that might be useful to a new player. One of the first drills you run is practicing a lob pass. “Do a lob pass”, it says. Except at no point during these drills does it say how to actually <em>perform</em> a lob pass. So I failed my lob pass. And I failed. And I failed. I had no idea what I was doing wrong and the game seemed completely disinterested in telling me. It was only by chance when I was loading the game that I saw it in one of the random loading screens that flashes up for a couple of seconds at a time: briefly tap the button to do a lob pass, hold the button down to do a ‘bullet’ pass. This was like a eureka moment - once this was figured out, the game unfolded in front of me like a beautiful flower.</p> <p>You see, I’ve realised that Madden is not the type of game to explain itself or hold your hand. In other games, like <em>EA UFC</em>, the equivalent of Madden’s ‘skills trainer’ is a series of extended quicktime event where even a complete beginner can easily rack up 100% scores and gold medals in no time. <em>Madden NFL 15</em> is tougher. It’s not just a quicktime event - it’s knowing what to do and when to do it. And, starting out, you’ll fuck up the drills. You’ll fuck them up a LOT. You’ll be forced to restart again and again. And it’s only when you’re into double-digits of retry attempts that you’ll actually scrape a success. You’ll happily take your bronze medal and move onto the next drill. It’s not arcade game. It doesn’t try to compensate for your lack of skill or knowledge. And you know what? I appreciate that. It means that when I actually perform a dead-perfect lob pass, there’s an extra sense of achievement. I fucking <em>earned</em> that pass. And so that means I’m going to make a wild statement that might annoy some people. Okay? Here we go. If you’re like me where you have no interest in American Football and you know nothing about Madden (or have forgotten anything you did know), Madden is sort of like <em>Dark Souls</em>: an impenetrable melange of game mechanics where each tiny advancement feels like a massive success.</p> <p>There, I said it.</p> <p>Even for a non-fan like me, there’s a lot to appreciate about this game. I’m pretty impressed with the social integration. The game tracks each player’s stats and decisions in the game and add that to a cumulative database, so when you’re in a particular situation, the game can say “the majority of the community chose <em>this</em> play”. Similarly, players are encouraged to send in their favourite screenshots from the game to be used in the interstitial loading screens. So you’ll see a picture and it will say “submitted by @AssMan1993”. Probably more than any other AAA game in recent memory, <em>Madden NFL 15</em> prides itself on its community focus. It doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It’s listening to its players and involving them in the game. For example, the game shipped with <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H1vpodIEG8c">a bug that caused one player to be rendered as 1’2” tall</a>. This glitch was fixed, but the massive viral popularity of the bug caused EA to turn it into an official game mode called “tiny titans”. That’s something I wish more games would take advantage of. The only other game I can think that does anything near as great a job of channeling the community is <em>Dark Souls</em>. Okay, I’ll stop with the <em>Dark Souls</em> comparisons now.</p> <p>I said I wanted to play <em>Madden NFL 15</em> until I won my first game. Well, I’ve done that. I reached the arbitrary goal I set myself for this game. And I think I’m going to keep playing this game. As a sport, American Football is still mostly Greek to me. I don’t know who any of the players are, what any of the positions do, or when to run a particular play. Christ, I even feel like a total fraud for just using the words “run a particular play”. And I’m sure this knowledge would really open up the rest of the game to me - there are entire game modes, like the fantasy football-type thing, that require this outside knowledge. But at this early stage, it’s all incidental shite that doesn’t actually matter. The important thing is that the basic game itself is actually lots of fun. And that’s what’s going to keep me coming back.</p> Star Wars Minus Williams https://lowbrowculture.com/video/star-wars-minus-williams/ Fri, 12 Sep 2014 13:00:00 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/video/star-wars-minus-williams/ <iframe width="1280" height="720" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Tj-GZJhfBmI" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> Watergun assassin: The grand game story of Street Wars → http://ift.tt/UVZyEs Wed, 13 Aug 2014 15:40:05 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/watergun-assassin-the-grand-game-story-of-street-wars/ <p>As I write this, I’m starving, but I dare not go out for food. My assassin could be anywhere. Eventually I break down and prepare the meal of the desperate: Two frankfurters scavenged from the back of the fridge, boiled limp and naked. Spoonful of mustard. I am in genuine fear of being shot.</p> Liberals dot dot dot https://lowbrowculture.com/quote/liberals-dot-dot-dot/ Mon, 11 Aug 2014 16:44:50 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/quote/liberals-dot-dot-dot/ <blockquote> We believe, wait… I thought… fast food joints, meh, don’t you guys think they’re like of the devil or something, that’s what, liberals… </blockquote> <p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y5ogJjmgpLM">Sarah Palin tries her hand at political satire</a>. I&rsquo;d say Jon Stewart is shitting himself.</p> Allison House on making a video for Jeff Tweedy → http://allison.house/blog/making-tweedy-summer-noon-music-video/ Thu, 10 Jul 2014 11:21:55 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/allison-house-on-making-a-video-for-jeff-tweedy/ <p>This is ‘showing your work’ done right. I love that she edited the video on a 30-day trial of Adobe Premiere.</p> Show your work https://lowbrowculture.com/post/show-your-work/ Thu, 10 Jul 2014 11:20:33 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/show-your-work/ <p>I’ve been reading <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Show-Your-Work-Getting-Discovered/dp/076117897X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1404988871&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=show+your+work">Austin Kleon’s Show Your Work</a>, which is like this great little book that perfectly straddles the line between motivational anecdotal bullshit (e.g. <a href="https://vimeo.com/85040589">the Ira Glass quote on the ‘taste gap’</a>) and practical advice (e.g. ‘have your own domain name that people can associate with <em>you</em>’).</p> <p>For the past year or so I’ve been taking part in a <a href="https://www.facebook.com/groups/557041711081798/">1 Game a Month group</a> here in Dublin. It’s a great group, full of lovely, helpful and enthusiastic people and I’ve learned loads about all sorts of different subjects I’m interested in: game design, programming, art, and sound. But I know people are frustrated with me there because getting me actually to let them see what I’ve done is like pulling teeth. I’ll keep it all to myself.</p> <p>Around Christmas, I took part in a gamejam where I made a game where you had to navigate using sound. This was the first time I’d ever let anyone else play something I’d created and it <em>scared the shit out of me</em>.</p> <p>I want to get better at this - showing people my works in progress. And most of all, showing people my finished work.</p> <p>So here we go.</p> 23 and me: The complete James Bond → https://medium.com/@liza/23-and-me-the-complete-james-bond-adecb7bcd972 Mon, 09 Jun 2014 16:23:43 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/23-and-me/ <p>Liza Daly watched all 23 James Bond films (and apparently read the novels, too). On <em>Quantum of Solace</em></p> <blockquote> <p>This is the only movie in which Bond does not get laid. It’s also the only one in which he is not captured. Draw your own conclusions.</p> </blockquote> <p>Worth reading. Although she says she&rsquo;s never met anyone who will defend <em>Moonraker</em>. I&rsquo;ll go to the mat for that film.</p> The Worst Day Of My Life Is Now New York's Hottest Tourist Attraction → http://www.buzzfeed.com/stevekandell/the-worst-day-of-my-life-is-now-new-yorks-hottest-tourist-at Thu, 22 May 2014 09:56:26 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/the-worst-day-of-my-life-is-now-new-yorks-hottest-tourist-attraction/ <p>The brother of someone killed in 9/11 visits the 9/11 Memorial Museum.</p> <blockquote> <p>I think now of every war memorial I ever yawned through on a class trip, how someone else’s past horror was my vacant diversion and maybe I learned something but I didn’t feel anything. Everyone should have a museum dedicated to the worst day of their life and be forced to attend it with a bunch of tourists from Denmark. Annotated divorce papers blown up and mounted, interactive exhibits detailing how your mom’s last round of chemo didn’t take, souvenir T-shirts emblazoned with your best friend’s last words before the car crash. And you should have to see for yourself how little your pain matters to a family of five who need to get some food before the kids melt down. Or maybe worse, watch it be co-opted by people who want, for whatever reason, to feel that connection so acutely.</p> </blockquote> Gentlemen of Letters https://lowbrowculture.com/video/gentlemen-of-letters/ Wed, 14 May 2014 12:57:53 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/video/gentlemen-of-letters/ <iframe src="//player.vimeo.com/video/81921161" width="800" height="450" frameborder="0" webkitallowfullscreen mozallowfullscreen allowfullscreen></iframe> <p><a href="http://vimeo.com/81921161">Gentlemen of Letters - A Dublin Sign Painting Film</a> from <a href="http://vimeo.com/user7692228">Colin Brady</a> on <a href="https://vimeo.com">Vimeo</a>.</p> <p>It&rsquo;s easy to take for granted just how important hand-painted signs are to the visual identity of Dublin city. This is a lovely documentary that shines some light on the people whose work we see almost every day.</p> Amazon guts Comixology https://lowbrowculture.com/post/amazon-guts-comixology/ Tue, 29 Apr 2014 09:31:41 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/amazon-guts-comixology/ <p><a href="http://comicbook.com/blog/2014/04/27/gerry-conway-the-comixology-outrage/">Gerry Conway: The ComiXology Outrage</a></p> <blockquote> And so, as we could have predicted, Amazon wrecks Comixology. <p>What has it been, less than a month since Jeff Bezos bought the most promising tool for renewing the mass distribution of comics in the digital era? I’ll give the man this: he’s moved faster to undermine an existing technology for the benefit of his own company than General Moantors did when it sabotaged Los Angeles’s public transit Red Line for the benefit of the bus fleet they wanted to sell the City of Angels. Job well done, Jeff. My comics reading has gone through the goddamn roof thanks to Comixology. The convenience of having an entire comics store at my fingertips is a powerful thing for someone with poor impulse-control. Being able to buy and read a comic from the same app is beautiful and simple and is exactly why I spend way more time inside Comixology than say, <a href="http://www.bitolithic.com/comic-zeal">Comic Zeal</a>.</p> </blockquote> <p>Splitting it into two experiences - buying a comic from the website, switching apps, downloading reading it in the Comixology app destroys this simplicity. It destroys what made Comixology so powerful. And to what end? To increase the profits on each individual sale at the expense of what I bet will be lower overall sales? It&rsquo;s a giant shame to see a smart company be so short-sighted.</p> <p>(Of course, I realise this whole thing is <em>such</em> a Western problem. You&rsquo;d expect a lot of people&rsquo;s monocles to fall into their tea over this issue. &ldquo;You mean they changed it to make it <em>harder</em> for me to waste money with them?!&rdquo;)</p> This Guy Is Trying to Collect Every Single Copy of the Movie 'Speed' on VHS → http://www.vice.com/read/this-guy-is-trying-to-collect-every-single-copy-of-the-movie-speed-on-vhs Tue, 22 Apr 2014 11:32:39 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/this-guy-is-trying-to-collect-every-single-copy-of-the-movie-speed-on-vhs/ <blockquote> <p><strong>And you’re going to collect them all.</strong></p> <p>Yeah. People always go, “Dude how many of these things are you going to get?” And I&rsquo;m like, “All of them, duh.”</p> </blockquote> <p>Godspeed, you crazy bastard.</p> The Guilt of the Video-Game Millionaires → http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/elements/2014/04/the-guilt-of-the-video-game-millionaires.html Fri, 04 Apr 2014 09:55:23 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/the-guilt-of-the-video-game-millionaires/ <p>Great article about how indie game devs are handling sudden financial success. Favourite line is this, about Davey Wreden, the creator of the Stanley Parable, on how he&rsquo;d ground himself:</p> <blockquote> <p>Wreden returned home having decided how, if his game sold well, he would spend the money. “He said that he would go to the store and buy the cheapest and most expensive salmon,” Ismail recalled. Wreden would then cook the two fish side by side and conduct a taste test to see whether the cost difference was justified.</p> </blockquote> Jodorowsky's Dune https://lowbrowculture.com/video/jodorowskys-dune/ Fri, 28 Mar 2014 21:44:39 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/video/jodorowskys-dune/ <iframe width="1280" height="720" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/4WWu1kclNDA" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> <p>Jodorowsky&rsquo;s version of <em>Dune</em> is right up there with Kubrick&rsquo;s <em>Napoleon</em> as one of the most famous films that never was. This documentary is an amazing glimpse at what could have been.</p> Visual Revolution of The Vanishing of Ethan Carter → http://www.theastronauts.com/2014/03/visual-revolution-vanishing-ethan-carter/ Fri, 28 Mar 2014 10:12:26 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/visual-revolution-of-the-vanishing-of-ethan-carter/ <p>Despite the fact they&rsquo;re a small team, the Astronauts are pushing the boundary of &ldquo;whoa&rdquo; visuals in videogames. This lengthy blog post explains how they&rsquo;re doing it (spoiler: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photogrammetry">photogrammetry</a>)</p> This Is a Generic Brand Video https://lowbrowculture.com/video/this-is-a-generic-brand-video/ Wed, 26 Mar 2014 10:32:34 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/video/this-is-a-generic-brand-video/ <iframe width="1280" height="720" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/2YBtspm8j8M" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> The Secret of Immersive Game Worlds → http://www.theastronauts.com/2014/03/secret-immersive-game-worlds/ Sun, 23 Mar 2014 09:43:33 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/the-secret-of-immersive-game-worlds/ <p>The makers of <em>The Vanishing of Ethan Carter</em> on how games today are created with an artificial &rsquo;lure&rsquo; to pull the players through the level (like the yellow landmarks in <em>The Last of Us</em>) and how this makes the game world feel synthetic and unnatural.</p> The Setup / John McAfee → http://john.mcafee.usesthis.com/ Fri, 14 Mar 2014 10:07:55 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/the-setup-john-mcafee/ <p>This is amazing. Without spoiling much: his favourite piece of software is the remote control software for the M153 50 caliber machine gun. His second favourite is the Smart Voice Recorder for Android.</p> Defining Cinematography → http://www.candlerblog.com/2014/03/05/defining-cinematography/ Wed, 12 Mar 2014 15:57:10 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/defining-cinematography/ <p>Interesting anaylsis of how &lsquo;cinematography&rsquo; and &lsquo;visual effects&rsquo; are intersecting from the point of view of the Academy awards.</p> The Wildly Functional Studio of Video Wizard Casey Neistat → http://gizmodo.com/the-wildly-functional-studio-of-video-wizard-casey-neis-513828366 Sun, 16 Feb 2014 13:24:32 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/the-wildly-functional-studio-of-video-wizard-casey-neistat/ <p>I have the <em>weirdest</em> hetero man-crush on Casey Neistat. This behind-the-scenes video of how he works reminds me a lot of <a href="https://vimeo.com/78314194">Stanley Kubrick&rsquo;s Boxes</a>, just how weirdly obsessive he becomes about every little thing. C.f. Neistat&rsquo;s organisation of little red boxes according to the relationship of contents of the box to the other boxes around it.</p> House of Cards Against Humanity https://lowbrowculture.com/post/house-of-cards-against-humanity/ Thu, 13 Feb 2014 23:22:35 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/house-of-cards-against-humanity/ <p>Netflix teamed up with the Cards Against Humanity guys to promote the second season of <em>House of Cards</em>. We&rsquo;ve <a href="https://lowbrowculture.com/link/cards-against-humanitys-5-more-black-friday-sale/">already seen how CAH have a habit of thumbing their nose at the established way of doing business</a>, so how did this work out? Predictably. Here&rsquo;s how CAH introduced this new pack:</p> <blockquote> <p>Last month, someone in the Netflix marketing department had an epiphany: House of Cards andCards Against Humanity both contain the word &ldquo;cards.&rdquo; When we got a phone call from Netflix, we enthusiastically agreed that the two products indeed contain the word &ldquo;cards.&rdquo;</p> </blockquote> <p>You know how Cards Against Humanity works, right? It&rsquo;s sort of like Apples to Apples. The black cards have sentences with blanks in them and the white cards have potential answers for those blanks. In the <em>House of Cards</em> set, the first black card says &ldquo;I can’t believe Netflix is using to promote House of Cards.&rdquo;</p> <p><a href="https://twitter.com/MaxTemkin/status/434063801567031296">https://twitter.com/MaxTemkin/status/434063801567031296</a></p> <p><a href="https://twitter.com/MaxTemkin/status/434063968370323458">https://twitter.com/MaxTemkin/status/434063968370323458</a></p> <p>I don&rsquo;t think Cards Against Humanity will be getting a call from Netflix again any time soon.</p> Dirtbag Hamlet → http://the-toast.net/2014/02/11/dirtbag-hamlet/ Thu, 13 Feb 2014 10:25:43 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/dirtbag-hamlet/ <blockquote> <p>Enter HAMLET, skateboarding</p> <p>OPHELIA: My lord, I–</p> <p>HAMLET ollies over OPHELIA’s head</p> <p>HAMLET [offstage]: we were never dating</p> </blockquote> Paris’ abandoned subways to be turned into underground entertainment venues → http://killscreendaily.com/articles/news/future-mayor-plans-turn-paris-abandoned-subways-entertainment-venues/ Tue, 11 Feb 2014 10:15:43 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/paris-abandoned-subways-to-be-turned-into-underground-entertainment-venues/ <p>This sounds like a great idea, but can you imagine what it would be like if someone used one for a <a href="http://sleepnomorenyc.com/">Sleep No More</a>/<a href="http://punchdrunk.com/">Punchdrunk</a> venue?</p> Radiotopia → http://www.radiotopia.fm/ Tue, 04 Feb 2014 15:30:07 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/radiotopia/ <p>Your new favourite podcasts.</p> Warriors. Come out to pla-ay. https://lowbrowculture.com/video/warriors/ Tue, 04 Feb 2014 15:08:16 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/video/warriors/ <iframe src="//player.vimeo.com/video/85122270?color=c9ff23" width="800" height="450" frameborder="0" webkitallowfullscreen mozallowfullscreen allowfullscreen></iframe> <p>Fan-made trailer for The Warriors. Spot on.</p> hey are you cool → http://heyareyoucool.tumblr.com/ Tue, 28 Jan 2014 15:31:50 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/hey-are-you-cool/ <p>A collection of the people one player meets in Day Z. This is exactly what I love about these sandbox online games - the stories that come out of them are <em>fascinating</em>.</p> Noel Gallagher reviews Oasis videos and hates them all → http://www.theguardian.com/music/musicblog/2014/jan/22/noel-gallager-hates-oasis-videos Thu, 23 Jan 2014 14:11:22 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/noel-gallagher-reviews-oasis-videos-and-hates-them-all/ <p>I&rsquo;ve never much liked their music, but I&rsquo;ve always admired Noel Gallagher for his glorious, foul-mouthed candour. I love that he can even apply this to his own work.</p> Smithsonian - "You Can Get Placebo Sleep" → http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/you-can-get-placebo-sleep-180949410/ Thu, 23 Jan 2014 12:56:49 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/smithsonian-you-can-get-placebo-sleep/ <p>Interesting. I&rsquo;ve been getting really spotty sleep for the last couple of months, and I&rsquo;ve noticed that any time I&rsquo;m much worse any time I <em>think</em> got bad sleep, even if my sleepcycle tells me otherwise.</p> Sneaky Cards → http://sneakycards.net/ Thu, 09 Jan 2014 09:39:12 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/sneaky-cards/ <p>Real-world &lsquo;quest&rsquo; cards, where almost everything is designed to brighten someone&rsquo;s day, or at least make it more interesting. The multiplayer aspect almost turns it into a card-based ARG.</p> Netflix's dumbed-down algorithms → http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2014/01/03/netflixs-dumbed-down-algorithms/ Tue, 07 Jan 2014 13:32:01 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/netflixs-dumbed-down-algorithms/ <p>Felix Salmon has a great write-up on the recent changes to Netflix&rsquo;s recommendation scheme. Basically, Netflix is a victim of its own success.</p> Extras https://lowbrowculture.com/post/extras/ Sun, 29 Dec 2013 10:30:20 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/extras/ <p>Having hauled 2,000+ DVDs to Italy and back again (and then, having hauled them across Dublin as we moved houses), I couldn&rsquo;t face it again. It&rsquo;s ridiculous, unnecessary work. I was carrying 20 boxes of discs whose digital information can, for the most part, be grabbed off Netflix. So I got rid of them. Went to the Dublin Flea Market and sold almost all of them.</p> <p>But it&rsquo;s not just the stress of moving and storing these things that bothered me. The plain fact is that physical discs, as a medium, are dying. The industry is moving towards digital distribution. Here in Dublin, HMV closed down at the beginning of the year. Since then, it&rsquo;s become nearly impossible to find blu-ray discs for sale in any brick-and-mortar shop. Likewise, Xtravision have pretty much wound up its business in the Republic. Discs are dead.</p> <p>And you know what? I&rsquo;m mostly okay with this. Services like Netflix and iTunes Movies are the convenient future of entertainment in the home<sup id="fnref:1"><a href="#fn:1" class="footnote-ref" role="doc-noteref">1</a></sup>. But my problem with digital distribution is that we&rsquo;re returning to the VHS era. A situation where you only get the film, no &rsquo;extras&rsquo;. Even Apple, who offers sparse &lsquo;iTunes extras&rsquo; on a handful of titles, can&rsquo;t play these extras through their custom streaming device, the Apple TV. To me, this feels like we&rsquo;ve gone back 30 years, to before Laserdisc was introduced.</p> <p>Why do I think this is a problem? <a href="http://articles.latimes.com/print/1997/oct/12/entertainment/ca-41788">Here&rsquo;s an interview with Paul Thomas Anderson</a> from back in 1997, when <em>Boogie Nights</em> was first released.</p> <blockquote> <p>My filmmaking education consisted of finding out what filmmakers I liked were watching, then seeing those films. I learned the technical stuff from books and magazines, and with the new technology you can watch entire movies accompanied by audio commentary from the director. You can learn more from John Sturges&rsquo; audio track on the &lsquo;<em>Bad Day at Black Rock</em>&rsquo; laserdisc than you can in 20 years of film school. Film school is a complete con, because the information is there if you want it.</p> </blockquote> <p>Technically savvy directors who really want to record a commentary will find a way of getting one out out there. When Warner Bros decided against putting a commentary on the DVD of The Fountain, <a href="http://vimeo.com/20471400">Darren Aronofsky released his own</a>. Likewise, <a href="http://collider.com/looper-commentary-track-rian-johnson/">Rian Johnson released his own commentary for Looper</a> when the film was still in cinemas. But these are the exceptions. How many filmmakers are going to voluntarily sit in a recording booth and talk for two hours? And if we&rsquo;re moving to digital-only distribution, is there anyone even anyone asking directors to do this?</p> <p>In a post-Vine world, where making a film is now just a matter of <em>taking out your phone</em> and <em>pushing a goddamn button</em>, a good source of knowledge and education about the process of filmmaking is more important than ever.</p> <div class="footnotes" role="doc-endnotes"> <hr> <ol> <li id="fn:1"> <p>I don&rsquo;t entirely agree with the price stucture of iTunes films &ndash; <em>Futureworld</em> is €17 to buy in HD. Fucking <em>Futureworld</em>?! &ndash; , but I&rsquo;ve still bought a couple of films off them. Mostly to test out the service.&#160;<a href="#fnref:1" class="footnote-backref" role="doc-backlink">&#x21a9;&#xfe0e;</a></p> </li> </ol> </div> Best games I played in 2013 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/best-games-i-played-in-2013/ Sat, 28 Dec 2013 12:55:13 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/best-games-i-played-in-2013/ <h2 id="gone-home">Gone Home</h2> <p><img src="http://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2013/12/gonehome1.jpg" alt="Gone Home"></p> <p>For the most part, this list is unordered. It&rsquo;s just a collection of games I really enjoyed playing, with no attempt to impose any sort of arrangement or ranking. With one massive exception. <em>Gone Home</em> is, by a huge margin, the best game I played in 2013. It&rsquo;s a short game. An unfussy game. One where the story is genuinely affected by what you bring into it. It&rsquo;s a story about a family and each member of that family. But you need to pay attention to things. Random notes, ticket stubs, receipts all tell the story of the family. It&rsquo;s possible to finish the game without discovering any of this. Such clever, mature storytelling made me think that maybe game developers are finally ready to move beyond stories about space marines or zombies.</p> <h2 id="last-of-us">Last of Us</h2> <p><img src="http://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2013/12/lastofus.jpg" alt="lastofus"></p> <p>Which isn&rsquo;t to say that stories about zombies should go away. They&rsquo;re played out, for sure, but they&rsquo;re not dead (sorry). When they&rsquo;re done well, they can be sublime. <em>The Last of Us</em> is another perfect demonstration of great storytelling helping players overlook some wonky gameplay mechanics. It&rsquo;s a small story told against a massive backdrop. And goes to show that we <em>can</em> empathise with a game character, and we don&rsquo;t need to be with a character for 8 hours for their death to have emotional resonance.</p> <h2 id="gta-v">GTA V</h2> <p><img src="http://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2013/12/gta5.jpg" alt="gta5"></p> <p>It doesn&rsquo;t quite reach the dizzy heights of <em>Red Dead Redemption</em> (which could be my favourite game of the last console generation), and I&rsquo;m a little disappinted they&rsquo;ve lost (or, after <em>Saint&rsquo;s Row</em>, abandoned) some of the biting satire of the earlier games, but this was the first <em>GTA</em> I&rsquo;ve actually finished. That has to say something.</p> <h2 id="legend-of-zelda-a-link-between-worlds">Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds</h2> <p><img src="http://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2013/12/linkbetweenworlds.jpg" alt="linkbetweenworlds"></p> <p>Closely tied with <em>Wind Waker</em> for my favourite Zelda game of all time. <em>A Link Between Worlds</em> cleverly plays with our nostalgia for the franchise and the series&rsquo; own internal systems. It&rsquo;s familiar and yet different.</p> <h2 id="tomb-raider">Tomb Raider</h2> <p><img src="http://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2013/12/tombraider.jpg" alt="tombraider"></p> <p>Post-<em>Uncharted</em>, things clearly had to change for Lara Croft and the <em>Tomb Raider</em> franchise. So they toned down some of the more ridiculous aspects of the franchise and brought the grit (so much grit). It lost some of the charm and whimsy along the way, but it was another example of great, grown-up storytelling.</p> <h2 id="rogue-legacy">Rogue Legacy</h2> <p><img src="http://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2013/12/roguelegacy.jpg" alt="roguelegacy"></p> <p>Look at my steam stats and you&rsquo;ll probably see that Rogue Legacy is the game I&rsquo;ve played most this year. It&rsquo;s a hardcore platformer &ndash; <em>Castlevania</em> crossed with a <em>Dark Souls</em>. But as crushingly painful and un-fun as that sounds, <em>Rogue Legacy</em> has a huge playful streak. Every time you die, you have to choose your next character, one of three children of your now-dead hero. And they all have their own traits. For example, one might be myopic, so everything far-away is blurred. Or one might suffer from flatulence, so every jump causes a little toot. You&rsquo;ll choose a deliberately dodgy character just to collect a bit of money and see what your next heir will be like. Pulling yourself out of that &ldquo;just one more go&rdquo; cycle is <em>tough</em>.</p> <h2 id="candy-box">Candy Box</h2> <p><img src="http://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2013/12/candybox.jpg" alt="candybox"></p> <p>Like <em>Frog Fractions</em>, <em>Candy Box</em> is about unexpected discovery. A simple text page slowly gives way to an entire RPG adventure told through ASCII. Our office lost an entire day of productivity to this game, as people got drawn into the strange things the players shouted at each other across the room. This was my favourite surprise of 2013.</p> <h2 id="ridiculous-fishing">Ridiculous Fishing</h2> <p><img src="http://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2013/12/ridiculousfishing.jpg" alt="ridiculousfishing"></p> <p>Another game with a surprising depth (Oh God, I swear that was not meant to be a pun. I&rsquo;m so sorry), <em>Ridiculous Fishing</em> is actually three games in one. The first game sees you casting your lure, trying to avoid fish as it goes down. The moment your lure touches a fish, it stops descending and then you have to play a second game - touch as many fish as you can as your lure comes back up. Once they&rsquo;re up, you need to blast them with your shotgun to score points. This was my favourite short-session game of 2013.</p> <h2 id="papers-please">Papers Please</h2> <p><img src="http://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2013/12/papersplease.jpg" alt="papersplease"></p> <p>If there&rsquo;s a common theme to the games on this list, it&rsquo;s that the games I liked most in 2013 felt grown-up. In <em>Papers Please</em>, you&rsquo;re a border guard for an eastern European country in the 1980s. You have to check the day&rsquo;s rules to figure out who is allowed into your country. Your wages then go to paying rent or making sure your family don&rsquo;t starve. The game isn&rsquo;t &lsquo;fun&rsquo; in the traditional sense. And I&rsquo;ve never been so stressed in a game. But it&rsquo;s compelling in a deep, dark way.</p> <h2 id="the-stanley-parable">The Stanley Parable</h2> <p><img src="http://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2013/12/stanleyparable.jpg" alt="stanleyparable"></p> <p><em>The Stanley Parable</em> is a game about choice. Do you go through the red door or the blue door? When the game&rsquo;s narrator (best narrator since <em>Thomas Was Alone</em>) is saying &ldquo;Stanley went through the red door&rdquo;, do you still go through the red door, or do you disobey the game? It&rsquo;s also a game all about player agency. But better than that - it knows it&rsquo;s about these things. It can poke fun at them. It&rsquo;s always one step ahead of the player. There&rsquo;s a glitch where you end up outside the map. I thought I&rsquo;d broken the game, but the narrator kicked in with &ldquo;So, you found a glitch. I bet you feel pretty proud of yourself.&rdquo; It&rsquo;s like a mystery box. Even writing about it now, I want to get back into it. To see exactly where its boundaries are.</p> <h2 id="proteus">Proteus</h2> <p><img src="http://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2013/12/proteus.png" alt="proteus"></p> <p>I feel weird putting <em>Proteus</em> on this list when I already have <em>The Stanley Parable</em> and <em>Gone Home</em>. People will accuse me of having a boner for the First Person Walker genre. But <em>Proteus</em> is something genuinely special and I wish more people would try it out. You don&rsquo;t even have to &ldquo;get&rdquo; it, just try it. And I don&rsquo;t mean &ldquo;get&rdquo; it intellectually &ndash; it&rsquo;s about the passage of time and life and death, big whoop &ndash; I mean &ldquo;get&rdquo; it in an <em>emotional</em> way. And even the fact that I&rsquo;m using words like &lsquo;&ldquo;get&rdquo; it in an emotional way&rsquo; about a videogame should give you an idea of exactly why I love this game so much. Try it.</p> Jason Snell's "How to watch Doctor Who" → http://jsnell.intertext.com/post/69570512310/how-to-watch-doctor-who Wed, 11 Dec 2013 08:29:57 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/jason-snells-how-to-watch-doctor-who/ <p>The host of one of my favourite podcasts, <a href="http://theincomparable.com/">The Incomparable</a>, has put together a great guide for anyone who wants to watch Doctor Who but does&rsquo;t know where to start.</p> Microtransactions https://lowbrowculture.com/post/microtransactions/ Wed, 04 Dec 2013 10:42:41 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/microtransactions/ <p>There&rsquo;s an Andy Warhol quote I come back to again and again. It&rsquo;s from his book <a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0156717204/ref=nosim/0sil8">The Philosophy of Andy Warhol</a>:</p> <blockquote> You can be watching TV and see Coca-Cola, and you know that the President drinks Coke, Liz Taylor drinks Coke, and just think, you can drink Coke, too. A Coke is a Coke and no amount of money can get you a better Coke than the one the bum on the corner is drinking. All the Cokes are the same and all the Cokes are good. Liz Taylor knows it, the President knows it, the bum knows it, and you know it. </blockquote> <p>One of the things that made <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xSXofLK5hFQ">Soulja Boy&rsquo;s video review of <em>Braid</em></a> so fascinating (for me, at least) was that it showed a successful musician geeking out about something that nerds had almost taken for granted. We&rsquo;d played this game. We knew it. On the other hand, Jay-Z&rsquo;s lyrics are increasingly about extremely exclusive experiences (&quot;<a href="http://rapgenius.com/354182">Let&rsquo;s get faded / Le Meurice for like 6 days</a>&quot;), but in the case of Soulja Boy and his <em>Braid</em> video, this was an experience that anyone with an Xbox could have.</p> <p>Videogames used to be a great social democratiser. If you could afford a videogame, you would be getting the exact same experience as anyone else It didn&rsquo;t matter how many albums you&rsquo;d sold or how much money you had in the bank. The only experiential difference came down to your skill at the game.</p> <p>The recent <a href="http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=721448">controversy surrounding microtransactions in <em>Forza 5</em></a> makes me think we&rsquo;ll be seeing the end of this. If I can&rsquo;t afford to buy a particular car with real money in <em>Forza</em>, then I have to grind and grind until I amass enough in-game credits. According to some calculations, this could take anywhere up to a couple of years for some of the top-end cars.</p> <p>And that&rsquo;s what I find most troubling about microtransactions. They&rsquo;re extending class structure to something that didn&rsquo;t need one. Now, when I play a game, I&rsquo;ll know I could always pay more and be playing a better version of the same game.</p> NPR's interview with Allie Brosh → http://www.npr.org/2013/11/12/244758140/even-when-it-hurts-alot-brosh-faces-life-with-plenty-of-hyperbole Wed, 04 Dec 2013 10:26:22 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/nprs-interview-with-allie-brosh/ <p>Allie Brosh (of Hyperbole and a Half) gave an amazing interview to Terry Gross a while ago where they cover a lot of subjects, including her struggles with depression. It&rsquo;s the most honest and raw interview I&rsquo;ve ever heard and I don&rsquo;t want to ruin it. But she also talks about why she draws in such a deliberately crude style, which I found fascinating.</p> <blockquote> <p>The reason I draw myself this way is that I feel that this absurd squiggly thing is actually a much more accurate representation of myself than I am. It&rsquo;s a better tool for communicating my sense of humor and actually getting across what I&rsquo;m trying to say than, say, being there in the flesh. &hellip;</p> <p>It&rsquo;s me on the inside. That&rsquo;s what I&rsquo;m like when I view myself. I am this crude absurd little thing, this squiggly little thing on the inside. So it&rsquo;s more of a raw representation of what it feels like to be me.</p> </blockquote> Cards Against Humanity’s "$5 More" Black Friday Sale → http://maxistentialist.tumblr.com/post/68844686496/cards-against-humanitys-5-more-black-friday Tue, 03 Dec 2013 10:25:14 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/cards-against-humanitys-5-more-black-friday-sale/ <blockquote> <p>We called our contact at Amazon and explained the idea for the sale to them. They thought it was funny but were also pretty annoyed - apparently monkeying with pricing on the biggest sales day of the year isn’t as funny to Amazon as it is to us.</p> </blockquote> <p>I wish more companies were as playful or as honest as the Cards Against Humanity guys.</p> Agrippa - A Book of the Dead → http://agrippa.english.ucsb.edu/ Mon, 02 Dec 2013 15:32:06 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/agrippa-a-book-of-the-dead/ <p>From <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agrippa_(a_book_of_the_dead)">Wikipedia</a>:</p> <blockquote> Agrippa (a book of the dead) is a work of art created by speculative fiction novelist William Gibson, artist Dennis Ashbaugh and publisher Kevin Begos Jr. in 1992. The work consists of a 300-line semi-autobiographical electronic poem by Gibson, embedded in an artist's book by Ashbaugh. Gibson's text focused on the ethereal nature of memories (the title is taken from a photo album). Its principal notoriety arose from the fact that the poem, stored on a 3.5" floppy disk, was programmed to encrypt itself after a single use; similarly, the pages of the artist's book were treated with photosensitive chemicals, effecting the gradual fading of the words and images from the book's first exposure to light. </blockquote> <p>There&rsquo;s something really magical about this. I love Jason Rohrer&rsquo;s <a href="http://www.wired.com/magazine/2011/07/mf_chainworld/">Chain World, a game that is played once then passed to another player</a>. But there&rsquo;s something special about the physicality of Gibson and Ashbaugh&rsquo;s book. Something beautifully ephemeral.</p> Second Homes for Leisure Living → https://archive.org/details/SecondHomesForLeisureLiving Thu, 28 Nov 2013 08:44:24 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/second-homes-for-leisure-living/ <p>Between my love for 60s illustrations and my love for a well-designed A-Frame, this book is pretty much pornography for me.</p> Hello Processing! → http://hello.processing.org/ Wed, 27 Nov 2013 09:36:46 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/hello-processing/ <p>A short online lecture on how to start doing interesting things with <a href="http://processing.org/">Processing</a>. So well done.</p> The continuing awfulness of Penny Arcade https://lowbrowculture.com/post/the-continuing-awfulness-of-penny-arcade/ Wed, 27 Nov 2013 09:02:22 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/the-continuing-awfulness-of-penny-arcade/ <p><img src="http://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2013/11/770836278_VG7Cr-L.jpg" alt="770836278 VG7Cr L"></p> <p>If you ask me, Penny Arcade is a brand in trouble. Financially, they&rsquo;re doing well. Their three conferences draw huge crowds annually (although people are saying that&rsquo;s not necessarily a positive thing), but critically, they&rsquo;re facing a massive backlash for their handling of the whole &ldquo;dickwolves&rdquo; issue (which is far too long and complicated to get into here - read <a href="http://www.wired.com/underwire/2013/09/penny-arcade-expo-dickwolves/">Rachel Edidin&rsquo;s article on Wired if you want to be depressed</a>).</p> <p>So given that they&rsquo;re already turning a lot of people against them, why did they think it would make sense <a href="http://www.linkedin.com/jobs2/view/9887522?trk=job_nov">to advertise a job like this</a>?</p> <p>It goes to show the importance of context. If Penny Arcade was a struggling startup, the ad would make a certain amount of sense. Almost every startup has had someone working a job like that (although maybe they&rsquo;d be slightly ashamed and wouldn&rsquo;t describe the role in such a humblebrag). And no-one would think twice about it. Except Penny Arcade <em>aren&rsquo;t</em> a struggling startup. They&rsquo;re a multi-million dollar corporation with fingers in lots of different pies. Besides the successful conferences I&rsquo;ve already mentioned, they&rsquo;ve got advertising, videogames, a &rsquo;tv&rsquo; show, books, merch. They&rsquo;re not struggling for cash. And yet, they&rsquo;re looking for a lynchpin of their entire infrastructure and they&rsquo;re looking to pay them peanuts.</p> <p>Of course, the response from the internet has been <a href="http://www.marco.org/2013/11/26/penny-arcade-awful-job">predictably</a> <a href="http://cwbuecheler.tumblr.com/post/68163195864/on-penny-arcade-exploitation-and-the-myth-of-the">savage</a>.</p> <p>And know what I think is the worst part? They saw absolutely nothing wrong with it.</p> <blockquote> <p>I get this feeling we&rsquo;ll get a lot of interest for this job&hellip; (AN IT HIRE!) <a href="http://t.co/SiCjPTAQRJ">http://t.co/SiCjPTAQRJ</a></p> <p>&ndash; Robert Khoo (@rkhoo) <a href="https://twitter.com/rkhoo/statuses/405150202736418816">November 26, 2013</a></p> </blockquote> <p>I realise this whole thing is of little relevance to anyone who reads this blog, but I just want to add my voice to say please, don&rsquo;t anyone take this job. Even as a worst-case, there are thousands of other start-ups out there who have this exact same role with the exact same shitty remuneration, but at least you would go home knowing you weren&rsquo;t being exploited by a misogynistic, tone-deaf conglomerate.</p> An Interview with Bill Watterson https://lowbrowculture.com/quote/an-interview-with-bill-watterson/ Sat, 19 Oct 2013 23:31:56 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/quote/an-interview-with-bill-watterson/ <blockquote> <p><strong>Owing to spite or just a foul mood, have you ever peeled one of those stupid Calvin stickers off of a pickup truck?</strong></p> <p>I figure that, long after the strip is forgotten, those decals are my ticket to immortality.</p> </blockquote> <p>Mental Floss has done the impossible and <a href="http://mentalfloss.com/article/53216/mental-floss-exclusive-our-interview-bill-watterson">snagged an interview with Bill Watterson</a>. And he seems just as charming as I&rsquo;d imagined he would be.</p> Matt Fraction on Suicide → http://mattfraction.com/post/63999786236/sorry-to-put-this-on-you-but-i-have-an-honest-question Thu, 17 Oct 2013 13:17:33 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/matt-fraction-on-suicide/ <p>God, this kid can write. He should be a writer or something.</p> Airships → http://www.theatlantic.com/infocus/2013/10/airships/100607/ Tue, 15 Oct 2013 07:52:05 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/airships/ <p>Even though I know these are all real, my brain can&rsquo;t process them. They&rsquo;re like something from an alternate reality.</p> Highway Sing-along https://lowbrowculture.com/video/highway-sing-along/ Fri, 11 Oct 2013 08:51:25 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/video/highway-sing-along/ <iframe width="1280" height="720" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/TETsJ1hS6EY" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> <p>This is lovely. Who couldn&rsquo;t use a few more moments of pure, uncynical joy in their lives?</p> Cesspool of Negativity https://lowbrowculture.com/quote/cesspool-of-negativity/ Fri, 27 Sep 2013 16:01:43 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/quote/cesspool-of-negativity/ <blockquote> <p>Solitary play can feel especially shameful, and we gamers have internalized that vaguely masturbatory shame, even those of us who&rsquo;ve decided that solitary play can be profoundly meaningful. Niko, I&rsquo;ve thought about this a lot, and internalized residual shame is the best explanation I have to account for the cesspool of negativity that sits stagnating at the center of video-game culture, which right now seems worse than it&rsquo;s ever been.</p> </blockquote> <p>&ndash; I might not have loved his book, but <a href="http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/9719678/tom-bissell-writes-letter-niko-bellic-grand-theft-auto-v">Tom Bissell&rsquo;s take on <em>GTA V</em></a> is spot on, in so many ways.</p> How Atari box art turned 8-bit games into virtual wonderlands → http://www.theverge.com/2013/9/19/4716444/how-atari-box-art-turned-8-bit-games-into-virtual-wonderlands Fri, 20 Sep 2013 08:41:06 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/how-atari-box-art-turned-8-bit-games-into-virtual-wonderlands/ <p>I sometimes worry that my old-man nostalgia is getting the better of me, but looking at these cartridges just nailed it for me. The covers of 8-bit games were things of beauty. Never mind that the graphics could never live up to the promise of the cover = your imagination filled in the details.</p> Kitsault - Canadian Ghost Town → http://www.messynessychic.com/2013/09/04/the-time-capsule-ghost-town-waiting-to-be-brought-back-to-life/ Wed, 11 Sep 2013 07:52:19 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/kitsault-canadian-ghost-town/ <p>For a place that has been abandoned for over 30 years, this place is eerily well-preserved.</p> Hilarious, terrifying or depressing https://lowbrowculture.com/quote/hilarious-terrifying-or-depressing/ Thu, 05 Sep 2013 22:48:08 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/quote/hilarious-terrifying-or-depressing/ <blockquote> <p>Intelligence officials asked the Guardian, New York Times and ProPublica not to publish this article, saying that it might prompt foreign targets to switch to new forms of encryption or communications that would be harder to collect or read.</p> </blockquote> <p><a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/05/nsa-gchq-encryption-codes-security">US and UK spy agencies defeat privacy and security on the internet - guardian.co.uk</a></p> London to Brighton - 1953, 1983, 2013 https://lowbrowculture.com/video/london-to-brighton-1953-1983-2013/ Tue, 03 Sep 2013 16:20:21 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/video/london-to-brighton-1953-1983-2013/ <iframe width="1280" height="720" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/tGTwSNPqAqs" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> The Irish Pub https://lowbrowculture.com/video/the-irish-pub/ Sat, 24 Aug 2013 08:55:12 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/video/the-irish-pub/ <iframe width="1280" height="720" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/N9uaboCF1N4" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> Visionaries https://lowbrowculture.com/quote/visionaries/ Wed, 22 May 2013 08:19:25 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/quote/visionaries/ <blockquote> <p>All due respect to Don Mattrick and his Prada-clad team of VPs, but it&rsquo;s just a bunch of dudes trying to sell us a box. Bring out the product guys, the visionaries, and then have them explain why they made the decisions they made that will affect us all, and there&rsquo;ll be a noticeable change in attitude from the gamer crowd.</p> </blockquote> <p>Xbox One was revealed yesterday and received a lukewarm reaction from the &lsquo;core&rsquo; gamer crowd. <a href="http://blog.jwhdavison.com/2013/05/xbox-one-hardly-surprising.html">John Davison nails the reason why</a></p> What would DFW make of Netflix? https://lowbrowculture.com/quote/what-would-dfw-make-of-netflix/ Wed, 22 May 2013 07:45:56 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/quote/what-would-dfw-make-of-netflix/ <blockquote> <p>An optimally adapted parasite takes as much from its host as possible without damaging the viability of the host. In order for us to stay viable hosts for the media parasite, we need only enough waking hours away from media to make money and to spend that money on advertisers’ offerings and/or media’s costs (and of course to feed ourselves and, like, stay alive). Media will gladly take all our other hours.</p> </blockquote> <p><a href="http://www.themorningnews.org/article/from-here-you-can-see-everything">James A. Pearson on what DFW would make of Netflix</a></p> Cyndi Lauper - Money Changes Everything https://lowbrowculture.com/video/cyndi-lauper-money-changes-everything/ Tue, 14 May 2013 11:26:03 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/video/cyndi-lauper-money-changes-everything/ <iframe width="960" height="720" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/pp4suZ4jNXg" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> <p>This is on <em>heavy</em> rotation in my house right now.</p> What do Hate Groups Think of Jennifer Lawrence? https://lowbrowculture.com/post/what-do-hate-groups-think-of-jennifer-lawrence/ Wed, 08 May 2013 20:56:38 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/what-do-hate-groups-think-of-jennifer-lawrence/ <blockquote> <p><strong>Hey there. I was just wondering if you could tell me your opinions on Jennifer Lawrence?</strong> <strong>Tony Alamo Christian Ministries:</strong> I have no idea who that is.</p> <p><strong>You know who Jennifer Lawrence is! She just won the Best Actress Oscar? She was the one who tripped on the stairs when she was going to get her award, and it was adorable?</strong><br> This is Tony Alamo Christian Ministries. This is a church. </p> <p><strong>You didn&rsquo;t see the Oscars this year?</strong><br> Did you call us because you have nothing better to do? Let me just say, real quick, the Lord&rsquo;s coming back. Very soon. And He&rsquo;s not gonna ask you how many movies you saw or which celebrities you knew. He&rsquo;s gonna ask you what you did for his son, Jesus. He died on the cross, and He did that just for you, and that&rsquo;s what we preach.</p> <p>**Wait, are you doing that thing where people pretend they don&rsquo;t know what someone or something is to seem cool? Like, my friend is really cerebral and is into a bunch of obscure old music, and one time he claimed he didn&rsquo;t know who the Spice Girls are. Which, obviously, is bullshit. **<br> Did you hear anything that I just said?</p> </blockquote> This is Water https://lowbrowculture.com/video/this-is-water/ Wed, 08 May 2013 07:47:08 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/video/this-is-water/ <p><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xmpYnxlEh0c">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xmpYnxlEh0c</a></p> <p>Is it weird to miss someone you never met? Because I really miss David Foster Wallace.</p> Top 10 Free Kindle Books - "Politics & Social Science" section https://lowbrowculture.com/post/top-10-free-kindle-books-politics-social-science-section/ Sun, 05 May 2013 21:57:09 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/top-10-free-kindle-books-politics-social-science-section/ <p>A list without judgement:</p> <ul> <li> <p>Preparing for the Coming Collapse of the U.S. Dollar 2nd Edition (Surviving in the New America)</p> </li> <li> <p>The Poor Man&rsquo;s Prepping Guide: How to Prepare for Disaster on a Shoestring Budget (Stay Alive)</p> </li> <li> <p>The Art of War</p> </li> <li> <p>Delusions of Grandeur</p> </li> <li> <p>The United States Constitution</p> </li> <li> <p>The Bug Out Bag: What You Need to Stay Alive</p> </li> <li> <p>How To Survive: The End Of The World (How to Survive the Apocalypse)</p> </li> <li> <p>Bug Out: What to Do When It&rsquo;s Time to Get Out of Dodge</p> </li> <li> <p>Death by China: Confronting the Dragon - A Global Call to Action</p> </li> <li> <p>Beyond Good and Evil</p> </li> </ul> Nginx requests - Raspberry Pi vs Amazon AWS → http://www.chimerasaurus.com/2013/01/nginx-requestssecond-raspberry-pi-vs-amazon-ec2/ Sat, 04 May 2013 13:01:21 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/nginx-requests-raspberry-pi-vs-amazon-aws/ <p>To give you an idea of just how under-powered a t1.micro actually is.</p> StoryBundle Video Game Bundle → http://storybundle.com/ Fri, 03 May 2013 09:42:27 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/storybundle-video-game-bundle/ <p>For the next 18 days, StoryBundle are offering 7 great DRM-free videogame books for whatever you want to pay. Pay more than $10 and you get 3 more books, including <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/250-Indie-Games-Must-Play/dp/143987574X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1367574107&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=250+indie+games+you+must+play">250 Indie Games You Must Play</a>.</p> I'll Dance Again https://lowbrowculture.com/quote/ill-dance-again/ Thu, 25 Apr 2013 11:09:17 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/quote/ill-dance-again/ <blockquote> <p>Hell, yeah, I’ve had plenty [of dark moments]. I’ve thrown my walker across the room and haven’t used it yet. But I realized you have to be selfish about the things that matter the most. My husband. The job I love. Dancing is my life. Yeah, having my foot blown off, that really sucks. But I can’t wallow in woe is me.</p> <p>I can’t let some (expletive) come along and steal my whole life. So, I’ll dance again. And next year, though I’ve never been a runner, yes, I plan to run the marathon.</p> </blockquote> <p>&ndash; <a href="http://bostonherald.com/news_opinion/columnists/peter_gelzinis/2013/04/dance_instructor_injured_in_bombing_vows_ill_dance">Adrianne Haslet-Davis might be my new hero</a></p> Only God Forgives https://lowbrowculture.com/video/only-god-forgives/ Fri, 19 Apr 2013 07:11:16 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/video/only-god-forgives/ <iframe width="1280" height="720" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/9yH31tp0oEk" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> Cary Grant on Style https://lowbrowculture.com/quote/cary-grant-on-style/ Fri, 19 Apr 2013 06:07:51 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/quote/cary-grant-on-style/ <blockquote> <p>I&rsquo;m reminded of a piece of advice my father gave me regarding shoes: it has stood me in good stead whenever my own finances were low. He said it&rsquo;s better to buy one good pair of shoes than four cheap ones. One pair made of fine leather could outlast four inferior pairs, and, if well cared for, would continue to proclaim your good judgment and taste no matter how old they become.</p> </blockquote> <p>&ndash; <a href="http://www.gq.com/style/wear-it-now/201304/cary-grant-on-style">Cary Grant on Style</a></p> BBC defends Baroness Thatcher Ding Dong song decision → http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-22126940 Sat, 13 Apr 2013 21:17:54 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/bbc-defends-baroness-thatcher-ding-dong-song-decision/ <p>This is really interesting. Even though the song is back in the charts, the BBC will only play 5 seconds of &lsquo;Ding Dong, the Witch is Dead&rsquo; on the Chart Show. They&rsquo;re not censoring a song, they&rsquo;re censoring a <em>context</em>.</p> Roger Corman school of Game Development https://lowbrowculture.com/post/roger-corman-school-of-game-development/ Sat, 13 Apr 2013 21:01:28 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/roger-corman-school-of-game-development/ <div class="embed video-player"> <iframe class="youtube-player" type="text/html" width="640" height="385" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/0dofacvjRkc" allowfullscreen frameborder="0"> </iframe> </div> <p>After he finished filming <em>The Raven</em>, Roger Corman decided that since he already had the large, gothic sets built, he could re-use them (and sets leftover from other films) to quickly knock together another film, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Terror_(1963_film)"><em>The Terror</em></a>. He effectively got two films for (roughly) the price of one.</p> <p>With another console cycle just around the corner, we can expect a tidal wave of news stories about the rising cost of game development. &ldquo;Now that everything is in super-high-res 4K HD, creating art assets costs more than the GDP of some European nations&rdquo; they&rsquo;ll probably say.</p> <p>This is why I love what Ubisoft have done with <em>Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon</em>. Rather than just scrapping all the work they did on <em>Far Cry 3</em>, or even just knocking together some boring DLC for extra multiplayer maps, they&rsquo;re re-using the assets in a completely new and interesting way. A way I&rsquo;m really excited to play.</p> I Am Packed → http://iampacked.com/ Thu, 04 Apr 2013 16:27:18 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/i-am-packed/ <p>The voyeuristic intersection of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knoll_(verb)">knolling</a> and packing porn.</p> The Battle We Didnt Choose → http://mywifesfightwithbreastcancer.com/ Tue, 02 Apr 2013 13:20:07 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/the-battle-we-didnt-choose/ <p>Heartbreaking.</p> Inside the Old City Hall Subway Station → http://tribecacitizen.com/2013/03/14/inside-the-old-city-hall-subway-station/ Fri, 22 Mar 2013 15:38:39 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/inside-the-old-city-hall-subway-station/ <p>I&rsquo;ve mentioned this before, but I always find it weird when I read about these &ldquo;hidden&rdquo; places that I&rsquo;ve visited in a videogame (in this case, I think a level of <em>The Darkness</em> took place in this subway station). It&rsquo;s weird to have memories of places you&rsquo;ve never visited before.</p> Lemons https://lowbrowculture.com/video/lemons/ Fri, 22 Mar 2013 14:19:18 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/video/lemons/ <iframe width="1280" height="720" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/sdSJ1--kBZ4" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> <p>I never really understood the point of <a href="http://vine.co">Vine</a> before. Now I get it. I totally get it.</p> Thumbs and Ammo → http://thumbsandammo.blogspot.ie/ Sat, 16 Mar 2013 05:39:12 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/thumbs-and-ammo/ <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2013/03/Ramboth.jpg" alt="Ramboth"></p> <p>&ldquo;Real tough guys don&rsquo;t need guns, they just need a positive, can-do attitude&rdquo;.</p> Ridiculous Fishing - A Tale of Redemption → http://www.ridiculousfishing.com/ Thu, 14 Mar 2013 13:58:46 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/ridiculous-fishing-a-tale-of-redemption/ <p>If <a href="http://hotlinemiami.com/">Hotline Miami</a> was a fishing game, it would probably look a lot like this. €2.89 on the iTunes store.</p> Global Internet Porn Habits Infographic → http://www.pornmd.com/sex-search Wed, 13 Mar 2013 17:23:17 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/global-internet-porn-habits-infographic/ <p>This site has broken down the 10 most popular porn search terms based on their country of origin. #1 in Ukraine is &ldquo;Raincoat&rdquo;. Wow.</p> Rob Thomas launches Kickstarter campaign for Veronica Mars: The Movie → http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/559914737/the-veronica-mars-movie-project Wed, 13 Mar 2013 15:35:49 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/rob-thomas-launches-kickstarter-campaign-for-veronica-mars-the-movie/ <p>I&rsquo;m totally backing this. And if someone fancies launching a campaign to get a <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1389371/?ref_=fn_al_tt_2">Rubicon</a> or <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1493239/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Terriers</a> movie going, I&rsquo;d be all for that too.</p> Frequency Illusion https://lowbrowculture.com/post/frequency-illusion/ Wed, 13 Mar 2013 12:03:05 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/frequency-illusion/ <p>Sophia Coppola and Kristen Sheridan have both got new movies out about a group of attractive young teenagers who break into the houses of rich people.</p> <h2 id="dollhouse">Dollhouse</h2> <div class="embed video-player"> <iframe class="youtube-player" type="text/html" width="640" height="385" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/8SnVHWPSSik" allowfullscreen frameborder="0"> </iframe> </div> <h2 id="the-bling-ring">The Bling Ring</h2> <div class="embed video-player"> <iframe class="youtube-player" type="text/html" width="640" height="385" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/BST3CCnP6uE" allowfullscreen frameborder="0"> </iframe> </div> <p>Is there something to be read into this? Is this a subject that especially appeals to daughters of directors past their prime? Should we expect Jennifer Lynch to complete the trifecta? Or is this just one of those things, like <em>A Bug&rsquo;s Life</em> and <em>Antz</em> landing at the same time? I don&rsquo;t know. Do I care? No. I&rsquo;m just killing time here.</p> Sorry, that username is taken → http://sorrythatusernameisalreadytaken.tumblr.com/ Tue, 12 Mar 2013 15:48:35 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/sorry-that-username-is-taken/ <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2013/03/tumblr_mj5lz9mwx41s78semo1_500.png" alt="tumblr_mj5lz9mwx41s78semo1_500"></p> The Last Mile https://lowbrowculture.com/video/the-last-mile/ Thu, 07 Mar 2013 12:13:40 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/video/the-last-mile/ <iframe width="853" height="480" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/-Lug_IxFKo8" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> <p>Blown away.</p> Dead End Thrills - Kentucky Route Zero → http://deadendthrills.com/2013/03/high-horse/ Wed, 06 Mar 2013 17:50:14 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/kentucky-route-zero/ <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2013/03/highhorse.jpg" alt="highhorse"></p> <p><a href="http://deadendthrills.com/">Dead End Thrills</a> is a lovely blog that takes screenshots of beautiful games and presents them as best they can. For example, to generate <a href="http://barbarella.deadendthrills.com/imagestore/stalkershadowofchernobyl/1024/hymnofthebigwheel.jpg">this lovely image from <em>Stalker</em></a>, they used nine graphical mods. These are things you can add to the game to make it look even prettier. To produce the image from <em>Kentucky Route Zero</em> above? None. Just a bit of offline antialiasing in Photoshop to smooth some of the lines.</p> <p>It&rsquo;s a <em>beautiful</em> game. And <a href="http://store.steampowered.com/app/231200/">now you can buy it on Steam</a>.</p> Journey - The Annotated Score https://lowbrowculture.com/video/journey-the-annotated-score/ Wed, 06 Mar 2013 09:21:18 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/video/journey-the-annotated-score/ <iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/qGcXI_BaR2Y" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> <p><em>Journey</em>&rsquo;s composer, Austin Wintory, gives a fascinating annotated walkthrough of the game&rsquo;s orchestral score.</p> Point - Counterpoint https://lowbrowculture.com/post/point-counterpoint-3/ Fri, 01 Mar 2013 21:14:30 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/point-counterpoint-3/ <h2 id="point">Point</h2> <p><a href="http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2013-02-27-all-future-ea-games-to-feature-microtransactions?utm_source=newsletter&amp;utm_medium=email&amp;utm_campaign=european-daily">All future EA games to feature microtransactions</a></p> <blockquote> <p>&ldquo;The next and much bigger piece [of the business] is microtransactions within games,&rdquo; he revealed. &ldquo;We&rsquo;re building into all of our games the ability to pay for things along the way, either to get to a higher level to buy a new character, to buy a truck, a gun, whatever it might be, and consumers are enjoying and embracing that way of the business.&rdquo;</p> </blockquote> <h2 id="counterpoint">Counterpoint</h2> <p><a href="http://www.theverge.com/2013/3/1/4042704/real-racing-3-available-in-the-us-for-free">&lsquo;Real Racing 3&rsquo; is ruined by in-app purchases</a></p> <blockquote> <p>It&rsquo;s a shame, because the game itself could be great. It features some of the most impressive mobile graphics we&rsquo;ve ever seen, the list of cars and courses is endless, and the way it integrates your friends&rsquo; lap times into your races for a pseudo-multiplayer experience makes it all the more immersive. The problem is that it all just feels so cheapened by the business model; while it&rsquo;s possible to play the game a little each day without forking out money &hellip; the constant nagging for cash grates.</p> </blockquote> <p><a href="http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2013-02-28-real-racing-3-review">Real Racing Review - 3/10</a></p> <blockquote> <p>There&rsquo;s a good game somewhere within Real Racing 3 - and there are plenty of free-to-play games that prove this model can work successfully while respecting the player. Firemonkeys, and perhaps more pertinently EA, have got that balance horribly, horribly wrong, to an extent where the business model becomes the game - with gut-wrenching results.</p> </blockquote> Game Over Tinies → http://www.pleated-jeans.com/2013/02/25/the-a-to-z-of-video-game-deaths/#more-54012 Wed, 27 Feb 2013 14:03:37 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/game-over-tinies/ <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2013/02/tinies.gif" alt="tinies"></p> <p>Video game deaths in the style of Edward Gorey&rsquo;s <em>The Gashlycrumb Tinies</em>.</p> Sorry https://lowbrowculture.com/quote/sorry/ Tue, 26 Feb 2013 15:31:22 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/quote/sorry/ <blockquote> <p>In addition, let me take this opportunity to apologize to anyone who&rsquo;s ever been offended by anything at any point throughout time. To be challenged in any way, or made to feel an emotion that is not immediately recognizable, is the worst thing in the world, and something for which the incredible human gift of language should never, ever be used. We are sorry if your feelings were ever hurt about anything.</p> </blockquote> <p><a href="http://www.thingx.tv/articles/thing-x-apologizes-2287/">ThingX&rsquo;s mocking</a> of <a href="http://www.laughspin.com/2013/02/25/should-the-onion-apologize-for-calling-quvenzhane-wallis-a-cnt-poll/">The Onion&rsquo;s Quvenzhané Wallis apology</a> is spot on.</p> To This Day https://lowbrowculture.com/video/to-this-day/ Tue, 26 Feb 2013 12:18:57 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/video/to-this-day/ <iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/ltun92DfnPY" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> Inbox Zero for Life → http://xph.us/2013/01/22/inbox-zero-for-life.html Tue, 26 Feb 2013 11:10:09 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/inbox-zero-for-life/ <p>I&rsquo;ve been following this routine for a couple of weeks now and, so far, it seems to be working. I process my inbox a couple of times a day and then spend the rest of my time in the &lsquo;starred&rsquo; section, clearing out anything that needs some attention. One thing I&rsquo;ve noticed about this is that I&rsquo;m much more likely to reply to an email now, even if it&rsquo;s just a two-word response. I&rsquo;m usually prone to procrastinating about replying to people, especially if the answer is in the negative. Strange that this email strategy seems to have broken me of this.</p> <p>Unfortunately, <a href="http://www.sparrowmailapp.com/">Sparrow</a> seems to be the only desktop Mac mail client to support Gmail keyboard shortcuts. Mail client developers: support Gmail keyboard shortcuts!</p> Idea: Peanut Gallery https://lowbrowculture.com/post/idea-peanut-gallery/ Mon, 25 Feb 2013 12:02:43 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/idea-peanut-gallery/ <p>Peanut Gallery: A script that takes a start time and an end time and generates a subtitle file for your twitter stream (or a given hash tag), so you can watch a show or other live event with (time-shifted) real-time twitter commentary.</p> <p>I woke up this morning to a twitter stream full of amazing Oscar commentary. For example, from the ever-reliable <a href="http://twitter.com/zodiac_mf">Zodiac Motherfucker</a>:</p> <blockquote> <p><a href="https://twitter.com/ZODIAC_MF/status/305863992142880769">@ZODIAC_MF</a> GET MRS POTATO HEAD THE FUCK OUT OF HERE</p> </blockquote> <p>By itself, this is a hilarious sentence, but who is he talking about? Without context, I&rsquo;m missing something. Actually, for most of my twitter stream last night, I don&rsquo;t know what people are referring to. I&rsquo;d say the same thing happened for anyone who wasn&rsquo;t watching the Sony PlayStation announcement. For certain shows and events, a snarky running commentary makes that show infinitely more entertaining.</p> <p>I&rsquo;ll probably watch the Oscars tonight &ndash; time-shifting a live event &ndash; and I&rsquo;d love to be able to time-shift my twitter stream as well. I think a subtitle track for my media file would be the best way of doing this.</p> <p>Unfortunately, I think this is the kind of thing Anil Dash was referring to in his essay <a href="http://dashes.com/anil/2012/12/the-web-we-lost.html">The Web We Lost</a>: I don&rsquo;t think Twitter&rsquo;s API allows this kind of usage. Shame.</p> Football: The Meal https://lowbrowculture.com/post/football-the-meal/ Wed, 20 Feb 2013 08:58:47 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/football-the-meal/ <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2013/02/guy.jpg" alt="guy"></p> <p>Remember Guy&rsquo;s American Kitchen and Bar? The restaurant <a href="http://lowbrowculture.com/2012/11/15/welcome-to-flavour-town/">Pete Wells slated in the New York Times</a>? Its domain name is <a href="http://guysamerican.com/">guysamerican.com</a>. <a href="https://twitter.com/BryanMytko">Bryan Mytko</a> bought the domain <a href="http://guysamericankitchenandbar.com/">guysamericankitchenandbar.com</a> and produced this. And it&rsquo;s <em>glorious</em>. &ldquo;35 oz of super-saddened, Cheez-gutted wolf meat&rdquo; is one of the best lines I&rsquo;ve read since the hey-day of Charlie Brooker&rsquo;s <a href="http://tvgohome.com/">TV Go Home</a>.</p> Kitbashed → http://kitbashed.com/ Tue, 19 Feb 2013 11:16:12 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/kitbashed/ <p>Michael Heilemann&rsquo;s site is to <em>Star Wars</em> what Lee Unkrich&rsquo;s <a href="http://www.theoverlookhotel.com/">The Overlook Hotel</a> is to <em>The Shining</em>. Exhaustive and written by a true obsessive. Beautiful.</p> Depression Quest → http://www.depressionquest.com/ Tue, 19 Feb 2013 08:02:31 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/depression-quest/ <p>Even if you&rsquo;re not suffering from depression (or if you <em>think</em> you&rsquo;re not suffering from depression), you should play this. Touching and extremely well-done.</p> Don't Mind at All https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/don-t-mind-at-all/ Fri, 15 Feb 2013 00:33:36 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/don-t-mind-at-all/ <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2013/02/tumblr_mi887aKQb11qz6f4bo10_500.jpg" alt="tumblr_mi887aKQb11qz6f4bo10_500"></p> <p>Part of <a href="http://tumblr.austinkleon.com/post/43092910638?utm_source=feedburner&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_campaign=Feed%3A+austinkleontumblr+%28TUMBLR+%7C+AUSTINKLEON.com%29">Austin Kleon&rsquo;s Love Blackouts</a></p> Happy Valentine's Day https://lowbrowculture.com/video/happy-valentines-day/ Thu, 14 Feb 2013 13:00:01 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/video/happy-valentines-day/ <iframe width="800" height="450" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/ApIuCbTZuxc" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> <p>Happy Valentine&rsquo;s Day.</p> How Netflix is turning viewers into puppets → http://www.salon.com/2013/02/01/how_netflix_is_turning_viewers_into_puppets/ Thu, 14 Feb 2013 11:54:35 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/how-netflix-is-turning-viewers-into-puppets/ <p>This is interesting. Netflix analysed its data and concluded that a lot of people liked political thrillers, a lot of people liked Kevin Spacey and a lot of people liked films directed by David Fincher. And so the first show they&rsquo;ve bankrolled is a political thriller starring Kevin Spacey and directed by David Fincher. And rather than some lowest-common-denominator, design-by-committee bullshit, it actually turned out pretty good.</p> Gamers are the ultimate trolls → http://www.theastronauts.com/2013/01/gamers-are-the-ultimate-trolls/ Fri, 08 Feb 2013 15:57:57 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/gamers-are-the-ultimate-trolls/ <blockquote> <p>I am guilty of this myself, of course. When Half Life started and the creators were showing me the living, breathing world outside of the rail car, I was too busy to notice, trying to jump out of the car through the window. In Half Life 2, when Alyx was telling me something important, I couldn’t hear it over the explosions of the grenades I kept throwing at her.</p> </blockquote> <p>This week&rsquo;s <a href="http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/188/kid-logic">This American Life</a> has a story about how babies are like scientists, and by doing things like, say, dropping their forks on the ground, they&rsquo;re actually working out the logic of the world. Because each game is different, with different rules and different logic, players have to do their own experiments. It&rsquo;s just a bonus that these experiments so often lead to hilarious, ridiculous situations.</p> Little Printer: A portrait in the nude → http://www.domusweb.it/en/design/little-printer-a-portrait-in-the-nude-/ Thu, 07 Feb 2013 23:26:23 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/little-printer-a-portrait-in-the-nude/ <p>I think that Berg&rsquo;s <a href="http://bergcloud.com/littleprinter/">Little Printer</a> is a great idea. It&rsquo;s right in the middle of the junction between magical technology and tactile physicality (I also think its £199 price-point is <em>insane</em>). This is a really nice insight into the design process behind it.</p> Tegan and Sara - Closer https://lowbrowculture.com/video/tegan-and-sara-closer/ Thu, 07 Feb 2013 14:20:37 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/video/tegan-and-sara-closer/ <iframe width="1280" height="720" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/9e9NSMY8QiQ" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> <p>Tegan and Sara have spent years putting out what I can only assume are perfectly fine indie records. I wouldn&rsquo;t really know, because they never really appeared on my radar (I listened to <em>Sainthood</em> a bit, but it didn&rsquo;t grab me). Now, they put out an album of amazing pop and I can&rsquo;t get enough.</p> <p>Bullshit indie bands: more amazing pop, please.</p> Far Cry 3 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/far-cry-3/ Wed, 06 Feb 2013 09:56:29 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/far-cry-3/ <p><img src="http://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2013/02/far-cry-3.jpg" alt="far-cry-3"></p> <p>I&rsquo;m finding it impossible to deal with <em>Far Cry 3</em> in its own terms. It&rsquo;s much easier for me to talk about it in terms of games it&rsquo;s <em>not</em>.</p> <p>It&rsquo;s not <em>Far Cry 2</em>, for example. Oh my God, <em>Far Cry 2</em> hates the player. Never mind the respawning enemies making sure that every square inch of that game&rsquo;s sprawling African savannah was actively hostile towards the player. And this was the least of your worries. More than once when I was playing that game, I found myself in the middle of a firefight when my gun would suddenly just fall apart in my hands (weapons &lsquo;wear out&rsquo; in <em>Far Cry 2</em>), I&rsquo;d panic and run away to consider my next move and that&rsquo;s when my character would suffer a malaria attack (your character is infected with malaria at the start of <em>Far Cry 2</em> and spends the rest of the game dealing with this). And then I&rsquo;d die.</p> <p><em>Far Cry 3</em> is not this. It&rsquo;s much more forgiving. More hand-holding. Almost to a fault. Straying too far off the prescribed path (even <em>during the tutorial</em>) will result in a &lsquo;mission failed&rsquo; screen. It&rsquo;s not messing around. It doesn&rsquo;t want you actually exploring the huge, open island without making sure you fully understand the mechanics and the context. As helpful and friendly as this is, I can&rsquo;t help but feel like this is a step back. It takes fewer risks. It&rsquo;s less dangerous. Much as I disliked the random bullshit in the previous <em>Far Cry</em> game, it was at least <em>remarkable</em>.</p> <p>Speaking of exploring, <em>Far Cry 3</em> is not <a href="http://www.visitproteus.com/"><em>Proteus</em></a> or <a href="http://www.ionfx.com/product_pc_Miasmata.php"><em>Misasmata</em></a>. It&rsquo;s not even <a href="http://dear-esther.com/"><em>Dear Esther</em></a>. These are all island-based games that are very much about exploration. <em>Proteus</em> and <em>Dear Esther</em> are nothing <em>but</em> exploration. You get from it what you get. <em>Miasmata</em> has a story and a history for you to peel back, layer after layer. Your exploration is rewarded with a deeper understanding of the narrative. It&rsquo;s like the designers took a look at <em>Lost</em> and thought &ldquo;there&rsquo;s a game there.&rdquo;</p> <p><em>Far Cry 3</em> is not that either. The game is set on a couple of huge, open islands with a long, varied history, but there&rsquo;s actually very little to explore. Every hut on the island is the same. Every cave is the same. There are WWII-era gun emplacements. There are downed aircrafts. There are beached tankers. But these are all just eye-candy, not actually things that affect your game in any way. They don&rsquo;t reveal anything about the story of <em>Far Cry 3</em> or the history of the Rook Islands. I found one cabin with a body in a noose, but without any context for who this guy was or why he hung himself, it&rsquo;s just a meaningless non-sequitur.</p> <p>And this is the problem with <em>Far Cry 3</em> - it&rsquo;s an enjoyable romp, but it doesn&rsquo;t have any aspirations to be anything new or original or even <em>different</em>. The entire plot is built on a series of tired Alice in Wonderland parallels (with a healthy dose of references to <em>The Beach</em> thrown in for good measure). And it could easily have been so much more. As well as his arsenal of heavy weapons, your character is also armed with a camera &ndash; a tool for exploration, for documenting things &ndash; and this could have been used in interesting ways; integrated into the gameplay somehow, but instead it&rsquo;s only ever used to identify enemies before you kill them.</p> <p>As much as I&rsquo;m enjoying <em>Far Cry 3</em>, I can&rsquo;t help thinking of it in terms of games it&rsquo;s not because it&rsquo;s just a very bland game done very well. And it could have been so much more, if it tried.</p> Surgeon Simulator 2013 → http://gamejam.bossastudios.com/ Wed, 06 Feb 2013 09:12:51 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/surgeon-simulator-2013/ <p>Like <a href="http://www.foddy.net/Athletics.html">QWOP</a> meets E.R. with a special guest appearance by the uncoordinated arm (and shitty IK physics) from <a href="http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3339/postmortem_dreamworks_.php">Jurassic Park: Trespasser</a>. So much fun.</p> The Hobbit Re-Covered → http://www.buzz-studios.com/The-Hobbit-Book-Re-cover Tue, 05 Feb 2013 09:56:04 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/the-hobbit-re-covered/ <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2013/02/Adam-Busby-Hobbit_2_860.jpg#center" alt="Adam-Busby-Hobbit_2_860"></p> <p>I know I talked recently about the problems with <a href="https://lowbrowculture.com/post/going-digital-only/">fetishizing the form of a book and not the content</a>, but sometimes you can&rsquo;t help it. The form is just so damn <em>lovely</em>.</p> Old school → http://middlemojo.com/2011/11/frank-blacks-world-is-loud-chaotic-and-extreme-hes-also-in-the-pixies/ Fri, 01 Feb 2013 10:29:57 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/old-school/ <blockquote> <p>Q: Wait a minute. Didn’t you just buy a house in Northampton?</p> <p>A: Yeah. We’re already moving. It’s a little more in the country. They want to have chickens and grow flowers and stuff. We got rid of TV, there’s no computers, no electronics. It’s old school. And the kids haven’t said peep about it.</p> <p>Q: How old are the kids?</p> <p>A: Three, five, six, eleven, and thirteen. It’s so loud. It’s crazy.</p> <p>Q: You do loud and crazy.</p> <p>A: Yeah, yeah. Everybody’s loud. Let me show you some pictures [on his iPhone].</p> </blockquote> <p>Do you see what happened there? &ldquo;No computers, no electronics. It&rsquo;s old school&rdquo;. But he still has an iPhone. Everyone has a smartphone now, but they&rsquo;re so ubiquitous that no-one even thinks of them as being a &ldquo;computer&rdquo;. <a href="http://www.warrenellis.com/?p=14314">Warren Ellis was totally right</a>. People don&rsquo;t even think about or recognise the magic around them.</p> <p>(Incidentally, <a href="http://middlemojo.com/">Middlemojo.com</a> is just <em>wonderful</em>. A blog about creative people approaching middle age. Why hasn&rsquo;t this been done before?)</p> Paperman https://lowbrowculture.com/video/paperman/ Wed, 30 Jan 2013 22:42:08 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/video/paperman/ <iframe width="800" height="450" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/aTLySbGoMX0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> Group of grown-ass men have been playing 'tag' for 23 years → http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323375204578269991660836834.html Wed, 30 Jan 2013 18:32:06 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/group-of-grown-ass-men-have-been-playing-tag-for-23-years/ <p>This is some serious dedication to messing around, legal contracts and everything.</p> 102 Spectacular Nonfiction Stories from 2012 → http://byliner.com/spotlights/102-spectacular-nonfiction-articles-2012 Wed, 30 Jan 2013 18:24:28 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/102-spectacular-nonfiction-stories-from-2012/ <p>Because my <a href="http://getpocket.com">Pocket</a> queue wasn&rsquo;t long enough.</p> Storyboard - Read the TV and Movies you don't want to watch → http://syntaxi.net/2013/01/20/storyboard/ Wed, 30 Jan 2013 17:07:35 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/storyboard-read-the-tv-and-movies-you-dont-want-to-watch/ <blockquote> <p>Storyboard was born of my insane desire to consume videos without actually having to watch them. Normally that would involve putting the TV on in the background and ignoring the video while listening to the audio, but what about the reverse? All visual without the audio. On my kindle.</p> </blockquote> <p>This reminds me of the line in Douglas Coupland&rsquo;s <em>Microserfs</em> about people turning on subtitles and watching films in fast-forward because it&rsquo;s more time-efficient.</p> Interactive map of Middle-Earth → http://3rin.gs Wed, 30 Jan 2013 09:13:13 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/interactive-map-of-middle-earth/ <p>So detailed. So impressive.</p> Going digital-only https://lowbrowculture.com/post/going-digital-only/ Wed, 30 Jan 2013 08:45:48 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/going-digital-only/ <p>Over Christmas, we moved again. This time, into the house we bought<sup id="fnref:1"><a href="#fn:1" class="footnote-ref" role="doc-noteref">1</a></sup>. One of the more useful things that falls out of the process of moving is that it gives you an opportunity to take account of your possessions. There&rsquo;s nothing like packing everything you own into boxes and carting them off to another place to make you realise how much <em>shit</em> you own.</p> <p>Well, somewhere around the 30th box or so, I had an epiphany. I have too much stuff.</p> <p>&ldquo;Duh, asshole. This isn&rsquo;t news.&rdquo;</p> <p>No, you&rsquo;re not listening to what I&rsquo;m saying. I&rsquo;m saying that my internal understanding &ndash; my mental self-image &ndash; suddenly went from &ldquo;I have a <em>lot</em> of stuff&rdquo; to &ldquo;I have <em>too much</em> stuff&rdquo;. As in, I could easily offload three-quarters of my DVD collection and not really feel the loss. Which is why I&rsquo;m sort of glad that <a href="http://hmv.com/hmv/site_down_1a.jpg">HMV is gone</a>. As a nerd who loves movies and games, its disappearance leaves me with fewer places to buy these things in Dublin, fewer avenues of temptation. This is a perfect opening for me to re-evaluate my relationship with these things and how they come into my life. A lot has already changed.</p> <p><strong>Books</strong>: <a href="http://www.kindle.com">Kindle</a> My kindle has completely transformed my relationship with books. I also count this as the thing that completely turned me onto the idea of digital, rather than physical ownership of media. I realised that I had been fetishizing the form, not the content.</p> <p><strong>Comics</strong>: <a href="http://comixology.com">ComiXology</a> I haven&rsquo;t bought a physical comic in at least a year now. Sorry, Forbidden Planet! Maybe if you weren&rsquo;t missing volume 1 of <em>every series I&rsquo;d like to check out</em>, y&rsquo;know?</p> <p><strong>Games</strong>: <a href="http://store.steampowered.com">Steam</a>, <a href="http://www.xbox.com">Xbox Live</a>, <a href="http://ie.playstation.com/psn/">PSN</a>, <a href="http://www.nintendo.com/wiiu/built-in-software/#/eshop">Wii U e-shop</a> I feel like, of everything listed here, games are the best represented in the digital market. Each platform has its own storefront (Steam isn&rsquo;t official, but it is the de-facto standard on PC) and it&rsquo;s only getting easier and cheaper to buy digital versions of things.</p> <p><strong>Movies</strong>: ?</p> <p>And this takes me to the point of this post. Yesterday, Philips announced that they were <a href="http://blogs.wsj.com/source/2013/01/29/philips-exits-consumer-electronics/">exiting the consumer electronics market</a>. This line jumped out for me:</p> <blockquote> <p>“Since we have online entertainment, people do not buy Blu-ray and DVD players anymore,” Mr. Van Houten said.</p> </blockquote> <p>I think this ties in with what I&rsquo;m saying - there&rsquo;s very little need to own physical copies of digital media. Consumers are realising this and HMV, having built the core of its market around selling DVDs and Blu-Rays, couldn&rsquo;t adapt.</p> <p>But I have a question about all this. People aren&rsquo;t buying Blu-rays or DVDs any more. So what are they actually buying? Is the lack of a standard for downloaded video harming adoption/uptake, just like we saw when HD-DVD and Blu-ray were competing to see which would be the dominant format? Also, until there is a standard, should we expect the price of digital-only movie purchases to remain high?<sup id="fnref:2"><a href="#fn:2" class="footnote-ref" role="doc-noteref">2</a></sup></p> <div class="footnotes" role="doc-endnotes"> <hr> <ol> <li id="fn:1"> <p>This is a whole other blog post, but <strong>holy fuck, we bought a house</strong>.&#160;<a href="#fnref:1" class="footnote-backref" role="doc-backlink">&#x21a9;&#xfe0e;</a></p> </li> <li id="fn:2"> <p>Take <em>Dredd</em> for example (one of my favourite films of last year). On the US iTunes store, it&rsquo;s $19.99 (€15) for the HD version of the movie plus the &lsquo;iTunes Extras&rsquo;, the iTunes versions of DVD extras. On the Irish store, it&rsquo;s €17 for the movie by itself. I&rsquo;m sure they&rsquo;re waiting for more Irish people to be interested in buying movies from iTunes before adding features and dropping the price, but without dropping the price or adding these features, how do they expect to <em>encourage</em> this interest?&#160;<a href="#fnref:2" class="footnote-backref" role="doc-backlink">&#x21a9;&#xfe0e;</a></p> </li> </ol> </div> In Conversation: Steven Soderbergh -- Vulture https://lowbrowculture.com/post/in-conversation-steven-soderbergh-vulture/ Mon, 28 Jan 2013 22:37:41 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/in-conversation-steven-soderbergh-vulture/ <blockquote> <p>I was watching one of those iconoclast shows on the Sundance Channel. Jamie Oliver said Paul Smith had told him something he hadn’t understood until very recently: “I’d rather be No. 2 forever than No. 1 for a while.” Just make stuff and don’t agonize over it. Stop worrying about being No. 1. I see a lot of people getting paralyzed by the response to their work, the imagined result. It’s like playing a Jedi mind trick on yourself, and Smith is right. That’s the way I’ve always approached films, the way I approach everything. Just <em>make</em> ’em.</p> </blockquote> <p>A while ago, over the course of a couple of days, I came across two slogans that have stuck with me and have had a profound impact on my approach to my creative projects. First is from <a href="http://www.wired.com/design/2012/05/analog-research-lab/">Facebook&rsquo;s Analog Research Lab&rsquo;s</a> who have a poster saying <a href="http://www.wired.com/design/wp-content/gallery/facebook-analog/20-06-st_-facebookanalog-dh_-58984-wired_analogfb_img_8143.jpg">&ldquo;Done is Better Than Perfect&rdquo;</a>. The other is Brendan Dawes&rsquo; <a href="http://brendandawes.com/content/02-projects/talkminusaction/11_000talk.jpg">&ldquo;Talk - Action = Shit&rdquo;</a>. Now, rather than being paralysed by the fear of the blank page and the fear of releasing anything that is less than perfect, I&rsquo;m churning stuff out. There&rsquo;s a lot of misses in there, but there are a few hits too.</p> How To See The Future https://lowbrowculture.com/quote/how-to-see-the-future/ Mon, 28 Jan 2013 08:53:31 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/quote/how-to-see-the-future/ <blockquote> <p>Ballardian banality comes from not getting the future that we were promised, or getting it too late to make the promised difference.</p> <p>This is because we look at the present day through a rear-view mirror. This is something Marshall McLuhan said back in the Sixties, when the world was in the grip of authentic-seeming future narratives. He said, “We look at the present through a rear-view mirror. We march backwards into the future.”</p> </blockquote> <p>&ndash; <a href="http://www.warrenellis.com/?p=14314">Warren Ellis, How to See the Future</a></p> Hello → http://www.flickr.com/photos/powerpig/8412086698/ Sun, 27 Jan 2013 09:09:40 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/hello/ <p>A tiny lego Mac. Adorable.</p> 2001 https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/2001/ Fri, 25 Jan 2013 10:32:20 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/2001/ <p><a href="http://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2013/01/tumblr_mguhgvEmLG1qzdglao1_1280.jpg"><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2013/01/tumblr_mguhgvEmLG1qzdglao1_1280-547x800.jpg" alt="tumblr_mguhgvEmLG1qzdglao1_1280"></a></p> <p>(via <a href="http://fuckyeahmovieposters.tumblr.com/post/41292194321/2001-a-space-odyssey-by-jason-heatherly">fuckyeahmovieposters</a>)</p> Fear of failure https://lowbrowculture.com/post/fear-of-failure/ Thu, 24 Jan 2013 11:43:42 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/fear-of-failure/ <p>This weekend, I&rsquo;m doing something foolish. I&rsquo;m taking part in the <a href="http://www.hellandback.ie/">Hell and Back</a>. It&rsquo;s a 10k race up and down the Little Sugarloaf, with a few obstacles thrown in for good measure. There&rsquo;s a lot to be scared of. Never mind the cold, I&rsquo;ve also got to <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ikI1CMori0w">haul my fat ass over a 7 foot wall</a>, and deliberately subject myself to an electric shock. And then there&rsquo;s the very real possibility that I will injure myself, badly.</p> <p>But the thing that&rsquo;s <em>really</em> got me scared &ndash; the thing that&rsquo;s actually keeping me up at night &ndash; is the fear of failure. Of not finishing the course at all. Or worse, coming dead last. This is scaring me more than serious bodily harm. I can handle physical pain. Anyone who knows me knows I can&rsquo;t handle emotional pain.</p> <iframe width="1280" height="720" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/RYlCVwxoL_g" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> <p>Ze Frank has some comforting things to say about this. Especially this line:</p> <blockquote> <p>Let me think about the people who I care about the most, and how when they fail or disappoint me… I still love them, I still give them chances, and I still see the best in them. Let me extend that generosity to myself.</p> </blockquote> <p>If my wife did anything like this, if she even <em>signed up</em> for something like this, I would be <em>so</em> proud of her. If she came dead last &ndash; if it took her eight hours to finish the course and everyone else had gone home &ndash; I&rsquo;d still be at the finish line, cheering for her like she&rsquo;d just out-run Usain Bolt. Can I do the same for myself?</p> <p>On second thought, maybe I should be watching <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&amp;v=3FKIgNH_0rQ#t=40s">clips from <em>Rocky</em></a> instead. Much less likely to make me cry.</p> The Shining board game → http://micro.brainiac.com/contest-games.html Wed, 23 Jan 2013 17:34:26 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/the-shining-board-game/ <p><img src="http://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2013/01/SHNGMAP1.gif" alt="SHNGMAP1"></p> <blockquote> <p>&ldquo;The Shining&rdquo; is a game based on the Stephen King novel of the same name. One player controls the evil and sentient Overlook hotel, the other the Torrence family, winter caretakers of the haunted estate. Using ambiant hedge animals, terrifying phantoms and possibly human possession, the hotel tried to claim young, psychically gifted Danny as it&rsquo;s own - by killing him!</p> </blockquote> <p>This sounds amazing.</p> Herp Derp YouTube Comments → http://www.tannr.com/herp-derp-youtube-comments/ Wed, 23 Jan 2013 13:48:08 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/herp-derp-youtube-comments-2/ <p>Speaking of stupid comments, I recently installed the Herp Derp extension for Chrome. It turns every YouTube comment into &ldquo;<a href="http://www.tannr.com/pictures/2011/10/comparison.png">herp derp derp</a>&rdquo;, and it has dramatically improved my experience with that site.</p> CONGRATULATIONS, YOU ARE NOW A KOTAKU COMMENTER → http://writer.inklestudios.com/stories/bpfh Wed, 23 Jan 2013 13:45:57 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/herp-derp-youtube-comments/ <p>Emily Gera&rsquo;s great interactive fiction/hypertext critique of the level of discourse found in the comments section at Kotaku.</p> I have become bro https://lowbrowculture.com/quote/i-have-become-bro/ Tue, 22 Jan 2013 19:57:05 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/quote/i-have-become-bro/ <blockquote> <p>Where does that leave me? I just spent 40 hours playing <em>Far Cry 3</em>. I have become bro, destroyer of worlds.</p> </blockquote> <p>&ndash; <a href="http://www.polygon.com/features/2013/1/22/3880638/far-cry-3-letters">Leigh Alexander and Quintin Smith discuss <em>Far Cry 3</em></a></p> Glee rips off Jonathan Coulton → http://www.salon.com/2013/01/18/did_glee_rip_off_jonathan_coultons_cover_of_baby_got_back/singleton/ Fri, 18 Jan 2013 17:39:48 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/glee-rips-off-jonathan-coulton/ <p>They even left in the &ldquo;Johnny C&rsquo;s in trouble&rdquo; line. If this is real, then it&rsquo;s really shameless.</p> James Deen x Lindsay Lohan https://lowbrowculture.com/quote/james-deen-x-lindsay-lohan/ Fri, 18 Jan 2013 09:30:00 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/quote/james-deen-x-lindsay-lohan/ <blockquote> <p>She said, “When Julia Roberts does topless scenes, she makes the whole crew shoot in their boxers! I want that!” And the whole crew just rolled their eyes and was like, “We’re not doing that. We’ll do that for fuckin’ Julia Roberts, but not you. Go find another crew; we’ll just leave.”</p> </blockquote> <p>&ndash; <a href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/01/17/porn-star-james-deen-on-his-canyons-experience-with-lindsay-lohan.html">Porn Star James Deen on His ‘Canyons’ Experience With Lindsay Lohan</a></p> I made this https://lowbrowculture.com/post/i-made-this/ Wed, 16 Jan 2013 14:33:58 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/i-made-this/ <p>Most videogame writing is shit.</p> <p>And don&rsquo;t give me any bollocks about objective vs subjective, or &ldquo;<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XVCtkzIXYzQ">yeah, well, y&rsquo;know that&rsquo;s just, like, your opinion, man.</a>&rdquo; It&rsquo;s true. More than any other entertainment industry, videogame writing is dominated by churnalism &ndash; press releases repackaged as news or editorial. Most videogame writers could be replaced by a <a href="http://www.markovengine.com/">Markov Engine</a> and I doubt many people would notice the difference.</p> <p><a href="http://www.eurogamer.net/author/278">Rab Florence&rsquo;s <em>Lost Humanity</em> series on Eurogamer</a> was something special. He wrote with wit, humour and passion. He wrote with honesty. He wrote the kind of videogame writing I wanted to read. Then there was <a href="http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2012-10-30-editors-blog-lost-humanity-18-aftermath">a bit of a kerfuffle</a> and he stopped writing for them.</p> <p>Remember what I was saying about <a href="http://lowbrowculture.com/2013/01/16/we-should-retire-aarons-number/">digital entropy</a>? I didn&rsquo;t want that to happen to this writing. It&rsquo;s too precious to allow it to crumble away to nothing.</p> <p>So I made a book of it.</p> <p><a href="http://imgur.com/z4LMr"><img src="http://i.imgur.com/z4LMr.jpg" alt=""></a></p> <p>I took all Rab&rsquo;s original <em>Lost Humanity</em> articles &ndash; screenshots and all &ndash; and some of the post-kerfuffle articles that were written on other sites and dumped them into <a href="http://www.latex-project.org/">LaTeX</a> using Zed Shaw&rsquo;s <a href="https://gitorious.org/learn-x-the-hard-way/learn-x-the-hard-way">learn-x-the-hard-way</a> as a basic template. I added an index. I wrote a little introduction (I don&rsquo;t know why). From all this, I generated a PDF, which I sent across to <a href="http://www.lulu.com/">lulu.com</a>. And for less than the price of a decent cocktail, I had a hard-copy of some of my favourite game writing.</p> <p><a href="http://imgur.com/OB2Wj"><img src="http://i.imgur.com/OB2Wj.jpg" alt=""></a></p> <p>I&rsquo;m really happy with the way this turned out and it&rsquo;s something I can see myself doing a lot in the future. Or at least, I could see myself doing it a lot in the future if I can sort out my LaTeX workflow. I haven&rsquo;t found a decent/reliable tool for dumping HTML/XML to LaTeX, so it takes a good bit of manual futzing to get it to a print-ready state. There&rsquo;s also <a href="http://blackstrap.it/">Blackstrap</a>, which will generate a book of your Instapaper/Pocket queue, which seems like it&rsquo;s scratching a similar itch.</p> We should retire Aaron's number → http://threads2.scripting.com/2013/january/weShouldRetireAaronsNumber Wed, 16 Jan 2013 12:20:14 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/we-should-retire-aarons-number/ <p>This is something I&rsquo;ve thought about a lot. What will happen to all my accounts after I die? Will my digital legacy just lie dormant while slowly being eroded by entropy? It&rsquo;s a sobering thought. All the <em>gold</em> I&rsquo;ve been dispensing on this blog and on <a href="http://twitter.com/johnke">my twitter account</a> &ndash; gone. That would be sad. But for this to happen to Aaron Schwarz? That would be absolutely tragic. Dave Winer proposes a solution: that the internet at large takes a role in curating Aaron&rsquo;s content as important historical artefacts. A lovely idea.</p> Crossword master Araucaria reveals in puzzle that he is dying of cancer → http://www.guardian.co.uk/crosswords/2013/jan/11/crossword-araucaria-reveals-dying-cancer?CMP=twt_fd Sat, 12 Jan 2013 12:53:22 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/crossword-master-araucaria-reveals-in-puzzle-that-he-is-dying-of-cancer/ <blockquote> <p>Quietly, ingeniously and, of course, cryptically, the beloved – and sometimes feared – crossword setter Araucaria has used one of his own puzzles to announce that he is dying of cancer.</p> <p>Above cryptic crossword No 25,842 sat a set of special instructions: &ldquo;Araucaria,&rdquo; it said, &ldquo;has 18 down of the 19, which is being treated with 13 15&rdquo;.</p> <p>Those who solved the puzzle found the answer to 18 was cancer, to 19 oesophagus, and to 13 15 palliative care. The solutions to some of the other clues were: Macmillan, nurse, stent, endoscopy, and sunset.</p> </blockquote> <p>This is very sad, but also strangely uplifting. I hope when my time comes, I can face death with the same playful, pleasant attitude.</p> Little Differences https://lowbrowculture.com/post/little-differences/ Fri, 11 Jan 2013 12:42:35 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/little-differences/ <p>Reading (or is it re-reading? I can&rsquo;t even remember if I ever finished it) Robert Pirsig&rsquo;s <em>Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance</em> and, being someone who works with computers for a living, I keep catching myself using it as an analogy for how I respond to computers and computer maintenance. It&rsquo;s like I&rsquo;m doing a mental search-and-replace as I read the book &ndash; &rsquo;s/motorcycle/computer/g'.</p> <p>This piece, in particular, grabbed me</p> <blockquote> <p>A friend who owns a cycle of the same make, model and even same year brought it over for repair, and when I test rode it afterward it was hard to believe it had come from the same factory years ago. You could see that long ago it had settled into its own kind of feel and ride and sound, completely different from mine. No worse, but different.</p> </blockquote> <p>Macs aren&rsquo;t renowned for their customizability. In fact, it&rsquo;s part of what I love about them. With a Linux/Unix machine, it&rsquo;s possible to spend your entire time tweaking your system and not actually get any work done. Macs are limited in this regard, each one is pretty much alike, so the operating system effectively disappears and there&rsquo;s almost no friction between you and your work.</p> <p>All the same, I have still managed to modify my MacBook (through a combination of <a href="http://manytricks.com/moom/">Moom</a>, <a href="http://www.alfredapp.com/">Alfred</a> and <a href="http://www.keyboardmaestro.com/main/">Keyboard Maestro</a>) to the point where someone using my computer will eventually go &ldquo;whoa&rdquo; and back away from the keyboard. But it makes total sense to me. It&rsquo;s the way I work. The same as yours, but different.</p> <p>There&rsquo;s something nice about that.</p> Good Night Lamp → http://goodnightlamp.com/ Fri, 11 Jan 2013 10:27:40 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/good-night-lamp/ <iframe src="//player.vimeo.com/video/56586373" width="800" height="450" frameborder="0" webkitallowfullscreen mozallowfullscreen allowfullscreen></iframe> <p><a href="http://vimeo.com/56586373">Good Night Lamp</a> from <a href="http://vimeo.com/goodnightlamp">Good Night Lamp</a> on <a href="https://vimeo.com">Vimeo</a>.</p> <p>I spent six months living away from my wife while she finished up her work in Rome. It was the worst six months of my life. Like losing a limb. Having something as simple as this &ndash; a light that tells you when someone is there &ndash; would have made the whole thing just a tiny bit better. I think it&rsquo;s nice because it imitates the presence of the other person, but also because it&rsquo;s a small way of saying &ldquo;I&rsquo;m thinking of you&rdquo;.</p> Motivation https://lowbrowculture.com/post/motivation/ Thu, 10 Jan 2013 08:44:10 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/motivation/ <p>When the Dublin Port Tunnel opened, they inaugurated it with a 10k fun-run. 5k up one tunnel, 5k back the other one. I did this for a laugh. A once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to go for a run somewhere that was built to be un-runnable. And I wasn&rsquo;t in <em>awful</em> shape when I did it. I could comfortably run about four or five kilometers without taking a break. You know, not bad for an enormous fatass.</p> <p>When you come out of the tunnel, you&rsquo;re just in the middle of nowhere<sup id="fnref:1"><a href="#fn:1" class="footnote-ref" role="doc-noteref">1</a></sup> on the M1. There&rsquo;s nothing to see. But when I came out, there were people on the bridge above the motorway. People just came out on a cold, bleary day to cheer a bunch of people they didn&rsquo;t know. They even hung a banner - &ldquo;YOU CAN DO IT&rdquo;.</p> <p>That <em>broke me</em>. I started welling up and completely lost my stride. And that&rsquo;s because I am a complete sucker for this kind of thing. I think it taps into something deep inside my lizard-brain. Some really basic emotions. These people could have stayed at home in their nice, comfy houses, with their feet up. But instead, they came out in the cold to cheer a load of out-of-shape people they didn&rsquo;t know, just to tell them they could do it. That was strangely <em>powerful</em>.</p> <iframe width="800" height="450" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/2JnYcuRW_qo" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> <p>Whoever is doing the copywriting for Nike is doing a great job of tapping into that same feeling. I&rsquo;m struggling to get into shape (or rather, a shape that isn&rsquo;t &lsquo;round&rsquo;) and I&rsquo;m watching this ad almost daily. It&rsquo;s cynical emotional manipulation by a heartless corporation, to be sure, but that doesn&rsquo;t mean it can&rsquo;t be a little bit beautiful too.</p> <p><a href="http://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2013/01/2013-01-09-10.35.36.png"><img src="http://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2013/01/2013-01-09-10.35.36.png" alt="2013-01-09 10.35.36"></a></p> <p>And then there&rsquo;s this. Who wrote this? Most companies would be happy to leave it to the app&rsquo;s programmer to write something insipid and bland like &ldquo;You beat your previous record&rdquo;. Because let&rsquo;s face it, running 7.19km isn&rsquo;t really an achievement for most people. It doesn&rsquo;t need any extra effort or thought. But for me (and people like me), it was huge. It was <em>epic</em>. And I just love the fact that they use epic language to describe it.</p> <p>Thanks, anonymous Nike copywriter.</p> <div class="footnotes" role="doc-endnotes"> <hr> <ol> <li id="fn:1"> <p>Technically, you&rsquo;re between Santry and Coolock. Which is a synonym for &ldquo;the middle of nowhere&rdquo;.&#160;<a href="#fnref:1" class="footnote-backref" role="doc-backlink">&#x21a9;&#xfe0e;</a></p> </li> </ol> </div> Just Saying https://lowbrowculture.com/video/just-saying/ Sat, 05 Jan 2013 12:40:29 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/video/just-saying/ <iframe width="1280" height="720" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/TpvxG7S0rbs" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> Vigil https://lowbrowculture.com/quote/vigil/ Fri, 04 Jan 2013 13:53:45 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/quote/vigil/ <blockquote> <p><strong>But isn&rsquo;t a language that deletes code crazy?</strong></p> <p>No, wanting to keep code that demonstrably has bugs according to its own specifications is crazy. What good could it possibly serve? It is corrupted and must be cleansed from your codebase.</p> <p>Vigil will do this for you automatically.</p> <p><strong>Vigil deleted a function. Won&rsquo;t that cause the functions that call it to fail?</strong></p> <p>It would seem that those functions appear to be corrupted as well. Run Vigil again and it will take care of that for you. Several invocations may be required to fully excise all bugs from your code.</p> </blockquote> <p><a href="https://github.com/munificent/vigil">Vigil - a very safe programming language</a></p> Home-made board games → http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2012/12/stone-librande-christmas Fri, 04 Jan 2013 10:22:29 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/home-made-board-games/ <p>Every Christmas, Stone Librande makes a board game for his family to play. This is a perfect demonstration of why I&rsquo;m so enamoured with board games - it takes a broad spectrum of extremely specialized skills to make a video game, but with enough imagination, you can easily make a board game with nothing more than bits and pieces you have lying around the house. I especially love the evolution of Librande&rsquo;s &ldquo;Maze Game&rdquo; from a <a href="http://www.wired.com/gamelife/wp-content/gallery/stone-librande/librande02-maze.jpg">basic cardboard prototype</a> to a <a href="http://www.wired.com/gamelife/wp-content/gallery/stone-librande/librande03-maze.jpg">gorgeous, intricate wood-and-tile version</a>.</p> Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra's Burger Recipes https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/dean-martin-and-frank-sinatras-burger-recipes/ Fri, 04 Jan 2013 08:27:05 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/dean-martin-and-frank-sinatras-burger-recipes/ <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2013/01/tumblr_mfxq5q49O01qa6t9oo1_1280.jpg#center" alt="tumblr_mfxq5q49O01qa6t9oo1_1280"></p> <p>I hope these are real. I hope Dean Martin had such classy taste in typography.</p> Games, 2012 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/games-2012/ Thu, 03 Jan 2013 16:36:46 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/games-2012/ <p>I already talked about <a href="http://lowbrowculture.com/2013/01/02/movies-2012/">my favourite films of 2012</a>. So now it&rsquo;s time to talk about my favourite games of 2012.</p> <p><strong>FTL</strong></p> <p><img src="http://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2013/01/ss_052d698926073e8d407a864f0e63a486af24ec0d.1920x1080.jpg" alt="ss_052d698926073e8d407a864f0e63a486af24ec0d.1920x1080"></p> <p><em>FTL</em> is a deceptively simple game. You make your way across the galaxy, dealing with emergencies that come up. But it&rsquo;s less frantic than it sounds. The game is rarely frantic. Any time you lose, it&rsquo;s not because you weren&rsquo;t fast enough to click on something, it&rsquo;s because you made a bad strategic decision ten or twenty turns back. The best <em>Star Trek</em> game never made.</p> <p><strong>Dishonored</strong></p> <p><img src="http://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2013/01/3.jpg" alt="3"></p> <p>Just in terms of world-building, this game deserves some serious credit. The story was pretty disposable &ndash; a dystopian world, there&rsquo;s a rebellion, you&rsquo;re its last hope, nothing you haven&rsquo;t seen before &ndash; but the depth of the world was incredible. Each character had a fleshed-out back-story, whether you interacted with them or not. And the game does nothing to force this on you. A lesser game would say WE PAID WRITERS A FORTUNE FOR THIS SHIT, SO WE&rsquo;RE GOING TO MAKE SURE EVERYONE HEARS IT. Not <em>Dishonored</em>. Bless them.</p> <p><strong>Super Hexagon</strong></p> <p><img src="http://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2013/01/ss_534dfe48501ce998f65340db88698fca6aef82c1.1920x1080.jpg" alt="ss_534dfe48501ce998f65340db88698fca6aef82c1.1920x1080"></p> <p>Remember when I said that <a href="http://lowbrowculture.com/2013/01/03/halo/">I&rsquo;m not particularly good at games, but muddle my way through anyway</a>? <em>Super Hexagon</em> is the perfect example of this. I&rsquo;ve sunk a worrying amount of time into it and still haven&rsquo;t beaten it on its third difficulty level (of six). But that&rsquo;s okay, because I can feel myself getting better at the game, even if it&rsquo;s only in millisecond increments. It&rsquo;s the only game on the front screen on my iPhone. That says something, right?</p> <p><strong>Journey</strong></p> <p><img src="http://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2013/01/Journey-Screen-One.jpg" alt="Journey-Screen-One"></p> <p><em>Journey</em> gave me a completely unique experience. As you make your way through the game&rsquo;s dreamlike environment, your game may or may not intersect with the games of other people. You can&rsquo;t touch these people or interfere with them. The only thing you can do is to &lsquo;chirrup&rsquo; at them &ndash; a little sound, with a symbol appearing over your head. Each player&rsquo;s symbol is unique, like a fingerprint. You don&rsquo;t know who these people are and the only way to identify them is with this symbol. You could play through the game and intersect with lots of other players dropping in and out of your game. Or you could play through the game with one other person.</p> <p>That&rsquo;s what I did. I played through the entire game with one other person. Completely organically, we developed a way to communicate with each other through these chirrups. We&rsquo;d fly around the levels and make different noises to say different things, like &ldquo;over here!&rdquo; or &ldquo;where are you?&rdquo;. We&rsquo;d show each other cool things we found in the level. It was lovely. The last level is a cold, snowy mountain. As we made our way towards the peak, the cold started to affect our characters. We couldn&rsquo;t chirrup as loudly any more. It was harder to stay together, with the wind blowing us around. We had to huddle together to keep our energy from completely disappearing. And even though we couldn&rsquo;t communicate with chirrups any more, we didn&rsquo;t need to. What we had to do was obvious. We had to stay together. That was all. Right at the end, you have to make it across a narrow ledge with the wind trying to blow you off. At the very last moments, before the turn into &lsquo;safety&rsquo;, I made it. I turned around, but my friend hadn&rsquo;t. He&rsquo;d been blown off.</p> <p>I couldn&rsquo;t believe it. I was distraught. I put the controller down, not knowing what to do. I waited there for <em>fifteen minutes</em> and he never came back. He was gone. That last part of the journey was the saddest thing I&rsquo;ve ever experienced in a game. During the game&rsquo;s credits, you are shown the symbols of each of the players you encountered and their PlayStation username. I messaged that guy straight away. I can&rsquo;t imagine another game invoking a real, human-level connection with another person quite as well.</p> <p><strong>Mark of the Ninja</strong></p> <p><img src="http://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2013/01/ss_5ca2235feff99db0b31a9e5578a64ef3806e9581.1920x1080.jpg" alt="ss_5ca2235feff99db0b31a9e5578a64ef3806e9581.1920x1080"></p> <p>This was the most perfectly-judged game I played this year. The stealth mechanic was spot-on and actually meant that there was a sense of being a &ldquo;ninja&rdquo; (as opposed to most other games, where &ldquo;ninja&rdquo; means &ldquo;guy with a sharp sword and throwing-stars&rdquo;). I finished this game over the course of two sessions and immediately started a new game, on the newly-unlocked difficulty level, where your character has his field-of-vision limited to what&rsquo;s in front of him. Oh wait, did I say &ldquo;perfectly-judged&rdquo;? Fuck those dogs.</p> Tom Waits - Austin City Limits 1978 https://lowbrowculture.com/video/tom-waits-austin-city-limits-1978/ Thu, 03 Jan 2013 10:50:13 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/video/tom-waits-austin-city-limits-1978/ <p>Watch <a href="http://video.pbs.org/video/2179574410">Tom Waits</a> on PBS. See more from <a href="http://www.acltv.com/">Austin City Limits.</a></p> <p>PBS have a video of Tom Waits&rsquo; concert from Austin City Limits in 1978. Such a great show.</p> Halo https://lowbrowculture.com/post/halo/ Thu, 03 Jan 2013 10:23:31 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/halo/ <iframe width="800" height="450" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/-kg3yxNsSzk" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> <p>In the fiction of the <em>Halo</em> universe, Master Chief is a supreme badass. Look at him in that trailer there, taking on twenty-foot tall space monsters like he hasn&rsquo;t got a care in the world. Look at the way he moves, stringing together action after action after action. It&rsquo;s balletic. Brutal, but <em>graceful</em>.</p> <p>When I play the game, Master Chief is a braindead meatbag who is more likely to die in the first five minutes by throwing a grenade at his own feet because the person controlling him is trying to figure out what each button does. The kind of idiot who jumps into a firefight with one bullet in the clip, so he spends the next 10 seconds getting riddled with bullets as he stands there, reloading. He&rsquo;s a moron whose neck muscles are made of jelly, so he spends almost the entire game looking either straight up or straight down.</p> <p>This is because I&rsquo;m not great at <em>Halo</em><sup id="fnref:1"><a href="#fn:1" class="footnote-ref" role="doc-noteref">1</a></sup>.</p> <p>I&rsquo;ve accepted that I&rsquo;m not great at certain games. Most games, to be honest. I&rsquo;m okay with this. I muddle through. I&rsquo;ll die a lot and eventually limp across the finish line. My death-count in <a href="http://thelettervsixtim.es/"><em>VVVVVV</em></a> stands in the couple-hundreds, but this is fine, because I&rsquo;m getting through the game at my own pace. This is how I get my money&rsquo;s worth.</p> <p>Except with <em>Halo</em>, this approach seems wrong, like it&rsquo;s missing the point. The main character, Master Chief, is not supposed to be the kind of person who just &ldquo;muddles through&rdquo;. I realise how stupid and overwrought this sounds, but I don&rsquo;t feel like I&rsquo;m doing justice to the character. The <em>Halo</em> story I&rsquo;m playing out is wrong: <em>my</em> Master Chief doesn&rsquo;t deserve any <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5lwyC0p454">awe or respect</a>.</p> <p>And <em>this</em> is why it takes me months to finish an 8-hour game of <em>Halo</em>.</p> <div class="footnotes" role="doc-endnotes"> <hr> <ol> <li id="fn:1"> <p>I have no battlefield tactics and poor muscle co-ordination and I get twitchy when I&rsquo;m nervous, so I tend to accidentally hit R3 a lot (binocular view) and will suddenly find myself zoomed into the nose of the enemy standing not two feet from me. It then takes me five seconds to remember what button I&rsquo;m supposed to hit to get me <em>out</em> of binocular view, by which time I&rsquo;m probably dead.&#160;<a href="#fnref:1" class="footnote-backref" role="doc-backlink">&#x21a9;&#xfe0e;</a></p> </li> </ol> </div> Movies, 2012 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/movies-2012/ Wed, 02 Jan 2013 15:09:20 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/movies-2012/ <p>One of the resolutions I made at the beginning of 2012 was that I would document every single film I watched. <a href="http://letterboxd.com/johnke/films/diary/">I actually stuck to this resolution</a>.</p> <p>Here are ten of the best I saw this year:</p> <p><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0056172/">Lawrence of Arabia, 1962</a></p> <p><img src="http://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2013/01/lawrence-of-arabia2.jpg" alt="lawrence-of-arabia2"></p> <p>Are you fucking kidding me? I spent my entire life <em>avoiding</em> this film, thinking it would be a big, bloated mess, only good for background noise during your post-Christmas dinner nap. I couldn&rsquo;t have been more wrong. I was <em>mesmerized</em> by this film.</p> <p><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1045658/">Silver Linings Playbook, 2012</a></p> <p><img src="http://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2013/01/SL.jpg" alt="SL"></p> <p>If you&rsquo;d have told me that David O. Russell would give us us one of sweetest, most tender depictions of depression and mental illness I can remember seeing, I would have called you a fucking jackass. But that&rsquo;s exactly what he did.</p> <p><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1560747/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">The Master, 2012</a></p> <p><img src="http://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2013/01/The_Master_Paul_Thomas_Anderson-70.jpg" alt="The_Master_Paul_Thomas_Anderson-70"></p> <p>I&rsquo;m still not sure exactly what I saw or what it&rsquo;s saying, but I haven&rsquo;t been able to stop thinking about it since I saw it.</p> <p><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1748122/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Moonrise Kingdom, 2012</a></p> <p><img src="http://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2013/01/movie_-_Moonrise-Kingdom.jpg" alt="Moonrise Kingdom"></p> <p>My favourite Wes Anderson film since <em>Rushmore</em>.</p> <p><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1915581/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Magic Mike, 2012</a></p> <p><img src="http://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2013/01/kinopoisk_450.jpg" alt="kinopoisk_450"></p> <p>Balls to the haters, this was <strong>fun</strong>. When I went to see it, I was one of only three men in a crowded screening. That was one of the most hilarious cinema experiences I&rsquo;ve ever had and I thank Magic Mike for giving me that.</p> <p><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1343727/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Dredd, 2012</a> / <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1899353/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">The Raid, 2011</a></p> <p><img src="http://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2013/01/dredd3D_05_72dpi.jpg" alt="Dredd 3D"></p> <p>This is my blog and I&rsquo;ll lump these two in together if I want to. They had similar setups, but as action films go, they both did great jobs of scratching totally different itches. And they were the two best action movies I saw all year.</p> <p><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1259521/?ref_=fn_al_tt_3">The Cabin in the Woods, 2011</a></p> <p><img src="http://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2013/01/1345530534_the-cabin-in-the-woods-2011-bdrip.mkv_snapshot_01.18.47_2012.08.20_10.24.00.jpg" alt="Cabin in the Woods"></p> <p>Why do they even <em>have</em> that button?</p> <p><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1306980/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">50/50, 2011</a></p> <p><img src="http://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2013/01/03_copy6_original.jpg" alt="50/50"></p> <p>A great little film that <em>could</em> have been lost underneath the egos of the actors involved. Fortunately, it wasn&rsquo;t.</p> <p><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1024648/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Argo, 2012</a></p> <p><img src="http://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2013/01/argo1.jpg" alt="argo1"></p> <p>Even if the film wasn&rsquo;t any good (it was), this would be on here for Ben Affleck&rsquo;s beard alone.</p> <p><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1942884/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Indie Game: The Movie, 2012</a></p> <p><img src="http://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2013/01/indie-game-the-movie-phil-fish.jpg" alt="indie-game-the-movie-phil-fish"></p> <p>A lot of documentaries this year didn&rsquo;t seem to have anything to say and were content to just be a collection of unconnected vignettes (<em>Queen of Versailles</em>, for example, has no through-line, the makers just happened to be in the right place at the right time). <em>Indie Game: The Movie</em> did a great job of shining a light on the vast wealth of human emotions that go into something as apparently frivolous as an independent video game.</p> New Year's Rulin's https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/new-years-rulins/ Wed, 02 Jan 2013 11:17:52 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/new-years-rulins/ <p>[<img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2013/01/woody-guthrie-new-years-rulins.jpg" alt="woody-guthrie-new-years-rulins"></p> <p>Woody Guthrie&rsquo;s new year&rsquo;s resolutions. Words to live by.</p> DIY Bacon https://lowbrowculture.com/video/diy-bacon/ Wed, 02 Jan 2013 08:42:32 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/video/diy-bacon/ <iframe width="1280" height="720" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/SYH3Z0Hp1Wo" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> <p>This changes <em>everything</em>.</p> Battery Movies https://lowbrowculture.com/quote/battery-movies/ Mon, 31 Dec 2012 10:50:42 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/quote/battery-movies/ <blockquote> <p>hat&rsquo;s the benefit here? I&rsquo;m not sure I buy the argument that long-form storytelling gives the material room to breathe, or even shows particular fidelity to the writings of Tolkien, Rowling, etc. I fear the real motivation is more cynical than that. It&rsquo;s the movie equivalent of pumping chickens full of water – bulking out the produce to maximise revenue.</p> </blockquote> <p>&ndash; <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2012/dec/28/worst-ideas-2012-multi-part-movie">Worst ideas of 2012: the rise of the multi-part movie</a></p> pulchritude https://lowbrowculture.com/quote/pulchritude/ Mon, 17 Dec 2012 08:26:03 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/quote/pulchritude/ <blockquote> <p><strong>pulchritude</strong></p> <p>A paradoxical noun because it means beauty but is itself one of the ugliest words in the language. Same goes for the adjectival form pulchritudinous. They&rsquo;re part of a tiny elite cadre of words that possess the very opposite of the qualities they denote. Diminutive, big, foreign, fancy (adjective), colloquialism, and monosyllabic are some others; there are at least a dozen more. Inviting your school-age kids to list as many paradoxical words as they can is a neat way to deepen their relationship to English and help them see that words are both symbols for things and very real things themselves.</p> </blockquote> <p>&ndash; David Foster Wallace, word notes in the Apple dictionary for &ldquo;Beauty&rdquo;</p> Making a video game without video → http://www.polygon.com/2012/12/6/3727928/johann-sebastian-joust-making-a-video-game-without-video Thu, 06 Dec 2012 23:40:26 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/making-a-video-game-without-video/ <p>There&rsquo;s something truly wonderful about <em>Johann Sebastian Joust</em>. It&rsquo;s a performance-piece that brings video games back to pure <em>play</em>. And it&rsquo;s so beautifully simple. In the video, Doug Wilson talks about how he came up with the idea for the game and how it was an &ldquo;oh!&rdquo; moment.</p> <p>Plus, now is probably a good time to <a href="http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/gutefabrik/sportsfriends-featuring-johann-sebastian-joust">pimp their Kickstarter</a>, which will help release <em>JSJ</em> to a wider audience.</p> Freaks and Geeks https://lowbrowculture.com/post/freaks-and-geeks/ Thu, 06 Dec 2012 19:59:11 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/freaks-and-geeks/ <p>1999:</p> <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2012/12/freaks-1.jpg#center" alt="1999"></p> <p>2012:</p> <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2012/12/freaks-2.jpg#center" alt="2012"></p> How To Run a 5 Whys (With Humans, Not Robots) → http://www.slideshare.net/danmil30/how-to-run-a-5-whys-with-humans-not-robots Wed, 05 Dec 2012 16:11:42 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/how-to-run-a-5-whys-with-humans-not-robots/ <p>5 Whys are really useful for sorting out an issue in the correct way, but it&rsquo;s <em>hard</em> to run a good 5 Whys. Dan Milstein&rsquo;s presentation is a great starting point.</p> Two Things (Gibson TTS and Fictional Memory Palaces) | booktwo.org https://lowbrowculture.com/quote/two-things-gibson-tts-and-fictional-memory-palaces-booktwo-org/ Tue, 04 Dec 2012 22:05:02 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/quote/two-things-gibson-tts-and-fictional-memory-palaces-booktwo-org/ <blockquote> <p>If you play a lot of video games, or a lot of a video game, you slowly learn the map, it stays in your head. It doesn’t exist, it’s an imaginary place, but you can find your way around in it, even give directions within it.</p> <p>A shared fiction is like a shared map, a space we can inhabit, a shared memory palace, even for a brief period.</p> </blockquote> <p>&ndash; <a href="http://booktwo.org/notebook/gibson-invisible-book-clubs/">Gibson TTS and Fictional Memory Palaces</a></p> 10 ways to make Dublin better → http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/weekend/2012/1110/1224326396884.html Thu, 22 Nov 2012 12:01:07 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/10-ways-to-make-dublin-better/ <blockquote> <strong>2 Elect a city boss</strong> <p>Dublin accounts for 40 per cent of the population, but nobody speaks for the city in the way Michael Bloomberg does for New York and Boris Johnson for London. Civic governance is incredibly weak, with an array of public bodies, from Dublin Port Company to the National Transport Authority, exercising power in the city. Any chance of metropolitan cohesion was squandered when Dublin was carved up arbitrarily between four local authorities in 1994.</p> </blockquote> <p>These are some great suggestions. For whatever reason, the city seems to be experiencing an increased period of self-reflection. And that&rsquo;s a good thing. Articles like these can only help.</p> John McAffee's insane life → Mon, 19 Nov 2012 14:18:39 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/john-mcaffee-s-insane-life/ <blockquote> <p>In the pre-dawn hours of April 30th of this year I woke to the sound of a bullhorn yelling un-intelligible orders. I ran naked outside and saw a military formation whose uniforms identified them as GSU, creeping slowly down my driveway. I laid down the pistol that I keep for protection and, contrary to Josh Davis’ assertion that I said “Motherfuckers”, said nothing and went back inside. I woke Amy, the 17 year old with whom I was living, and calmly told her to get dressed – that the GSU was invading the property.</p> </blockquote> <p>Did you know <a href="http://www.whoismcafee.com/">John McAfee has a blog</a>? Did you know it&rsquo;s the most insane-slash-interesting thing ever?</p> Nike+ FuelBand micro-review https://lowbrowculture.com/post/nike-fuelband-micro-review/ Sun, 18 Nov 2012 16:32:28 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/nike-fuelband-micro-review/ <p>I picked up a <a href="http://www.nike.com/us/en_us/lp/nikeplusfuelband">Nike+ FuelBand</a> in San Francisco a couple of months ago. It&rsquo;s a nice piece of kit. On the wrist, it&rsquo;s comfortable and, more importantly, unobtrusive. In black at least, it looks just like a charity wristband, so hardly anyone even notices it. The tiny little light-up display is both adorable and looks futuristic as fuck.</p> <p>But I have a couple of minor problems with it.</p> <ol> <li> <p>What the fuck <em>is</em> Nike+ Fuel? I&rsquo;ve set a daily goal of 2,000<sup id="fnref:1"><a href="#fn:1" class="footnote-ref" role="doc-noteref">1</a></sup>, but what does that actually <em>mean</em>? Is 2,000 a little or a lot? If I&rsquo;m using this as a way to track my activity or to lose weight, I&rsquo;d love to know exactly what this is supposed to represent<sup id="fnref:2"><a href="#fn:2" class="footnote-ref" role="doc-noteref">2</a></sup>.</p> </li> <li> <p>This isn&rsquo;t FuelBand-specific, and is more a problem with all phone peripherals, such as the <a href="https://jawbone.com/up">Jawbone Up</a>: If your peripheral has shitty battery life (the FuelBand gets less than a week per charge), can you not figure out some way to charge the peripheral off my phone? I&rsquo;ve already have three things charging beside my bed each night, so if it&rsquo;s between your stupid peripheral and my Kindle or my phone, you&rsquo;re not going to win. Even some sort of pass-through between the phone charger and the phone that would siphon off enough to charge the peripheral would work for me.</p> </li> </ol> <p>Overall, it&rsquo;s not bad. It would never replace my Nike+ app on my phone (I&rsquo;ve logged 1,493kms run - I am <em>locked in</em>), but it&rsquo;s a great supplement to it.</p> <div class="footnotes" role="doc-endnotes"> <hr> <ol> <li id="fn:1"> <p>Sub-problem: how am I supposed to refer to these units? &ldquo;Nike+ Fuel Units&rdquo;? That&rsquo;s a bit of a mouthful, no?&#160;<a href="#fnref:1" class="footnote-backref" role="doc-backlink">&#x21a9;&#xfe0e;</a></p> </li> <li id="fn:2"> <p>This is like the problem when buying things off Xbox Live - the currency is &ldquo;Xbox Points&rdquo;, which doesn&rsquo;t translate easily to euros, dollars or pounds. They&rsquo;re obfuscating how much you&rsquo;re spending. Why would Nike obfuscate the amount of exercise you&rsquo;re doing?&#160;<a href="#fnref:2" class="footnote-backref" role="doc-backlink">&#x21a9;&#xfe0e;</a></p> </li> </ol> </div> Welcome to Flavour Town → http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/14/dining/reviews/restaurant-review-guys-american-kitchen-bar-in-times-square.html?pagewanted=all&_r=4& Thu, 15 Nov 2012 22:19:59 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/welcome-to-flavour-town/ <blockquote> <p>What exactly about a small salad with four or five miniature croutons makes Guy’s Famous Big Bite Caesar (a) big (b) famous or (c) Guy’s, in any meaningful sense?</p> <p>Were you struck by how very far from awesome the Awesome Pretzel Chicken Tenders are? If you hadn’t come up with the recipe yourself, would you ever guess that the shiny tissue of breading that exudes grease onto the plate contains either pretzels or smoked almonds? Did you discern any buttermilk or brine in the white meat, or did you think it tasted like chewy air?</p> <p>Why is one of the few things on your menu that can be eaten without fear or regret — a lunch-only sandwich of chopped soy-glazed pork with coleslaw and cucumbers — called a Roasted Pork Bahn Mi, when it resembles that item about as much as you resemble Emily Dickinson?</p> </blockquote> <p>If you read just one restaurant review today, make it Pete Wells&rsquo; review of Guy’s American Kitchen &amp; Bar in the New York Times</p> Ashamed https://lowbrowculture.com/quote/ashamed/ Thu, 15 Nov 2012 12:54:30 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/quote/ashamed/ <blockquote> <p>To her family, I want to say: I am ashamed, I am culpable, and I am sorry. For every letter to my local politician I didn&rsquo;t write, for every protest I didn&rsquo;t join, for keeping quiet about abortion rights in the company of conservative relations and friends, for becoming complacent, for thinking that Ireland was changing, for not working hard enough to secure that change, for failing to create a society in which your wife, your daughter, your sister was able to access the care that she needed: I am sorry. You must think that we are barbarians.</p> </blockquote> <p>&ndash; <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/nov/15/ireland-medieval-abortion-law-savita">I am ashamed that Ireland&rsquo;s medieval abortion law still stands - Emer O&rsquo;Toole - guardian.com</a></p> The Best https://lowbrowculture.com/post/the-best/ Thu, 08 Nov 2012 11:21:09 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/the-best/ <p><a href="https://dcurt.is/the-best">Dustin Curtis on &ldquo;The Best&rdquo;</a>:</p> <blockquote> <p>An interesting side effect, which I hadn’t anticipated, was that I developed a blind trust in the things I used. I trusted my lamp to be bright enough to light up the wheel well of a truck when its tire went flat, and it was. I trusted my wallet to hold cash, boarding passes, and IDs without deforming or falling apart, and it did. I trusted that my towel would dry quickly, because it was designed for travel, and it did. I trusted the zippers on my backpack to stay closed as I hiked through the night, and they did. These might seem like stupid things to worry about, but when you have trust in everything you own, you don’t have to worry about anything. It’s liberating and an amazing feeling. My life was markedly better because of it.</p> </blockquote> <p>I&rsquo;ve got a bit of a bag problem. By this, I mean that I seem to accumulate bags, because I have this wild, irrational fear of not having the correct bag for any given situation.</p> <p>(Look, I already acknowledged it was wild and irrational. Shut up.)</p> <p>For Christmas last year, my wife got me a <a href="https://www.goruckgear.com/Gear/Details/GR1">GoRuck GR1</a>. It is, hands down, the best bag I&rsquo;ve ever owned. It&rsquo;s the perfect size for a weekend away. It&rsquo;s the perfect size for carry-on luggage on an airplane. I&rsquo;ve used it in the worst weather Ireland can throw at it and it&rsquo;s never once leaked or even gotten soggy. When I <a href="https://lowbrowculture.com/post/bicycle-helmets/">had my bike accident</a>, the bag completely protected my MacBook Pro. Again, the best bag I&rsquo;ve ever owned.</p> <p>And I haven&rsquo;t bought another bag since I got it because I haven&rsquo;t <em>needed</em> another bag.</p> <p>So I totally understand what Dustin Curtis is saying. It&rsquo;s always worth doing your research and spending a little extra money, if necessary, to make sure you get the best.</p> Let's start the foodie backlash https://lowbrowculture.com/quote/lets-start-the-foodie-backlash/ Mon, 01 Oct 2012 10:23:11 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/quote/lets-start-the-foodie-backlash/ <p><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/sep/28/lets-start-foodie-backlash">Let&rsquo;s start the foodie backlash</a></p> <blockquote> The OED's very first citation of "foodie" is from 1980, an oozing New York Times magazine celebration of the mistress of a Parisian restaurant and her "devotees, serious foodies". "Foodie" has now pretty much everywhere replaced "gourmet", perhaps because the latter more strongly evokes privilege and a snobbish claim to uncommon sensory discrimination – even though those qualities are rampant among the "foodies" themselves. The word "foodie", it is true, lays claim to a kind of cloying, infantile cuteness which is in a way appropriate to its subject; but one should not allow them the rhetorical claim of harmless innocence implied. </blockquote> Bicycle Helmets https://lowbrowculture.com/post/bicycle-helmets/ Mon, 01 Oct 2012 07:35:22 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/bicycle-helmets/ <p>Elisabeth Rosenthal has a piece in the New York Times Sunday Review about <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/30/sunday-review/to-encourage-biking-cities-forget-about-helmets.html?pagewanted=1&amp;_r=3">whether helmets should be worn when cycling</a>. Her argument is that, yes, helmets <em>probably</em> save lives<sup id="fnref:1"><a href="#fn:1" class="footnote-ref" role="doc-noteref">1</a></sup> but making them mandatory actually discourages people from cycling.</p> <blockquote> <p>Recent experience suggests that if a city wants bike-sharing to really take off, it may have to allow and accept helmet-free riding. A two-year-old bike-sharing program in Melbourne, Australia — where helmet use in mandatory — has only about 150 rides a day, despite the fact that Melbourne is flat, with broad roads and a temperate climate. On the other hand, helmet-lax Dublin — cold, cobbled and hilly — has more than 5,000 daily rides in its young bike-sharing scheme. Mexico City recently repealed a mandatory helmet law to get a bike-sharing scheme off the ground. But here in the United States, the politics are tricky.</p> </blockquote> <p>Last year, I had the worst bike accident of my life. I was coming from the north side of the city. As I <a href="https://maps.google.com/?ll=53.347592,-6.251183&amp;spn=0.002514,0.006968&amp;t=m&amp;z=18&amp;layer=c&amp;cbll=53.347342,-6.25163&amp;panoid=ux5OWu1AZrwpT3C48TC-tA&amp;cbp=12,63.64,,0,20.51">came around the corner of the Matt Talbot bridge</a> - at a point where two cycle lanes cross over each other <em>in the middle of a pedestrian crossing</em> - when another cyclist on a Dublin Bike was coming the other way. We both saw each other too late and we both swerved in the same direction.</p> <p><a href="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2012/10/IMG_0013.jpg">The results weren&rsquo;t pretty</a>.</p> <p>I landed on my head, lost consciousness for a few minutes and was taken to hospital in an ambulance.</p> <p>There were two things I realised. First is that I don&rsquo;t think cycling helmets should be mandatory, but for my style of cycling, which I would call &lsquo;assertive&rsquo; rather than &lsquo;aggressive&rsquo;, I probably should wear one. The other thing I realised is that people on Dublin Bikes are, generally, awful and dangerous cyclists. They have no idea of the rules of the road. No concept of spacial awareness. They&rsquo;re oblivious to other road-users (and especially, other cyclists). What I have observed myself is that their first use of a Dublin Bike is usually the first time they&rsquo;ve been on a bike in a few years, so they&rsquo;re a bit wobbly and nervous. And then, after about fifteen minutes, they remember how much <em>fun</em> cycling is and they start cycling like lunatics. And that&rsquo;s when you have to watch out for them. Because they are the heaviest bikes on the road and an accident with them will fuck you up.</p> <p>Believe me. They will fuck you up.</p> <p>So, speaking as a cyclist, I guess my point is that I think bicycle helmets shouldn&rsquo;t be mandatory. Regardless of what I just said about the majority of Dublin Bike users, I think the Dublin Bike scheme is a terrific asset to the city and I also believe that it would get no use if people were forced to buy and use a helmet before using one of the bikes. I think that the decision should be left to the individual cyclist, that people should wear a helmet if they feel like they need it.</p> <div class="footnotes" role="doc-endnotes"> <hr> <ol> <li id="fn:1"> <p>Although she seems to suggest the life-saving benefits of helmets are largely apocryphal&#160;<a href="#fnref:1" class="footnote-backref" role="doc-backlink">&#x21a9;&#xfe0e;</a></p> </li> </ol> </div> Advice https://lowbrowculture.com/post/advice/ Sun, 23 Sep 2012 09:46:23 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/advice/ <blockquote> Floss at least once every day; buy the nice kind that doesn’t chop your fingers up. If you’re wearing a jacket, you probably need both a pocket square and a tie. You don’t need more than one computer anymore. Build a fire pit in your backyard at all costs. Sync everything. Try to strike up friendly conversations with every driver who calls you a cunt. Splurge on a cell phone with a data plan; if you already have one, splurge on a solid state drive; if you have both, you don’t need anything else. </blockquote> <p><a href="http://thedata.cc/post/25251049584/advice">Nickd gives some great advice about capital-L living</a>. I really want a fire pit now.</p> Point - Counterpoint → http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/19/technology/personaltech/apples-iphone-5-scores-well-with-a-quibble-review.html?pagewanted=2 Wed, 19 Sep 2012 14:58:45 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/point-counterpoint-2/ <blockquote> <p>It’s just too bad about that connector change. Doesn’t Apple worry about losing customer loyalty and sales?</p> </blockquote> <p>Apple’s reponse:</p> <blockquote> <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/tumblr_malqwwFneb1qb40je.jpg" alt="lolololololol"></p> </blockquote> You treat me like a nerfherder and that feels so rough https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/you-treat-me-like-a-nerfherder-and-that-feels-so-rough/ Sat, 09 Jun 2012 15:32:15 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/you-treat-me-like-a-nerfherder-and-that-feels-so-rough/ <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/tumblr/24748562725.png" alt=""></p> <p>Won&rsquo;t be able to not hear this now. Thanks.</p> Tintin in R'lyeh https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/tintin-in-r-lyeh/ Sat, 09 Jun 2012 15:27:01 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/tintin-in-r-lyeh/ <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/tumblr/24748296257_0.jpg" alt=""></p> <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/tumblr/24748296257_1.jpg" alt=""></p> <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/tumblr/24748296257_2.jpg" alt=""></p> <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/tumblr/24748296257_3.jpg" alt=""></p> <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/tumblr/24748296257_4.jpg" alt=""></p> <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/tumblr/24748296257_5.jpg" alt=""></p> <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/tumblr/24748296257_6.jpg" alt=""></p> <p><a href="http://fckyeahhplovecraft.tumblr.com/post/24479616338/muzskis-reinterpretation-of-herges-famous-comic">fckyeahhplovecraft</a>:</p> <blockquote> <p><a href="http://muzski.darkfolio.com/">Muzski</a>’s reinterpretation of Hergé’s famous comic series feature Tintin, Captain Haddock, Snowy and all your beloved characters in an exciting new light as they unwittingly stumble upon soul-shattering vistas from Beyond.</p> <p>Watch our brave adventurers flee from shoggoths, Deep Ones, fish folk, ghouls, Formless Spawn, Mi-Go, Elder Things, nightgaunts, Old Ones, Outer Gods and foreigners (i.e. non-Anglo-Saxons) as they face many an existential crisis regarding their insignificance on a cosmic scale!</p> <p>What eldritch horrors await our companions as they unearth the secrets from untold aeons in the dark corners of the earth? Will they heroically flee from these abominations from the stars, or will they choose the merciful oblivion that is death by throwing themselves on squalid pavements or shooting themselves in the head? And what trick does Nyarlathotep have up ‘His’ sleeve this time?</p> <p>Find out in <em>The Weird Adventures of Tintin, by H. P. Lovecraft</em>!</p> </blockquote> Cabin in the Woods → Wed, 25 Apr 2012 22:21:02 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/cabin-in-the-woods/ <p><em>Cabin in the Woods</em> is the best deconstruction of the horror genre since <em>Scream</em>. Actually, fuck that. <em>Cabin in the Woods</em> is much better than <em>Scream</em>. Wes Craven was happy enough to just list out the tropes of slasher movies, leading to a nudging, winking circle-jerk of &ldquo;You know we know these tropes. And now we know you know we know them.&rdquo;</p> <p><em>Cabin in the Woods</em> is better than that. It lists out the cliches &ndash; the things we <em>love</em> about horror movies &ndash; and gives them <em>context</em>. And not in some po-faced way. It&rsquo;s got convictions and goddamn if it doesn&rsquo;t follow through on them. Asked if he had any plans for a sequel, director Drew Goddard answered &ldquo;Have you seen the ending to my movie?&rdquo;</p> <p>You <strong>need</strong> to see this ending. And the middle. And also the beginning. Multiple times, if possible.</p> 'Angry Molesting Tree' https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/angry-molesting-tree/ Wed, 25 Apr 2012 21:32:10 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/angry-molesting-tree/ <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/tumblr/21803442845.jpg" alt=""></p> Hyrule Forever https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/hyrule-forever/ Tue, 24 Apr 2012 15:34:26 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/hyrule-forever/ <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/tumblr/21717284191.jpg" alt=""></p> <p>From <a href="http://aledknowsbest.com/post/21510234661/hyrule-forever">aledlewis</a></p> One small step for man https://lowbrowculture.com/video/21016395460/ Fri, 13 Apr 2012 08:43:10 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/video/21016395460/ <iframe width="400" height="225" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/OEyGEHETPog?wmode=transparent&autohide=1&egm=0&hd=1&iv_load_policy=3&modestbranding=1&rel=0&showinfo=0&showsearch=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> <p>Ireland&#8217;s late entry into the space race.</p> Things that have made me cry (this week) https://lowbrowculture.com/post/things-that-have-made-me-cry-this-week/ Thu, 12 Apr 2012 13:09:00 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/things-that-have-made-me-cry-this-week/ <h2 id="caines-arcade">Caine&rsquo;s Arcade</h2> <div class="embed video-player"> <iframe class="youtube-player" type="text/html" width="640" height="385" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/faIFNkdq96U" allowfullscreen frameborder="0"> </iframe> </div> <p>I usually hate flashmobs. I even hate the idea of them. I think they&rsquo;re usually selfish things, usually at someone&rsquo;s expense (c.f. <a href="http://www.thisamericanlife.org/tv-archives/season-one/reality-check">Improv Everywhere&rsquo;s &ldquo;Best Gig Ever&rdquo;</a>). But this was genuinely sweet. And I love that random strangers have chipped in over $40,000 to put this kid through college.</p> <h2 id="an-invocation-for-beginnings">An Invocation for Beginnings</h2> <div class="embed video-player"> <iframe class="youtube-player" type="text/html" width="640" height="385" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/RYlCVwxoL_g" allowfullscreen frameborder="0"> </iframe> </div> <p>I&rsquo;m so glad Ze Frank is back, because the world needs more disarmingly sincere people who rarely blink. The sentiment at 1:09 is just beautiful.</p> <h2 id="fionas-rescue">Fiona&rsquo;s Rescue</h2> <div class="embed video-player"> <iframe class="youtube-player" type="text/html" width="640" height="385" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/YJkZXh9v_i4" allowfullscreen frameborder="0"> </iframe> </div> <p>WAAAAH.</p> Suspended https://lowbrowculture.com/post/20907250545/ Wed, 11 Apr 2012 16:09:08 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/20907250545/ <p><img src="http://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m2bo57xYrP1qb40je.png" alt=""></p> <p>Over the weekend, while my wife was away, I came up with a few dumb ideas for things to keep me busy. One was an iPhone app that&rsquo;s maybe a little too PG-13 for this blog - let&rsquo;s just say it involved dicks and iPhone pictures thereof. The other was a twitter bot that would reply whenever someone tweeted one of the main lyrics from Ice Cube&rsquo;s <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h4UqMyldS7Q&amp;ob=av3n">Today was a Good Day</a>. You tweet &ldquo;Didn&rsquo;t have to use my AK&rdquo;, it would reply and say &ldquo;@foo didn&rsquo;t have to use his AK. Today was a good day&rdquo;. I spent about an hour writing it and launched it on Monday night.</p> <p>I guess some people didn&rsquo;t get the joke (although I was <em>amazed</em> at the amount of retweets and favourites it got), because the account was suspended today.</p> <p>This is my first time seeing the Twitter &ldquo;account suspended&rdquo; page and I&rsquo;m amazed. I&rsquo;m amazed at how stern it is. I&rsquo;m amazed that there&rsquo;s nothing you can do about the fact your account has been suspended except tick the two checkboxes which say &ldquo;I promise I&rsquo;ll be good from now on&rdquo;. I&rsquo;m amazed there&rsquo;s no contact details if you want to appeal this decision. But mostly, I&rsquo;m just amazed there&rsquo;s no option to say &ldquo;Fuck it, this joke isn&rsquo;t worth it - delete this account&rdquo;.</p> Finding Goatse: The Mystery Man Behind the Most Disturbing Internet Meme in History → http://gawker.com/5899787/finding-goatse-the-mystery-man-behind-the-most-disturbing-internet-meme-in-history Wed, 11 Apr 2012 00:01:59 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/finding-goatse-the-mystery-man-behind-the-most-disturbing-internet-meme-in-history/ <p>I never thought I’d say this about Goatse, but this genuinely beautiful article. And a great way to close a chapter on a period of internet culture.</p> ‘Out There’ at the Barkley: Portraits From the Edge of Endurance → http://www.geoffreybakerphotography.com/?page_id=1719 Tue, 10 Apr 2012 12:24:00 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/out-there-at-the-barkley-portraits-from-the-edge-of-endurance/ <blockquote> The Barkley is the world’s toughest race you’ve never heard of. With 59,100 feet of climb and decent over 100 miles, it’s considered the most difficult endurance event on the planet. In its 25-year history, only twelve men, the same amount of men who have walked on the moon, have actually been able to finish the race. </blockquote> <p>Before and after shots of some of the competitors. Look at these faces. These people have stared into the abyss.</p> 10 Alternative Disney Posters https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/10-alternative-disney-posters/ Sun, 08 Apr 2012 12:51:49 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/10-alternative-disney-posters/ <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/tumblr/20710333027.jpg" alt=""></p> <p><a href="http://www.tqsmagazine.co.uk/10-beautiful-alternative-disney-movie-posters/">10 Alternative Disney Posters</a></p> Compare https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/compare/ Thu, 05 Apr 2012 11:24:51 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/compare/ <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/tumblr/20521423976_0.jpg" alt=""></p> <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/tumblr/20521423976_1.jpg" alt=""></p> <p>Is this some kind of joke? There&rsquo;s no way this isn&rsquo;t deliberate.</p> Chocolate Falcon https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/chocolate-falcon/ Tue, 03 Apr 2012 14:13:26 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/chocolate-falcon/ <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/tumblr/20407989798.jpg" alt=""></p> <p>She doesn&rsquo;t look like much, but <a href="http://www.geekologie.com/2012/03/26/millennium-falcon-chocolate-2.jpg">she&rsquo;s got it where it counts</a></p> Wil Wheaton's new board game webseries https://lowbrowculture.com/video/20401718606/ Tue, 03 Apr 2012 09:45:54 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/video/20401718606/ <p><a href="http://wilwheaton.tumblr.com/post/20360779332/my-new-show-tabletop-premieres-today-episode">wilwheaton</a>:</p> <blockquote> <p>My new show, #Tabletop, premieres today. Episode 1, Small World, with @day9tv, @grantimahara, and @jennabusch is LIVE! </p> <p>Table Top Episode 1: Small World (by <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X9QtdiRJYro&amp;list=PL4F80C7D2DC8D9B6C&amp;index=1&amp;feature=plpp_video">geekandsundry</a>)</p> </blockquote> Give me a tab https://lowbrowculture.com/post/give-me-a-tab/ Tue, 03 Apr 2012 09:43:00 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/give-me-a-tab/ <blockquote> <p><em>Lou</em>: You gonna order something, kid?<br> <em>Marty McFly</em>: Ah, yeah… Give me - Give me a Tab.<br> <em>Lou</em>: Tab? I can&rsquo;t give you a tab unless you order something.<br> <em>Marty McFly</em>: All right, give me a Pepsi Free.<br> <em>Lou</em>: You want a Pepsi, PAL, you&rsquo;re gonna pay for it.</p> </blockquote> <p>Kids today watching <em>Back to the Future</em> would be just as confused as Lou. What the fuck is a Tab? What the fuck is Pepsi Free?</p> <p>Full circle.</p> Adults Should Read Adult Books → http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2012/03/28/the-power-of-young-adult-fiction/adults-should-read-adult-books Tue, 03 Apr 2012 09:40:26 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/adults-should-read-adult-books/ <blockquote> <p>The only thing more embarrassing than catching a guy on the plane looking at pornography on his computer is seeing a guy on the plane reading “The Hunger Games.” Or a Twilight book. Or Harry Potter. The only time I’m O.K. with an adult holding a children’s book is if he’s moving his mouth as he reads.</p> </blockquote> <p>Translation: <em>I am insufferable cunt.</em></p> <p>Honestly, there&rsquo;s not a sentence in his article that I don&rsquo;t find absolutely hateful. Using Thomas Pynchon and David Foster Wallace to show us how well-read you are is total bullshit (I know this because it&rsquo;s the exact kind of total bullshit I pull myself).</p> Should have sent a poet https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/should-have-sent-a-poet/ Mon, 02 Apr 2012 13:36:12 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/should-have-sent-a-poet/ <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/tumblr/20347689911.jpg" alt=""></p> <p>For all the complaints about the Smithfield Horse Fair, what happens if they take it away? We miss out on pictures like this.</p> <p>Of a Garda.</p> <p>Pushed into a pile of horse shit.</p> <p>With a massive horse wang hitting him on the head.</p> <p>Amazing.</p> <p>(via <a href="http://www.broadsheet.ie/2012/04/02/meanwhile-at-the-smithfield-horse-fair/">Meanwhile, At The Smithfield Horse Fair - Broadsheet.ie</a>)</p> Running https://lowbrowculture.com/quote/running/ Mon, 02 Apr 2012 09:51:08 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/quote/running/ <blockquote> <p>While more than a million humans run marathons voluntarily each year, most animals we consider excellent runners — antelopes and cheetahs, for example — are built for speed, not endurance. Even nature’s best animal distance runners — such as horses and dogs — will run similar distances only if forced to do so, and the startling evidence is that humans are better at it, Lieberman said.</p> <p>Modern humans and their immediate ancestors such as Homo erectus sport several adaptations that make humans, instead of some ferocious, furry, or fleet creature, the animal world’s best distance runners.</p> </blockquote> <p><a href="http://www.physorg.com/news95954919.html" target="_blank">Humans hot, sweaty, natural-born runners - physorg.com</a></p> Sex in San Andreas https://lowbrowculture.com/quote/sex-in-san-andreas/ Mon, 02 Apr 2012 09:48:00 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/quote/sex-in-san-andreas/ <blockquote> <p>Unfortunately, here is the situation,” Donovan wrote in an e-mail to Sam on Aug. 16, 2004, and proceeded to list the necessary changes.</p> <p>“Hooker in car blow job — we need to show much less of the critical mouth to penis area.</p> <p>“Hooker Stand Up Blow Job — this needs to be removed or implied.</p> <p>“Sex with girlfriend — essentially this is all beyond the bounds of M and 18 ratings, and needs to be removed or implied.</p> <p>“Sex shop workers need to have slightly more nipple coverage particularly for the States.</p> <p>“Key to her heart spanking date scene needs to be removed, as it constitutes sexualized violence which is a huge problem.</p> <p>“Blow job in back room of dealer’s house is cool however.</p> </blockquote> <p><a href="http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2012/03/hot-coffee-san-andreas/">The Bureaucracy of Videogames: Why San Andreas Had to Tone Down the Sex - wired.com</a></p> Superman is kind of a dick https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/superman-is-kind-of-a-dick/ Sun, 01 Apr 2012 00:22:59 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/superman-is-kind-of-a-dick/ <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/tumblr/20255908413.jpg" alt=""></p> <p><a href="http://thisisnthappiness.com/post/20210966225/youve-had-this-coming">nevver</a>:</p> <p><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/44099259@N00/2843751043/in/set-711696">You’ve had this coming</a></p> Horror Synths: Sequential Circuits Prophet 5 Synthesizer → http://manisthewarmestplacetohide.com/blog/horror-synths-sequential-circuits-prophet-5-synthesizer Fri, 30 Mar 2012 14:29:04 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/horror-synths-sequential-circuits-prophet-5-synthesizer/ <p>Horror movie blog, Man is the Warmest Place to Hide takes a look at the huge role the Prophet synthesizer plays in 80s horror. This is why the internet is great.</p> Small / Far Away https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/small-far-away/ Fri, 30 Mar 2012 07:56:30 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/small-far-away/ <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/tumblr/20162749746.jpg" alt=""></p> Sublime Text → http://www.sublimetext.com/ Thu, 29 Mar 2012 13:06:41 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/sublime-text/ <p><a href="http://macromates.com/">The king</a> is dead! Long live the king!</p> GoldenEye N64 included a full, working Spectrum emulator → http://www.therwp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=48139 Thu, 29 Mar 2012 11:22:36 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/goldeneye-n64-included-a-full-working-spectrum-emulator/ <p>Something they put in as a test and never took out. Completely inaccessible through the console. Still, amazing.</p> Writing Portal 2 https://lowbrowculture.com/quote/writing-portal-2/ Thu, 29 Mar 2012 09:31:58 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/quote/writing-portal-2/ <blockquote> <p>For Portal 2 the script was written mainly in Word. The Left 4 Deads have so many lines that need to fire under certain conditions; we track it all in database software - Visual FoxPro 6. This results in my often being lazy and writing directly into the tables and then writing a script to output a Word document to take to the recording studio. I think it is safe to say, L4D2 is the only game written in Visual Foxpro. I don’t really recommend it.</p> </blockquote> <p><a href="http://chet.faliszek.usesthis.com/">An interview with Chet Faliszek, writer at Valve Software</a></p> 35-Year Old Retakes the SAT https://lowbrowculture.com/quote/35-year-old-retakes-the-sat/ Sun, 25 Mar 2012 12:25:01 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/quote/35-year-old-retakes-the-sat/ <blockquote> <p>If you&rsquo;re 35 years old and you&rsquo;re thinking about retaking the SAT as a kind of blog stunt, I would highly recommend you avoid it. In fact, I would recommend that no one take the SAT ever. It&rsquo;s a sternly worded dinosaur of a test, graded in an arbitrary manner with outdated equipment, and it blows. The only reason people take it is because they have to. It exists only so that preppy dipshits can brag about their scores well into adulthood if they did well. I hate it. I hope the Princeton Review gets fucked by a cattle prod.</p> </blockquote> <p><a href="http://deadspin.com/5893189/what-happens-when-a-35%20year%20old-man-retakes-the-sat">What Happens When A 35-Year-Old Man Retakes The SAT?</a></p> Album Covers Mix and Match https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/album-covers-mix-and-match/ Sat, 24 Mar 2012 11:59:19 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/album-covers-mix-and-match/ <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/tumblr/19829700689.jpg" alt=""></p> <p><a href="http://thedesigninspiration.com/articles/amazing-album-covers-mix-and-match/">Album Covers Mix and Match</a></p> Heavy Hangs The Bandwidth That Torrents The Crown https://lowbrowculture.com/post/19828174059/ Sat, 24 Mar 2012 10:31:05 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/19828174059/ <p>Link: <a href="http://ihnatko.com/2012/02/20/heavy-hangs-the-bandwidth-that-torrents-the-crown/">Heavy Hangs The Bandwidth That Torrents The Crown</a></p> <p>Andy Ihnatko:</p> <blockquote> <p>You’re not into physical media? I’m with you. It’ll be on iTunes soon. See? The store page lists the release date. March 6. You can circle it on the calendar and everything.</p> <p>You’re still frowning. What’s wrong, Scrumpkin?</p> <p>Oh. You want it right now.</p> <p>But — umm — the release date is only, like, two or three weeks away. Just hang on a bit. You’ll be fine.</p> <p>Yes, I heard you (please, sir, there’s really no need to shout). I understand that you want it (and I hope I’m not misquoting you) right the ****ity-**** NOWWWWWWWW. But you can’t have it now. You can have it on March 6. It isn’t even as far away as you think. Remember? February is the super-short month?</p> <p>(Sigh)</p> <p>You’re already torrenting it, aren’t you?</p> <p>Annnnd now you’re also calling me a d*** because I expected you to wait two weeks, and you’re claiming that you’re “forced” to torrent it because the video industry is bunch of turds. How charming.</p> </blockquote> <p>I wish everyone would read Andy Ihnatko&rsquo;s post before banging out their own incoherent, self-entitled posts on how the entertainment industry is leaving them with <em>no choice</em> to but pirate TV shows. Even MG Siegler &ndash; usually a super-smart guy and a great writer &ndash; wrote a post titled &ldquo;<a href="http://pandodaily.com/2012/03/20/a-winter-of-piracy-is-coming/">Help! I’m Being Forced To Pirate Game Of Thrones Against My Will!</a>&rdquo;.</p> <p>Seriously?</p> <p>These guys should try living in Europe for a while, where HBO is a distant dream, the selection of shows and films on iTunes seems to be a cruel joke and where Netflix only <em>just</em> launched. I pirate my TV shows too, but only because I have issues with delayed gratification. I&rsquo;m okay with that, and I don&rsquo;t try to blame anyone but myself.</p> <p>Everyone, just go read Andy Ihnatko&rsquo;s post.</p> Disturbing https://lowbrowculture.com/video/19827819764/ Sat, 24 Mar 2012 10:08:46 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/video/19827819764/ <p><a href="http://tumblr.thedailywh.at/post/19781143836/early-bird-special-youtuber-danielbwilson-writes">thedailywhat</a>:</p> <blockquote> <p><strong>Early Bird Special:</strong> YouTuber <a href="http://www.youtube.com/user/danielbwilson">danielbwilson</a> writes: “Discovered completely by accident by putting the toys away, it just had to be recorded and shared. Alone these toys seem innocent, but together, it is just wrong. Elmo Live and Tickle Me Extreme Cookie Monster.”</p> <p>[<a href="http://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/r8m8e/this_is_disturbing/">reddit</a>.]</p> </blockquote> Le Petit Prince https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/19589568179/ Mon, 19 Mar 2012 21:33:03 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/19589568179/ <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/tumblr/19589568179.jpg" alt=""></p> <p><a href="http://www.troygua.com/work/le-petit-prince/">Troy Gua - Le Petit Prince</a></p> <p>So good. Also loved the recreation of <a href="http://www.troygua.com/files/gimgs/29_29princealbum1.jpg">Prince&rsquo;s first album cover</a>.</p> World of the Living Dead → https://worldofthelivingdead.com/ Sun, 18 Mar 2012 09:30:58 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/world-of-the-living-dead/ <p>Browser-based zombie strategy game using Google Maps as a back-end. Gorgeous. Like a HD <a href="http://www.urbandead.com/">Urban Dead</a>, which sucked away <em>months</em> of my life.</p> Why Finish Books? - The New York Review of Books → http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2012/mar/13/why-finish-books/ Fri, 16 Mar 2012 11:59:06 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/why-finish-books-the-new-york-review-of-books/ <p>This really hits home for me. I&rsquo;ve been slogging my way through books I haven&rsquo;t been enjoying and I&rsquo;ve had enough. As the article points out: &ldquo;The more bad books you finish, the fewer good ones you’ll have time to start.&rdquo;</p> LA Times: "All red meat is bad for you" → http://www.latimes.com/health/la-he-red-meat-20120313,0,565423.story Wed, 14 Mar 2012 00:01:30 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/la-times-all-red-meat-is-bad-for-you/ <p>I&rsquo;ve been seeing a lot of links to news articles about this study saying that red meat is linked to a whole range of health-related risks. The part every news article leaves out, and which <a href="http://archinte.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/full/archinternmed.2011.2287">the original study takes into considerations</a>, is that people who eat a lot of red meat probably have other lifestyle factors that would contribute to their general health level. From the study: &ldquo;Men and women with higher intake of red meat were less likely to be physically active and were more likely to be current smokers, to drink alcohol, and to have a higher body mass index.&rdquo;</p> Shamrocking https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/shamrocking/ Mon, 12 Mar 2012 18:33:00 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/shamrocking/ <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/tumblr/19187786542.jpg" alt=""></p> <p><a href="http://www.buzzfeed.com/mcdonalds/have-you-tried-shamrocking-yet-3tnh">Americans are trying to make #Shamrocking a &rsquo;thing&rsquo;.</a></p> <p>Hey America? Fuck you.</p> <p>Also, while we&rsquo;re on the subject, the first one of you sons of bitches to call it &ldquo;St. Patty&rsquo;s Day&rdquo; is getting punched in the dick.</p> Wat → https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/talks/wat Fri, 09 Mar 2012 15:46:46 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/wat/ <p>Gary Bernhardt&rsquo;s nerd-heavy talk on the various WAT-inducing cases in Ruby and Javascript.</p> 3 shell scripts to improve your writing, or "My Ph.D. advisor rewrote himself in bash." → http://matt.might.net/articles/shell-scripts-for-passive-voice-weasel-words-duplicates/ Wed, 07 Mar 2012 21:27:19 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/3-shell-scripts-to-improve-your-writing-or-my-ph-d-advisor-rewrote-himself-in-bash/ <p>I think a large part of my secret desire to become a writer is just so I can rock a load of LaTeX and use a Makefile &ndash; a fucking <em>Makefile</em> &ndash; on my writing.</p> Inside Chris Ware's House https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/inside-chris-ware-s-house/ Wed, 07 Mar 2012 12:19:43 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/inside-chris-ware-s-house/ <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/tumblr/18898599232.jpg" alt=""></p> <p>Chris Ware&rsquo;s house looks almost exactly like I imagined it would.</p> <p>(via <a href="http://welcometotripcity.com/2012/03/wares-world-inside-the-home-of-cartoonist-chris-ware/">Trip City</a>)</p> DELETE MORE CARE LESS https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/delete-more-care-less/ Wed, 07 Mar 2012 11:53:57 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/delete-more-care-less/ <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/tumblr/18898151436.jpg" alt=""></p> <p>(via <a href="http://www.newyorkshitty.com/street-art/?p=75877">The Word On The Street, Part III: Good Advice</a>)</p> Banksy on Advertising https://lowbrowculture.com/quote/banksy-on-advertising/ Wed, 07 Mar 2012 11:41:00 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/quote/banksy-on-advertising/ <blockquote> <p>You owe the companies nothing. Less than nothing, you especially don’t owe them any courtesy. They owe you. <strong>They have re-arranged the world to put themselves in front of you</strong>. They never asked for your permission, don’t even start asking for theirs.</p> </blockquote> <p><a href="http://blakemccreary.com/2012/03/banksy-on-advertising-quote/">Banksy On Advertising</a></p> Confrontation Mashup https://lowbrowculture.com/video/18897508138/ Wed, 07 Mar 2012 11:14:45 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/video/18897508138/ <iframe src="//player.vimeo.com/video/37865623" width="800" height="450" frameborder="0" webkitallowfullscreen mozallowfullscreen allowfullscreen></iframe> <p>48 films’ worth of ownage in two minutes.</p> <p>Or, FUCK YEAH BLOOD, GUTS &amp; CGI.</p> <p>(via <a href="http://www.avclub.com/articles/48-films-worth-of-ownage-in-two-minutes,70363/?mobile=true">The AV Club</a>)</p> Pristine Convenience https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/pristine-convenience/ Tue, 06 Mar 2012 18:51:49 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/pristine-convenience/ <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/tumblr/18855111445.gif" alt="Renton from Trainspotting"></p> <p><a href="http://iwdrm.tumblr.com/post/2858772535">iwdrm</a>:</p> <blockquote> <p><em>“I fantasize about a massive, pristine convenience. Brilliant gold taps, virginal white marble, a seat carved from ebony, a cistern full of Chanel Number 5, and a flunky handing me pieces of raw silk toilet roll. But under the circumstances I’ll settle for anywhere.”</em></p> </blockquote> <p><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0117951/">Trainspotting (1996)</a></p> Pictures of People Scanning QR Codes https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/18843659835/ Tue, 06 Mar 2012 11:34:32 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/18843659835/ <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/tumblr/18843659835.jpg" alt=""></p> <p><a href="http://picturesofpeoplescanningqrcodes.tumblr.com/">Pictures of People Scanning QR Codes</a></p> Take the ride https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/18843308297/ Tue, 06 Mar 2012 11:12:30 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/18843308297/ <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/tumblr/18843308297.jpg" alt=""></p> Religious Wars → http://culturedcode.com/things/ Tue, 06 Mar 2012 10:32:48 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/religious-wars/ <p>Things is to <a href="http://www.omnigroup.com/products/omnifocus/">OmniFocus</a> as <a href="http://www.vim.org/">Vim</a> is to <a href="http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/">Emacs</a></p> <p>I&rsquo;ve always been a Vim man.</p> Gaming the system: On the rise of YouTube’s search-friendly “reply girls” → http://shortformblog.tumblr.com/post/18230584617/youtube-reply-girls-seo Fri, 02 Mar 2012 12:01:06 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/gaming-the-system-on-the-rise-of-youtubes-search-friendly-reply-girls/ <p>I know, we all hate spammers. But you&rsquo;ve got to admire their ingenuity and their grasp of human psychology.</p> Andrew Breitbart: Death of a Douche → http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/andrew-breitbart-death-of-a-douche-20120301 Fri, 02 Mar 2012 11:25:32 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/andrew-breitbart-death-of-a-douche/ <p>The WorldNetDaily geniuses are already suggesting he was assassinated. I&rsquo;m glad this is the last insane story Breitbart will give them.</p> Hey Hey https://lowbrowculture.com/quote/hey-hey/ Thu, 01 Mar 2012 17:13:22 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/quote/hey-hey/ <blockquote> <p>They quit before it became too embarrassing, and almost immediately their short run of hit singles, plus the TV theme, became oldies radio regulars. Dig deeper, though, because the Monkees&rsquo; catalogue is full of gems. Their influence is gentle but pervasive; it&rsquo;s hard to think of any other group who could have released a song that would be covered by both the Sex Pistols and PJ &amp; Duncan. &ldquo;Whenever I think of the Monkees,&rdquo; said the Go-Betweens&rsquo; Robert Forster in 1986, &ldquo;it&rsquo;s a sunny morning, the brightest colours, and David Jones&rsquo;s eyes. Their music is perfect, as perfect as pop could ever be. Last Train to Clarksville has been written, and we are left with our own imperfection.</p> </blockquote> <p>For anyone who dismisses the Monkees as an entirely manufactured pop group, I point them at <em>Head</em> and its impressive subversion of their image. <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/musicblog/2012/mar/01/the-monkees-believer-davy-jones">At least Peter Stanley gets it</a>.</p> Half-Ass https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/half-ass/ Thu, 01 Mar 2012 13:12:16 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/half-ass/ <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/tumblr/18549410429.gif" alt=""></p> Soviet Ruins https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/soviet-ruins/ Thu, 01 Mar 2012 11:11:00 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/soviet-ruins/ <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/tumblr/18547221226.jpg" alt=""></p> <blockquote> <p>I first heard about the Buzludzha monument (pronounced Buz’ol’ja) last summer when I was attending a photo festival in Bulgaria. Alongside me judging a photography competition was Alexander Ivanov, a Bulgarian photographer who had gained national notoriety after spending the last 10 years shooting ‘Bulgaria from the Air’. Back then he showed me some pictures of what looked to me like a cross between a flying saucer and Doctor Evil’s hideout perched atop a glorious mountain range.</p> </blockquote> <p>I love that we live in a world where a place like this actually exists. And has been allowed to go to ruin, making it infinitely more dramatic-looking. I couldn&rsquo;t even decide which picture to post, they&rsquo;re all so amazing. Just stop whatever you&rsquo;re doing now and <a href="http://humanplanet.com/timothyallen/2012/02/buzludzha-buzludja-bulgaria/">check them all out</a>.</p> Steve Martin is STILL the best https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/18546868288/ Thu, 01 Mar 2012 10:48:45 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/18546868288/ <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/tumblr/18546868288.png" alt=""></p> The Star Wars Saga: Suggested Viewing Order → http://www.nomachetejuggling.com/2011/11/11/the-star-wars-saga-suggested-viewing-order/ Tue, 28 Feb 2012 13:01:16 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/the-star-wars-saga-suggested-viewing-order/ <p>If you&rsquo;re someone who doesn&rsquo;t give the <em>Star Wars</em> films a second thought, you have no idea how much thought us nerds put into the idea of what order we should make our kids watch them. This guy has perfected it.</p> <p>I&rsquo;d encourage you to read his whole post, but if you&rsquo;re still all &ldquo;TL;DR&rdquo;? IV, V, II, III, VI. No Episode I at all.</p> Time Spent https://lowbrowculture.com/quote/time-spent/ Tue, 28 Feb 2012 11:55:41 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/quote/time-spent/ <blockquote> <p>Visitors using personal computers spent an average of about <em>three minutes a month</em> on Google between last September and January, versus <em>six to seven hours</em> on Facebook each month over the same period, according to comScore, which didn&rsquo;t have data on mobile usage.</p> </blockquote> <p>Whoa. <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204653604577249341403742390.html">The Mounting Minuses at Google - WSJ.com</a></p> Infovore » A Year of Links → http://infovore.org/archives/2012/02/26/a-year-of-links Tue, 28 Feb 2012 11:50:11 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/infovore-a-year-of-links/ <p>Tom Armitage:</p> <blockquote> <p>I thought it would be interesting to produce a kind of personal encylopedia: each volume cataloguing the links for a whole year. Given I first used Delicious in 2004, that makes for eight books to date.</p> </blockquote> <p>Beautifully done.</p> A Heck of a Stance https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/a-heck-of-a-stance/ Mon, 27 Feb 2012 23:12:19 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/a-heck-of-a-stance/ <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/tumblr/18401813679.jpg" alt=""></p> <p>If both of Angelina&rsquo;s legs were showing.</p> The 8 Most Opulent Gifts in the Oscar Swag Bags → http://newsfeed.time.com/2012/02/26/the-8-most-opulent-gifts-in-the-oscar-swag-bags/#swag-bag-bliss Mon, 27 Feb 2012 23:00:15 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/the-8-most-opulent-gifts-in-the-oscar-swag-bags/ <p>Each gift bag was worth about $60,000. And these got handed out to all the nominees. Reminds me of that line from <em>Withnail &amp; I</em> - Free to those that can afford it. Very expensive to those that can&rsquo;t.</p> Dear Esther https://lowbrowculture.com/post/18386537544/ Mon, 27 Feb 2012 18:21:00 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/18386537544/ <p>With no characters to interact with, no enemies to fight, no puzzles to solve, no way to manipulate the environment around you, <em>Dear Esther</em> is guaranteed to spark a thousand hand-wringing debates about what a game actually <em>is</em>. Can a game have none of the elements listed above and still call itself a game? Or is it enough to provide an experience to the player? Come to think of it, if you&rsquo;re not &ldquo;playing&rdquo;, what do you call it?</p> <p>I guess you could call it exploration. <em>Dear Esther</em> is <em>great</em> at exploration. You explore an uninhabited island, with its beautifully rendered landscapes and scattered clues to the people who once lived there. You explore the story (or <em>stories</em>) being told by the disembodied narrator. You explore the nature of gameplay.</p> <p>More than anything, though, <em>Dear Esther</em> is about atmosphere. The story being told, the tone of the narration, the haunting soundtrack, the gorgeous visuals. These all add up to a singular atmosphere of loneliness and desolation. The creators have said they were <a href="http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012/02/06/igf-factor-2012-dear-esther/">influenced by Tarkovsky&rsquo;s Stalker</a> &ndash; a film that is more about creating an atmosphere than telling a compelling story.</p> <p>But, although it tries, it can&rsquo;t escape its game roots. <em>Dear Esther</em> is built with &ldquo;Source&rdquo; engine, the same one that powers <em>Half Life 2</em>, and so it&rsquo;s necessarily constrained in the scope of its ability to tell a story and build the atmosphere it is going for, in much the same way as a book is bound by the constraints of having to tell its story through the medium of static print. As a result, its game-like artifacts are completely out of place in such an anti-game. To prevent you going too far off the prescribed path, <em>Dear Esther</em> uses conventions like invisible walls and insta-death points. Arbitrary rules that people often expect and that sometimes even make sense in a traditional &lsquo;game&rsquo;. In something like this, though, they shatter the illusion and the atmosphere.</p> <p>As a game (if that&rsquo;s what you decide to call it), <em>Dear Esther</em> a failure. As a story, it falls similarly flat, drip-feeding the brunt of the story through the same kind of cack-handed, painfully oblique passages as we saw in <em>Braid</em>.</p> <p>As an <em>experience</em>, there&rsquo;s nothing like it.</p> Feltron Biennial Report → http://feltron.com/ar11_01.html Mon, 27 Feb 2012 17:01:23 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/feltron-biennial-report/ <p>Nicholas Felton has released the latest version of his &ldquo;annual reports&rdquo; - a collection of all the data that makes up his life. As someone who has trouble <a href="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0ArCB75RbAr6XdEtTeWZRMEZfNVN1UGFPRk1FckJrdkE#gid=0">keeping track of the movies he&rsquo;s watched</a>, I&rsquo;m very jealous of his ability to consistently keep track of this stuff.</p> <p>After the internet design community started spooging over these things a few years ago, he set up <a href="http://daytum.com/">daytum</a>, a website to help people collect these various discrete bits of information and to present them in a &ldquo;Feltron Annual Report&rdquo; kind of way. And yet <a href="http://feltron.com/ar11_09.html">according to the &ldquo;about&rdquo; page of the report</a>, (and even <a href="http://daytum.com/feltron">according to his account page on daytum</a>), he doesn&rsquo;t use it himself. I dunno, I just found that interesting.</p> No Content Found https://lowbrowculture.com/video/18380390087/ Mon, 27 Feb 2012 15:16:28 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/video/18380390087/ <p>Spielberg, fresh off Jaws, watching the 1976 Oscar nominations.</p> <p>&ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t get it! I wasn&rsquo;t nominated! I got beaten out by Fellini!&rdquo;</p> No Content Found https://lowbrowculture.com/video/18214433760/ Fri, 24 Feb 2012 23:41:04 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/video/18214433760/ <p>If you&rsquo;ve got 35 minutes to spare, you could do a lot worse than spending it in the company of Ron Gilbert and Tim Schafer, talking about graphic adventures.</p> Debbie Harry and Andre the Giant https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/debbie-harry-and-andre-the-giant/ Thu, 23 Feb 2012 09:17:27 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/debbie-harry-and-andre-the-giant/ <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/tumblr/18123267637.jpg" alt="Debbie Harry and Andre the Giant"></p> <p>All I need is a giant 70s &lsquo;fro and this could be a picture of me and my wife heading out on a Saturday night.</p> No Content Found https://lowbrowculture.com/video/18123208138/ Thu, 23 Feb 2012 09:13:54 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/video/18123208138/ <p>Hereford, Hereford, Hereford.</p> The myth of the eight-hour sleep → http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-16964783 Wed, 22 Feb 2012 15:04:16 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/the-myth-of-the-eight-hour-sleep/ <p>Scientists are arguing that the 8-hour sleep is unnatural, and that humans naturally fall into a more segmented sleep cycle. In other words, I should be treating every day like I treat Sunday, with a pre-sleep nap.</p> Gamification https://lowbrowculture.com/quote/gamification/ Wed, 22 Feb 2012 13:53:13 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/quote/gamification/ <blockquote>The problem with Gamification is that it tries to solve a problem that doesn't exist. We already have a universal points system, across all aspects of life, that represents status and is redeemable for real world prizes. **It's called "money."**</blockquote> <p><a href="http://playthisthing.com/problem-gamification">Greg Costikyan nails it</a></p> No Content Found https://lowbrowculture.com/video/17318882844/ Thu, 09 Feb 2012 14:56:41 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/video/17318882844/ <p>Double Fine are using Kickstarter to fund their new adventure game. 140% funded in 24 hours.</p> <p>Seriously, this is monumental.</p> Fountain - A Markup Language for Screenwriting → http://fountain.io/ Thu, 09 Feb 2012 14:21:39 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/fountain-a-markup-language-for-screenwriting/ <p><a href="http://johnaugust.com/2012/introducing-fountain">John August</a>:</p> <blockquote> <p>Back when we announced FDX Reader, I got a lot of emails asking, &lsquo;When are you going to make a screenwriting app?” Answer: Today. My hope is that we just made a thousand. Fountain turns every text editor into a screenwriting app.</p> </blockquote> <p>This means flexibility. This means genuine collaboration - people in geographically different locations can edit the same Google Doc at the same time. This means I can write a screenplay on my phone.</p> <p>This means I don&rsquo;t really have any excuse not to write any more.</p> El Wingador → http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/03/opinion/el-wingador.html?_r=2 Wed, 08 Feb 2012 10:37:34 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/el-wingador/ <p>Errol Morris Op-Doc on Bill &lsquo;El Wingador&rsquo; Simmons. I love that he has a cross-stitch by his front door saying &ldquo;NOTHING EXCEEDS LIKE EXCESS&rdquo;.</p> No Content Found https://lowbrowculture.com/video/17206255241/ Tue, 07 Feb 2012 11:47:37 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/video/17206255241/ <p><a href="http://www.disneyhistoryinstitute.com/2012/02/disneyland-canon-1957.html">DISNEY HISTORY INSTITUTE: Disneyland Canon: 1957</a> via <a href="http://waxy.org">Waxy</a></p> <p>One thing stood out watching this amazingly restored home video of Disneyland. With &lsquo;Main Street USA&rsquo;, Walt Disney was attempting to recreate the atmosphere of small-town America that he grew up with - the America of the 1900s and 1910s. This video is from 1957, so most of the people walking through this section of Disneyland had either direct memories of this period or were only one generation removed from it.</p> <p>If you visit Disneyland now, you&rsquo;ll walk down a Main Street USA that is still going for that same atmosphere of turn-of-the-century Americana, even though the people visiting it are likely four or five generations removed from this period. They don&rsquo;t have any nostalgia for this time. They probably don&rsquo;t even know what the hell a &ldquo;Penny Arcade&rdquo; is.</p> <p>Interestingly, if Walt Disney was just getting started today, and was building his first park now, the atmosphere of small-town America he would be creating would actually be the America of the mid-1950s - the time when Disneyland was actually built.</p> Ain't no one fucks with Tiny Hippo https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/ain-t-no-one-fucks-with-tiny-hippo/ Tue, 07 Feb 2012 11:35:06 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/ain-t-no-one-fucks-with-tiny-hippo/ <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/tumblr/17206029777.jpg" alt=""></p> <p>(via <a href="http://poorlydrawnlines.com/">Poorly Drawn Lines</a>)</p> Crowdsourcing https://lowbrowculture.com/post/17160249291/ Mon, 06 Feb 2012 18:46:01 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/17160249291/ <p>One of the unfortunate effects of living in another country for almost five years is that you have to almost completely rebuild your knowledge of your home city. Specifically, I find that I need to find out where the best bars and restaurants are (because, honestly, there&rsquo;s only so much <a href="https://twitter.com/#!/CrackBIRDdublin">Crackbird</a> a man can handle).</p> <p>In theory, this is where things like <a href="http://www.yelp.ie">Yelp</a> and <a href="http://www.menupages.ie">Menupages</a> are supposed to come in. The internet hive-mind is supposed to work its magic. I should be able to shout &ldquo;Yelp! What is best in life?&rdquo; and it will tell me &ldquo;<a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0082198/quotes">To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of their women.</a>&rdquo;. Instead, it says &ldquo;<a href="http://www.yelp.ie/biz/paulies-pizza-dublin">Paulie&rsquo;s Pizza</a>, <a href="http://www.yelp.ie/biz/kilmainham-gaol-dublin">Kilmainham Gaol</a> and <a href="http://www.yelp.ie/biz/croke-park-dublin">Croke Park</a>.&rdquo;</p> <p>Wrong, Yelp.</p> <p>I guess it&rsquo;s just a fundamental problem with crowdsourcing. Rather than helping the cream rise to the top, the noise generated by these sites actively drowns out useful information, making them useless. Even large sites like Amazon suffer from the same problem. I recently tried to buy a wireless access point for work. I checked out a few tech blogs and read reviews of some products. I finally settled on a Cisco product and went to Amazon to order it. Despite the almost entirely favorable reviews I&rsquo;d read, the access point had only two and a half stars on Amazon. Turns out this was based on two reviews, the first of which was a one-star review with the person saying he&rsquo;d had a problem with the <em>technical support</em> for <em>another</em> Cisco product. The other review was from Cisco themselves, giving the product five stars. The text of their &lsquo;review&rsquo; was &ldquo;if you have an issue with a product, please email us at $blah&rdquo;. Both reviews were useless and, if I&rsquo;d been basing my purchase on the overall score of the product, I would have walked away.</p> <p>More useful than the hours I&rsquo;ve spent trawling Yelp and Menupages has been the one post I put up on Facebook, asking my friends where they&rsquo;d recommend for places to eat. This way, I&rsquo;ve immediately got context for each one of the places that have been recommended - this friend has <em>impeccable</em> taste, so I&rsquo;ll try their recommendation first etc. It&rsquo;s a similar reason why I trust Brian Lam&rsquo;s <a href="http://thewirecutter.com/">The Wire Cutter</a> over the countless aggregation sites, or anything that relies on the average score of a large group of people to recommend technology. A sufficiently well-curated site run by a single person can still trump the wider internet.</p> No Content Found https://lowbrowculture.com/video/17153473226/ Mon, 06 Feb 2012 14:29:00 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/video/17153473226/ <p><em>&ldquo;Pain or damage don&rsquo;t end the world. Or despair. Or fuckin&rsquo; beatings. The world ends when you&rsquo;re dead. &rsquo;til then, you got more punishment in store. Stand it like a man - and give some back.&rdquo;</em></p> Russian scientists searching for underground 'alien' lake still missing on SEVENTH day as Tuesday 'date of no return' looms → http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2095193/Lake-Vostok-Russian-scientists-drilling-alien-Antarctic-lake-buried-20m-years.html Sun, 05 Feb 2012 23:49:55 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/russian-scientists-searching-for-underground-alien-lake-still-missing-on-seventh-day-as-tuesday-date-of-no-return-looms/ <p>Sorry for linking to the Daily Mail, but HOLY FUCK.</p> Connecting nvALT and Address Book → http://brettterpstra.com/connecting-nvalt-and-address-book/ Fri, 03 Feb 2012 12:26:38 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/connecting-nvalt-and-address-book/ <p>I use nvAlt (synced with SimpleNote) all over the place, from storing little code snippets to keeping track of ideas and lists over time. Brett Terpstra has come up with a great idea for linking notes with individual people in your address book. Love this.</p> The Dublin cinema manager who became the only Irish prisoner of Dachau → http://comeheretome.wordpress.com/2012/01/28/the-dublin-cinema-manager-who-became-the-only-irish-prisoner-of-dachau Wed, 01 Feb 2012 12:31:32 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/the-dublin-cinema-manager-who-became-the-only-irish-prisoner-of-dachau/ <p>This post shows why <em>Come Here To me</em> is, by a huge margin, my favourite Irish blog.</p> No Content Found https://lowbrowculture.com/video/16576165357/ Fri, 27 Jan 2012 13:20:26 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/video/16576165357/ <p><em>4,748 Self-Portraits and Counting</em></p> <p>I think Jeff Harris just became my new personal hero.</p> Directed by John Ford https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/directed-by-john-ford/ Tue, 24 Jan 2012 17:59:08 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/directed-by-john-ford/ <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/tumblr/16414295525_0.png" alt="John Ford"> <img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/tumblr/16414295525_1.gif" alt="John Ford"></p> <p><a href="http://bonaventurer.tumblr.com/post/16124015705/directed-by-john-ford-1971">bonaventurer</a>:</p> <blockquote> <p><em>Directed by John Ford (1971)</em></p> </blockquote> No Content Found https://lowbrowculture.com/video/16404892252/ Tue, 24 Jan 2012 12:46:22 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/video/16404892252/ <p><a href="http://www.iheartchaos.com/post/16350459140/filipino-traffic-cop-is-possessed-by-the-funky">iheartchaos</a>:</p> <blockquote>**Filipino traffic cop is possessed by the funky ghost of Michael Jackson** > > <blockquote> <p>Even if you’re stuck in rush hour Manila traffic, at least the traffic cop’s a smooth criminal.</p> </blockquote> <blockquote> <p><a href="http://jalopnik.com/5878331/michael-jackson-isnt-dead-hes-been-reincarnated-as-a-filipino-traffic-cop">Via</a></p> </blockquote> <blockquote> <p><em>Submitted by Delsyd</em></p> </blockquote> </blockquote> No Content Found https://lowbrowculture.com/video/16402148930/ Tue, 24 Jan 2012 10:03:46 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/video/16402148930/ <p>Butch Walker And The Black Widows - Synthesizers</p> No Content Found https://lowbrowculture.com/video/16117375130/ Thu, 19 Jan 2012 15:41:35 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/video/16117375130/ <p>Lisa Hannigan - What&rsquo;ll I Do?</p> <p>Goes to show that all you need for a successful video is a decent song, a ridiculously cute singer and a rollercoaster. The rest will take care of itself.</p> Lighthouse Cinema re-opening → http://www.broadsheet.ie/2012/01/17/they-fixed-the-cinema/ Tue, 17 Jan 2012 11:37:20 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/lighthouse-cinema-re-opening/ <p>I was saying to my missus on Saturday about how I was really sad that I was living away from Ireland for the entirely lifespan of the Lighthouse Cinema in Smithfield. Now it&rsquo;s Monday and they&rsquo;re announcing that it&rsquo;s being re-opened!</p> <p>So let&rsquo;s see if I can use my new power for good: I am also really sad that <em>Rubicon</em> and <em>Terriers</em> were cancelled.</p> 2 Broke Girls panel turns ugly with racism, raunchiness charges - HitFix.com → http://www.hitfix.com/blogs/whats-alan-watching/posts/press-tour-2-broke-girls-panel-turns-ugly-with-racism-raunchiness-charges Thu, 12 Jan 2012 10:53:19 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/2-broke-girls-panel-turns-ugly-with-racism-raunchiness-charges-hitfix-com/ <p>I really like Kat Dennings as an actress and was really happy to hear she had landed the lead in a sitcom. But holy shit, <em>2 Broke Girls</em> is unwatchable. I think they only hired an actual Asian to play the Asian character because they couldn&rsquo;t hire Mickey Rooney from <em>Breakfast at Tiffany&rsquo;s</em>.</p> The Little Prince https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/the-little-prince/ Wed, 11 Jan 2012 11:24:40 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/the-little-prince/ <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/tumblr/15666910857.jpg" alt=""></p> <p>Why hasn&rsquo;t this been done before?</p> Biblios https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/biblios/ Wed, 11 Jan 2012 08:30:31 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/biblios/ <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/tumblr/15664430482.jpg" alt=""></p> <p><a href="http://www.guylaramee.com/">Guy Laramee&rsquo;s Biblios project</a>. I can already hear all the snarky voices saying &ldquo;Can you do <em>that</em> with a Kindle?&rdquo;</p> No Content Found https://lowbrowculture.com/video/15615074280/ Tue, 10 Jan 2012 11:07:18 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/video/15615074280/ <p>Oh, the Places You&rsquo;ll Go at Burning Man!</p> <p>Beautifully done.</p> The Rules https://lowbrowculture.com/post/15395005547/ Fri, 06 Jan 2012 11:39:41 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/15395005547/ <p>I&rsquo;ve been cycling in and out of town almost every day since July. A half-hour in, against the wind. A half hour back, uphill almost the whole way. My entire attitude towards cycling has changed. It&rsquo;s not just simple transport any more. It&rsquo;s <em>war</em>. War against myself. War against taxi drivers. War against Dublin weather.</p> <p>Which is why I love <a href="http://www.velominati.com/blog/the-rules/">Velominati&rsquo;s Rules of cycling etiquette</a>. Okay, some are a little fetishistic about the bike itself, which is a little creepy. But this one in particular caught my eye.</p> <blockquote> <blockquote> <p><strong>Rule #9 / If you are out riding in bad weather, it means you are a badass. Period.</strong></p> </blockquote> <p>Fair-weather riding is a luxury reserved for Sunday afternoons and wide boulevards. Those who ride in foul weather – be it cold, wet, or inordinately hot – are members of a special club of riders who, on the morning of a big ride, pull back the curtain to check the weather and, upon seeing rain falling from the skies, allow a wry smile to spread across their face. This is a rider who loves the work.</p> <blockquote> </blockquote> </blockquote> <p>I cycled through <a href="http://www.rte.ie/news/2011/1107/weather.html">&lsquo;monster rain&rsquo;</a>, down a road where a previously-underground river suddenly became an overground river. Cycling in rain doesn&rsquo;t bother me any more. With a change of clothes and a radiator, you can cycle through <em>anything</em>.</p> <p>I also love Rule 12 - &ldquo;The correct number of bikes to own is n+1.&rdquo;</p> <blockquote> <blockquote> <p>While the minimum number of bikes one should own is three, the correct number is n+1, where n is the number of bikes currently owned. This equation may also be re-written as s-1, where s is the number of bikes owned that would result in separation from your partner.</p> </blockquote> </blockquote> <p>Although, in my case, you could replace the word &ldquo;bikes&rdquo; in the previous paragraph with &ldquo;board games&rdquo;.</p> Olly Moss's posters for My Neighbour Totoro https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/olly-moss-s-posters-for-my-neighbour-totoro/ Wed, 28 Dec 2011 10:25:16 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/olly-moss-s-posters-for-my-neighbour-totoro/ <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/tumblr/14912715572.jpg" alt=""></p> <p><a href="http://www.moss.fm/post/14230598297/i-worked-with-studio-ghibli-and-mondo-to-create">ollymoss</a>:</p> <blockquote> <p>I worked with Studio Ghibli and Mondo to create these two posters for one of my favourite movies. I still can’t quite believe this, it’s such a huge honour.</p> <p>My Neighbor Totoro is a 20x36 8-colour screen print. It’ll be for sale from Mondo soon and, as usual, I will have some signed APs for sale at some point later.</p> </blockquote> <p>My birthday is coming up. <em>Totoro</em> is one of my favourite films. Coincidence?</p> A Proper "Alien" Resurrection → http://mubi.com/notebook/posts/a-proper-alien-resurrection Wed, 28 Dec 2011 02:07:29 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/a-proper-alien-resurrection/ <p>Speaking of <em>Alien</em>, Mubi is hosting a fantastic assessment of all the little things that make that film so great. Love this line: &ldquo;Even the design concept behind Saul Bass’ (uncredited) opening titles transforms the viewer’s initial perceptions of something seemingly benign into an understanding of a thing that is concretely threatening.&rdquo;</p> <p>Guess what film I&rsquo;ll be watching tomorrow?</p> No Content Found https://lowbrowculture.com/video/14893198925/ Wed, 28 Dec 2011 02:02:13 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/video/14893198925/ <p>Trailer for Ridley Scott&rsquo;s <em>Prometheus</em>. Love all the little nods to the <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bEVY_lonKf4">trailer for <em>Alien</em></a>. Honestly, I haven&rsquo;t been this excited about a film in a long time.</p> Golden Snitch Ornament https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/14889344302/ Wed, 28 Dec 2011 00:46:21 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/14889344302/ <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/tumblr/14889344302.jpg" alt=""></p> <p><a href="http://tinyapartmentcrafts.blogspot.com/2010/12/golden-snitch-ornament-tutorial.html">Golden Snitch Ornament Tutorial</a></p> <p>Love this. A bit late for this year, but I&rsquo;ve already bookmarked it and set a reminder for next year.</p> No Content Found https://lowbrowculture.com/video/14874961493/ Tue, 27 Dec 2011 19:54:00 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/video/14874961493/ <p>The Sundays - Wild Horses</p> <p>You would not <em>believe</em> how much this songs mean to me.</p> No Content Found https://lowbrowculture.com/video/14611561762/ Thu, 22 Dec 2011 10:29:31 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/video/14611561762/ JJ Abrams on the future of cinema attendance https://lowbrowculture.com/post/14429654712/ Mon, 19 Dec 2011 00:34:31 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/14429654712/ <p>In <a href="http://www.nerdist.com/2011/12/nerdist-podcast-149-jj-abrams/">a recent interview with <em>The Nerdist</em> podcast</a>, J.J. Abrams (who, incidentally, comes across as an incredibly friendly and yet completely joyless person) suggested that cinemas wouldn&rsquo;t suffer the same level of decline as traditional book and record shops. His reasoning? He reckons the experience of going to the cinema can&rsquo;t be properly reproduced, even by the most tricked-out and elaborate TV and surround-sound setups. For him, the collective experience of watching a film in the dark with a group of strangers is so singular that it will always have a place in our lives.</p> <p>I&rsquo;m not sure I buy it. This year alone, I had two wildly differing experiences at the cinema that make me question what he&rsquo;s saying.</p> <p>First, there was <em>Rise of the Planet of the Apes</em>. At the dramatic high-point point of the movie, the moment at which &ndash; spoiler alert! &ndash; an ape speaks for the first time, the audience started tittering. This is supposed to be a powerful scene, but let&rsquo;s face it: it&rsquo;s <em>a fucking ape talking</em>, so it&rsquo;s also a little silly. I don&rsquo;t really blame the audience for laughing. At the same time, this didn&rsquo;t stop it from completely breaking the illusion and tearing me out of the film. It made me feel stupid for having been so caught up in the movie that I was fully buying it before the laughter made me realise I was invested in <em>a fucking ape talking</em>. If I&rsquo;m honest, I still resent that audience for doing that to me. If I had been watching it at home, I&rsquo;d probably have fonder memories of that film.</p> <p>A few weeks later, I went along to <em>Melancholia</em>, an incredibly powerful movie that I still haven&rsquo;t fully processed, even months after seeing it. For the most part, this is a small, personal film. It&rsquo;s a glimpse at someone suffering from depression. The film feels so voyeuristic that projecting it twenty feet tall seems sort of wrong. Maybe that&rsquo;s also part of the &lsquo;message&rsquo; of that film (haven&rsquo;t worked this out yet - like I said, still processing it). But the film is book-ended by beautiful shots that completely justify being shown on a huge screen, and where the soundtrack <em>deserves</em> an amazing sound-system. The bombastic final shot deserves to be experienced as part of an audience, as people start looking around at each other, slightly dazed and giving each other a full-on Keanu &ldquo;Whoa&rdquo;. For me, the ending makes me incredibly happy, almost boastful, that I saw that film in the cinema. No matter what way you cut it, it just wouldn&rsquo;t have been the same at home. In fact, I think the whole film will be less powerful outside of the cinema.</p> <p>These are the outliers, though; the most extreme examples of my recent experiences of watching a film with an audience. But for most people, the average cinema-going experience &ndash; and I&rsquo;d question how &lsquo;average&rsquo; J.J. Abrams&rsquo; cinema-going experiences are these days &ndash; ranges from &lsquo;dreadful&rsquo; to &lsquo;OH MY FUCKING CHRIST, ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!&rsquo;. <a href="http://www.the-medium-is-not-enough.com/images/code_of_conduct.jpg">Talking, rustling, texting, irresponsible parenting</a>: all of these things appear to be accepted, almost <em>expected</em> parts of a trip to the cinema. As much a cost of entry as the extortionate ticket price. I&rsquo;d argue that this is one of the main reasons <a href="http://articles.latimes.com/2011/mar/30/business/la-fi-ct-cinemacon-20110330">cinema attendance is down 20% compared to last year</a>. People are staying home to watch their movies.</p> <p>Let&rsquo;s face facts. Part of the reason for the decline of high-street book and music shops, particularly the larger franchise-type shops, is that the experience of using these shops became so impersonal and unfriendly &ndash; in some cases, downright hostile &ndash; towards the customers, that people were willing to trade the tangible benefits of the traditional shopping experience for one they can control. Online shopping is often impersonal and unfriendly (although rarely hostile), but it at least has the added benefit of being <em>convenient</em>. What it lacks in humanity, it makes up for in choice. And price. With cinema, we&rsquo;re seeing the same thing - people are willing to sacrifice the singular experience of seeing a film with an audience for a slightly more mundane experience they control.</p> <p>And, you know what? I don&rsquo;t blame them.</p> Has Randy Bachman Solved a Decades-Old Guitar Mystery? → http://www.alancross.ca/a-journal-of-musical-things/2011/12/16/has-randy-bachman-solved-a-decades-old-guitar-mystery.html Sat, 17 Dec 2011 11:01:57 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/has-randy-bachman-solved-a-decades-old-guitar-mystery/ <p>I have spent an embarrassing amount of time and almost crippled myself trying to contort my fingers into a shape that sounds like a passable version of the first chord of <em>A Hard Day&rsquo;s Night</em>. Couldn&rsquo;t figure it out. Randy Bachman has the answer, and it&rsquo;s <em>beautiful</em>.</p> No Content Found https://lowbrowculture.com/video/14349246163/ Sat, 17 Dec 2011 10:30:49 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/video/14349246163/ Christmas is Coming https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/christmas-is-coming/ Sat, 17 Dec 2011 00:30:36 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/christmas-is-coming/ <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/tumblr/14330305293.jpg" alt=""></p> Steve Jobs on a Park Bench https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/steve-jobs-on-a-park-bench/ Thu, 15 Dec 2011 23:29:38 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/steve-jobs-on-a-park-bench/ <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/tumblr/14281606834.jpg" alt=""></p> <p><a href="http://minimalmac.com/post/14263282859/yet-another-rare-and-touching-photo-of-a">minimalmac</a>:</p> <blockquote> <p><em>Yet another rare and touching photo of a contemplative Steve Jobs on a park bench in Palo Alto. The photo was taken by Ryan Katsanes in 2007.</em></p> <p>(via <a href="http://www.edibleapple.com/2011/10/06/new-photo-of-steve-jobs-circa-2007/">Edible Apple</a>)</p> </blockquote> No Content Found https://lowbrowculture.com/video/14211046171/ Wed, 14 Dec 2011 11:19:42 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/video/14211046171/ <p>FILM THE POLICE - B. Dolan feat. Toki Wright, Jasiri X, Buddy Peace &amp; Sage Francis.</p> intersection of ambition and incompetence https://lowbrowculture.com/quote/intersection-of-ambition-and-incompetence/ Wed, 14 Dec 2011 11:07:43 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/quote/intersection-of-ambition-and-incompetence/ <blockquote>Graffiti happens at the intersection of ambition and incompetence: people want to make their mark on the world, but have no other way to do it than literally making a mark on the world.</blockquote> <p><a href="http://www.paulgraham.com/trolls.html">Paul Graham on Trolls</a>.</p> Metafilter https://lowbrowculture.com/quote/metafilter/ Sun, 11 Dec 2011 23:04:00 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/quote/metafilter/ <blockquote> <p>How to describe Metafilter to a novice?</p> <p>Well, say there&rsquo;s a video with a guy doing high speed rapping about pancakes: Metafilter is great place to discuss….the spatula.</p> </blockquote> <p><a href="http://www.metafilter.com/110363/IM-MAKING-PANCAKES-FRESHER-THAN-A-MAFUCKA">Metafilter user not_that_epiphanius explains exactly why I love Metafilter</a></p> No Content Found https://lowbrowculture.com/video/14055561061/ Sun, 11 Dec 2011 07:00:06 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/video/14055561061/ <p>This has been my favourite Christmas song for years now, but it&rsquo;s got a whole new meaning for me this year.</p> David Attenborough - Wonderful World https://lowbrowculture.com/video/13945935791/ Fri, 09 Dec 2011 01:14:01 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/video/13945935791/ <div class="embed video-player"> <iframe class="youtube-player" type="text/html" width="640" height="385" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/B8WHKRzkCOY" allowfullscreen frameborder="0"> </iframe> </div> <p>David Attenborough&rsquo;s version of What a Wonderful World. And you just <em>know</em> he means it.</p> No Content Found https://lowbrowculture.com/video/13922224947/ Thu, 08 Dec 2011 15:14:45 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/video/13922224947/ Nintendo's Miyamoto Stepping Down, Working on Smaller Games → http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2011/12/miyamoto-interview/ Thu, 08 Dec 2011 10:33:11 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/nintendo-s-miyamoto-stepping-down-working-on-smaller-games/ <p>On the one hand, this is incredibly sad news - the end of an era. But on the other hand, I&rsquo;m excited to see what he can do with &ldquo;smaller games&rdquo;.</p> From a Vauxhall Velox https://lowbrowculture.com/quote/vauxhall-velox/ Wed, 07 Dec 2011 18:40:00 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/quote/vauxhall-velox/ <blockquote>Her mother read her mail <p>And her Dad was a Policeman</p> <p>Which I must say worried me</p> <p>But some things have just got to be</p> <p>So we passed very fast like ships in the night</p> <p>Or cars in a contraflow system</blockquote></p> <p>&ndash; <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S8JSBk76_ik">Billy Bragg, From a Vauxhall Velox</a></p> <p>Not only is this a <em>perfect</em> simile, it&rsquo;s goddamned <em>ballsy</em> to drop a term like &ldquo;contraflow system&rdquo; into a pop song.</p> Who's Afraid Of Lana Del Rey? - The Awl → http://www.theawl.com/2011/12/whos-afraid-of-lana-del-rey Wed, 07 Dec 2011 15:46:54 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/who-s-afraid-of-lana-del-rey-the-awl/ <p>If you&rsquo;re as baffled by the whole Lana Del Rey as I am, this is a good place to start. I just wish the author had expanded it a bit more - five lengthy paragraphs about the ways in which people are hating her, barely a mention of <em>why</em>.</p> Fan-designed Criterion Cover for Exorcist III https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/fan-designed-criterion-cover-for-exorcist-iii/ Wed, 07 Dec 2011 13:03:30 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/fan-designed-criterion-cover-for-exorcist-iii/ <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/tumblr/13871091482.jpg" alt=""></p> <p><a href="http://tonymayer.tumblr.com/post/13503734593/i-have-dreams-of-a-rose-and-a-long-flight-of">tonymayer</a>:</p> <blockquote> <p><em>“I have dreams of a rose, and a long flight of stairs. Incidentally, who is this Damien you speak of?”</em></p> <p>If I could have one wish, it would be that Blatty got the chance to assemble his original cut of <em>Legion</em>, the way he envisioned it before studio meddling turned it into <em>The Exorcist III</em>. Despite the final versions flaws, it’s still one of my favorite movies.</p> </blockquote> <p>It might be a hot mess, but <em>Exorcist III</em> is still one of the most terrifically creepy movies I&rsquo;ve ever seen. It gets under your skin and stays there. There are scenes &ndash; single shots, even &ndash; that still manage to give me shivers when I think of them. It&rsquo;s criminally underrated/overlooked as a horror film.</p> <p>This is a much better cover than <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:The_Exorcist_3.jpg">the nonsense they ended up going with</a>.</p> B-Sides: Is She & Him's Gender-Swapped "Baby It's Cold Outside" Less Date Rape-y Than the Original? → http://bitchmagazine.org/post/b-sides-she-him-baby-its-cold-outside-date-rape-feminist-music Wed, 07 Dec 2011 12:21:25 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/b-sides-is-she-him-s-gender-swapped-baby-it-s-cold-outside-less-date-rape-y-than-the-original/ <p>As a follow-up to the previous post, Bitch magazine asks if having the woman play the predatory role in the song makes it less date-rapey.</p> <p>I&rsquo;m going with &ldquo;no&rdquo;. This song is inherently sketchy, no matter what way you spin it.</p> Dean Martin - A Winter Romance https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/dean-martin-a-winter-romance/ Tue, 06 Dec 2011 15:38:13 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/dean-martin-a-winter-romance/ <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/tumblr/13828044224.jpg" alt=""></p> <p>Dean Martin: Total mutt.</p> <p>Although, you just <em>know</em> he boned both of those girls. And probably that girl in the background too.</p> <p>Yes, I&rsquo;ve started listening to Christmas songs. And this weekend I fully intend to watch <em>Scrooged</em> and maybe <em>Elf</em>. And there&rsquo;s nothing anyone can do to stop me.</p> Future of Literature https://lowbrowculture.com/quote/future-of-literature/ Tue, 06 Dec 2011 00:23:27 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/quote/future-of-literature/ <blockquote>Saying that 3D movies are the future of cinema is like saying that Magic Eye books were the future of literature.</blockquote> <p><a href="http://theoatmeal.com/blog/3d_movies">Why 3D movies need to die - The Oatmeal</a></p> Alone Again, Naturally https://lowbrowculture.com/video/13679598812/ Sat, 03 Dec 2011 15:12:58 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/video/13679598812/ <div class="embed video-player"> <iframe class="youtube-player" type="text/html" width="640" height="385" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/8ImIZBYGKMA" allowfullscreen frameborder="0"> </iframe> </div> <p>Is this what happens when you get older? You don&rsquo;t listen to The Smiths when you&rsquo;re feeling sad. Instead, you start listening to Gilbert O&rsquo;Sullivan?</p> <p>Just me? Oh.</p> Penis Size Across Europe https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/penis-size-across-europe/ Fri, 02 Dec 2011 23:09:38 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/penis-size-across-europe/ <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/tumblr/13651185429.jpg" alt=""></p> <p>As an Irishman, I just want to say thank fuck for Romania.</p> Art won't save the world https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/art-won-t-save-the-world/ Thu, 01 Dec 2011 18:24:28 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/art-won-t-save-the-world/ <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/tumblr/13595825514.jpg" alt=""></p> No Content Found https://lowbrowculture.com/video/13594596735/ Thu, 01 Dec 2011 17:41:34 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/video/13594596735/ Leonardo di Caprio as Jay Gatsby https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/leonardo-di-caprio-as-jay-gatsby/ Wed, 30 Nov 2011 11:38:33 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/leonardo-di-caprio-as-jay-gatsby/ <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/tumblr/13542516239.jpg" alt=""></p> <p>Jeez, Leo&rsquo;s starting to look <em>old</em>.</p> The Video Game Art of Fumito Ueda - The New Yorker → http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/culture/2011/10/the-video-game-art-of-fumito-ueda.html Wed, 30 Nov 2011 11:30:28 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/the-video-game-art-of-fumito-ueda-the-new-yorker/ <p>It&rsquo;s encouraging to see a profile of the director of <em>Ico</em> and <em>Shadow of the Colossus</em> in <em>The New Yorker</em>.</p> No Content Found https://lowbrowculture.com/video/13540413375/ Wed, 30 Nov 2011 09:19:22 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/video/13540413375/ <p><img src="http://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lvgv73T5tL1qb40je.png" alt=""></p> Talking Heads - This Must Be The Place from Stop Making Sense https://lowbrowculture.com/video/stop-making-sense/ Tue, 29 Nov 2011 14:12:36 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/video/stop-making-sense/ <div class="embed video-player"> <iframe class="youtube-player" type="text/html" width="640" height="385" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/N7zluBxv2Z0" allowfullscreen frameborder="0"> </iframe> </div> <p>Honestly, if I had a time machine, I wouldn&rsquo;t go back and murder Hitler as a baby or chill with dinosaurs or any of that shit. I&rsquo;d go back to 1983 and go see Talking Heads on their Stop Making Sense tour.</p> <p>Scientists: get on it.</p> Indiana Jones and the Secret of the Unicorn https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/indiana-jones-and-the-secret-of-the-unicorn/ Mon, 28 Nov 2011 14:39:00 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/indiana-jones-and-the-secret-of-the-unicorn/ <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/tumblr/13453756714.jpg" alt=""></p> <p>Indiana Jones and the Secret of the Unicorn (by <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/avanaut/6414260283/">Avanaut</a>)</p> Book Igloo https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/book-igloo/ Sun, 27 Nov 2011 16:58:48 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/book-igloo/ <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/tumblr/13405175607_0.jpg" alt=""></p> <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/tumblr/13405175607_1.jpg" alt=""></p> <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/tumblr/13405175607_2.jpg" alt=""></p> <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/tumblr/13405175607_3.jpg" alt=""></p> <p><a href="http://lazy-hoor.tumblr.com/post/13151478906/sertetlen-book-igloo-need-omg-want">lazy-hoor</a>:</p> <blockquote> <p><a href="http://sertetlen.tumblr.com/post/13130976755/book-igloo-need">sertetlen</a>:</p> <p>BOOK IGLOO. NEED.</p> <p>OMG <em>WANT</em>!</p> </blockquote> Tomorrow's World Archive https://lowbrowculture.com/video/tomorrows-world-archive/ Sun, 27 Nov 2011 14:35:00 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/video/tomorrows-world-archive/ <div class="embed video-player"> <iframe class="youtube-player" type="text/html" width="640" height="385" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/vix6TMnj9vY" allowfullscreen frameborder="0"> </iframe> </div> <p>The BBC has put up a <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/archive/tomorrowsworld/">collection of clips from Tomorrow&rsquo;s World</a>, from its first episode in 1965 until its last in 2003.</p> <p>As a huge nerd who is also a fan of kitsch bullshit and mid-century design, this is absolutely wonderful.</p> Fussy https://lowbrowculture.com/quote/fussy/ Sat, 26 Nov 2011 10:53:56 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/quote/fussy/ <blockquote> <p>Thus at the next cocktail hour, I reached for the bottle of Poland&rsquo;s finest in my freezer. (Of course I keep vodka in the freezer. As Jack Donaghy would say, &ldquo;What am I, a farmer?&rdquo;) Staring at the frosty bottle, however, caused flashbacks to Unpleasant Speculums I Have Known. Instead, I rooted around in a kitchen cupboard for some cheap (but warm) vodka left over from a party. There it was, in a jug. Not even my kids would sneak sips of this stuff. And I didn&rsquo;t think that that particular area of my body would be especially fussy about brands.</p> </blockquote> <p>Skeptical of the story going around the internet about teenagers using booze-soaked tampons to get drunk, <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/danielle-crittenden/vodka-tampons_b_1105433.html?ref=canada&amp;just_reloaded=1">HuffPo writer Danielle Crittenden decides to try it for herself</a>.</p> The History of Mahna Mahna https://lowbrowculture.com/video/the-history-of-mahna-mahna/ Fri, 25 Nov 2011 17:05:45 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/video/the-history-of-mahna-mahna/ <div class="embed video-player"> <iframe class="youtube-player" type="text/html" width="640" height="385" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/yXo1ufdQ4sg" allowfullscreen frameborder="0"> </iframe> </div> <blockquote> <p>“Mahna Mahna” is as catchy as a song can be, like a fishing hook stuck in your tympanum. Most people know the tune from a classic sketch that aired during The Muppet Show’s 1976 premiere, in which an orange-haired hepcat unsuccessfully tries to persuade two hot-pink creatures with long, disapproving snouts to get into the “Mahna Mahna” groove. But the bit goes back further, and the song further still, originating in, of all places, an Italian soft-core movie called <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001H5TJSG/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=slatmaga-20&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;camp=217145&amp;creative=399373&amp;creativeASIN=B001H5TJSG">Sweden: Heaven and Hell</a>.</p> </blockquote> <p>Well, I&rsquo;ll be.</p> <p>(via <a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/culturebox/2011/11/_mahna_mahna_how_a_ditty_from_a_soft_core_italian_movie_became_the_muppets_catchiest_tune_.single.html">“Mahna Mahna”: How a ditty from a soft-core Italian movie became the Muppets’ catchiest tune. - Slate Magazine</a>)</p> Dan Carlin's Common Sense → http://www.dancarlin.com/disp.php/cs Fri, 25 Nov 2011 12:46:46 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/dan-carlin-common-sense/ <p>Along with his other show, <a href="http://www.dancarlin.com/disp.php/hh">Hardcore History</a>, Dan Carlin&rsquo;s <em>Common Sense</em> is one of my favourite podcasts right now. In the latest episode, &ldquo;The Very Velvet Fist&rdquo;, he gives one of the best takes on the whole &ldquo;Occupy&rdquo; movement, especially given the whole UC Davis debacle last weekend.</p> <p>Seriously, I hope everyone listens to this.</p> Jimmy, give us Blue Steel https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/jimmy-give-us-blue-steel/ Fri, 25 Nov 2011 11:57:07 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/jimmy-give-us-blue-steel/ <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/tumblr/13295821387.jpg" alt=""></p> <p>(via <a href="http://thedailywh.at/2011/11/23/icwudt-of-the-day-21/?utm_source=feedburner&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_campaign=Feed:%20feedburner/oicv%20(The%20Daily%20What)&amp;utm_content=Google%20Reader">The Daily What</a>)</p> When Sci-Fi Worlds Collide https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/when-sci-fi-worlds-collide/ Fri, 25 Nov 2011 08:45:45 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/when-sci-fi-worlds-collide/ <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/tumblr/13292931788.jpg" alt=""></p> <p>(via <a href="http://awesomepeoplehangingouttogether.tumblr.com/post/13288809998/freddie-mercury-and-darth-vader">awesomepeoplehangingouttogether</a>)</p> Billy Bragg - The Great Leap Forward 2011 https://lowbrowculture.com/video/13256978512/ Thu, 24 Nov 2011 16:45:00 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/video/13256978512/ <div class="embed video-player"> <iframe class="youtube-player" type="text/html" width="640" height="385" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/y4b7cbI_MVI" allowfullscreen frameborder="0"> </iframe> </div> <p>I did the maths and worked out that I&rsquo;ve seen Billy Bragg play live almost every year for the past 15 years. (When I first started, I was consistently one of the youngest in the room. Now, not so much.) One thing I look forward to is seeing how he&rsquo;ll adapt this one song, <em>Waiting for the Great Leap Forwards</em>, to reflect the current political and cultural landscape. This 2011 version is pretty spot-on.</p> <p>For comparison, here&rsquo;s <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wWjO9BTJhPc">1988</a>, and <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8XbbW5jM3MM">2006</a> (you can actually see my head in this one - that&rsquo;s me just around Billy&rsquo;s right foot).</p> Less Human Than Human: The Design Philosophy of Apple | The Awl https://lowbrowculture.com/post/13251955267/ Thu, 24 Nov 2011 13:52:48 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/13251955267/ <p>Link: <a href="http://www.theawl.com/2011/11/apple-and-design">Less Human Than Human: The Design Philosophy of Apple | The Awl</a></p> <p>Two things here.</p> <p>First, this is just awful. The Awl usually has a fairly high standard for its articles, but this is a hot mess. When it isn&rsquo;t rambling to the point of incoherency, it&rsquo;s just plain <em>wrong</em>. For example, the first line of the <em>second paragraph</em>, where the author launches into the actual thesis:</p> <blockquote> <blockquote> <p>The widespread admiration for Apple’s design ethos is in two parts: one functional, the other aesthetic.</p> </blockquote> </blockquote> <p>Wrong already. <a href="http://www.stephenfry.com/2011/10/06/steve-jobs/single-page/">Stephen Fry put it eloquently</a></p> <blockquote> <blockquote> <p>Only dullards crippled into cretinism by a fear of being thought pretentious could be so dumb as to believe that there is a distinction between design and use, between form and function, between style and substance</p> </blockquote> </blockquote> <p>(Although I don&rsquo;t think anyone who feels like dropping a bit of irrelevant trivia about <em>John Ruskin</em> into an article about Apple&rsquo;s design philosophy can legitimately invoke the &lsquo;fear of being thought pretentious&rsquo; defence.)</p> <p>Secondly, I don&rsquo;t know if this is happening to anyone else, but I&rsquo;m getting this thing where a flash ad for the Chevy Volt is actually hijacking my entire browser session, reloading the entire article in an iframe on the Chevy site. This completely breaks Instapaper and means you can&rsquo;t send someone the URL without giving the Chevy site an extra hit. Earlier this week, Brent Simmons wrote a terrific article about <a href="http://inessential.com/2011/11/22/the_pummeling_pages">how certain publications have become almost <em>hostile</em> towards their readers</a> with the amount of intrusive ads on their pages. It&rsquo;s genuinely disappointing to see The Awl going down the same road.</p> Get Well Soon https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/get-well-soon/ Thu, 24 Nov 2011 11:23:12 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/get-well-soon/ <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/tumblr/13249420910.jpg" alt=""></p> No Content Found https://lowbrowculture.com/video/13206161819/ Wed, 23 Nov 2011 15:42:39 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/video/13206161819/ Wall-E https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/wall-e/ Wed, 23 Nov 2011 00:16:17 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/wall-e/ <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/tumblr/13179660620.jpg" alt=""></p> The Life And Death Of Skyrim’s Lydia - Rock, Paper, Shotgun → http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/11/21/skyrim-lydia-death/ Tue, 22 Nov 2011 15:46:34 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/the-life-and-death-of-skyrims-lydia-rock-paper-shotgun/ <p>A while ago, I was banging on about the random events in the world of <em>Red Dead Redemption</em> and how they helped increase the sense of immersion and my fondness for that game (at least, the first time you encounter these random events. After six or seven attempted horse-jackings, it all becomes rote bullshit).</p> <p><em>Skyrim</em>, on the other hand, is genuinely amazing. There&rsquo;s so much to do &ndash; not just story stuff, but random, one-off things &ndash; that you find yourself investing deeply in the characters. I found myself nodding along to John Walker&rsquo;s story of &lsquo;his&rsquo; Lydia. It&rsquo;s a totally accurate description of how this game gets its claws in you and you find yourself doing things (and <em>enjoying</em> doing things) in the game that sound completely cracked if you try to explain them to other people.</p> Dead End Thrills does Skyrim → http://deadendthrills.com/?cat=314 Tue, 22 Nov 2011 15:45:46 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/dead-end-thrills-does-skyrim/ <p>Okay, I&rsquo;ll admit, I&rsquo;m a little obsessed with <em>Skyrim</em> right now. But look at these landscapes and tell me they&rsquo;re not amazing. Everyone gushed over how great the facial animation system was in <em>LA Noire</em>. I think the cloud generation system in <em>Skyrim</em> is even more impressive. <a href="http://deadendthrills.com/2011/11/heat/">This one</a> is my favourite of the lot.</p> No Content Found https://lowbrowculture.com/video/13155241802/ Tue, 22 Nov 2011 12:06:34 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/video/13155241802/ No Content Found https://lowbrowculture.com/video/13153908784/ Tue, 22 Nov 2011 10:39:58 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/video/13153908784/ <p>I can&rsquo;t say for certain, but I really hope that&rsquo;s the first time a Tusken Raider has given me a boner.</p> Cultural Differences → http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2011/1118/1224307766658.html#.TsY716kwgjU.twitter Fri, 18 Nov 2011 11:52:24 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/cultural-differences/ <p>In Ireland, &ldquo;bagels and garlic bread set for sharp price rise as VAT rules change&rdquo;</p> <blockquote> <p>The price of bagels, croissants, garlic bread and a range of other similar products is likely to increase significantly in the weeks ahead after Revenue decided they were not sufficiently bread-like to be exempt from VAT.</p> </blockquote> <p>Meanwhile, in America, <a href="http://www.themarknews.com/articles/7492-u-s-decides-pizza-sauce-is-a-vegetable">U.S. Decides Pizza Sauce Is a Vegetable</a></p> <blockquote> <p>A joint Senate-House panel of American lawmakers has caved in to the frozen food lobby by voting to uphold school lunch regulations that stipulate that tomato sauce in pizza counts as a vegetable serving.</p> </blockquote> <p>I never thought I&rsquo;d say this, but maybe it&rsquo;s time <a href="http://www.patthebaker.com/">Pat the Baker</a> and <a href="http://www.brennansbread.ie/">Mister Brennan</a> got together to form a lobby group of their own.</p> Collection of Skyrim Panoramas → http://imgur.com/a/y4bHJ#0 Thu, 17 Nov 2011 23:21:24 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/collection-of-skyrim-panoramas/ <p>Some of these are unfathomably beautiful.</p> Quentin Tarantino is our Woodie Guthrie https://lowbrowculture.com/quote/quentin-tarantino-is-our-woodie-guthrie/ Wed, 16 Nov 2011 15:27:54 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/quote/quentin-tarantino-is-our-woodie-guthrie/ <blockquote>What I’m saying, basically, is that Quentin Tarantino is our Woody Guthrie; he is the Woody Guthrie of mondo and the midnight movie.</blockquote> <p>Regardless of how you feel about Tarantino and his movies, I recommend that everyone reads Christian Thorne&rsquo;s amazing essay &ldquo;Tarantino, Nazis, and Movies That Can Kill You&rdquo; (<a href="http://sites.williams.edu/cthorne/articles/tarantino-nazis-and-movies-that-can-kill-you-part-1/">part 1</a>, <a href="http://sites.williams.edu/cthorne/articles/tarantino-nazis-and-movies-that-can-kill-you-part-2/">part 2</a>).</p> Britta'd it https://lowbrowculture.com/quote/brittad-it/ Tue, 15 Nov 2011 07:55:12 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/quote/brittad-it/ <blockquote>NBC is pulling Community from its mid-season schedule to make room in January for the return of 30 Rock and a new comedy based on the life of Chelsea Handler.</blockquote> <p>Really? <a href="http://twitter.com/#!/DonaldGlover/status/136269535346049024">As Donald Glover put it</a>: Britta&rsquo;d it. <a href="http://nymag.com/daily/entertainment/2011/11/community-benched-in-nbc-mid-season-shuffle.html">Community Benched in NBC Mid-Season Shuffle</a></p> Riff Raff - 1976 and 2011 https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/riff-raff-1976-and-2011/ Tue, 15 Nov 2011 07:44:37 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/riff-raff-1976-and-2011/ <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/tumblr/12829217256.jpg" alt=""></p> <p>Riff Raff - 1976 and 2011. Part of Irina Werning&rsquo;s amazing <a href="http://www.irinawerning.com/bttf2/back-to-the-future-2-2011/">Back to the Future 2</a> series.</p> Make it blue. Make it red. Make it a pony. https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/make-it-blue-make-it-red-make-it-a-pony/ Fri, 11 Nov 2011 12:45:45 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/make-it-blue-make-it-red-make-it-a-pony/ <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/tumblr/12638805636.jpg" alt=""></p> <p>(via <a href="http://www.designworklife.com/2011/11/10/ddb-adc-annual-awards-call-for-entries-campaign/">design work life » DDB: ADC Annual Awards Call for Entries Campaign</a>)</p> Triumph The Insult Comic Dog Visits Occupy Wall Street → http://links.laughingsquid.com/post/12338719825/triumph-the-insult-comic-dog-visits-occupy-wall Wed, 09 Nov 2011 12:18:02 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/triumph-the-insult-comic-dog-visits-occupy-wall-street/ <p>from Laughing Squid Links</p> Touch of Life https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/touch-of-life/ Wed, 09 Nov 2011 11:21:09 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/touch-of-life/ <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/tumblr/12553324928.jpg" alt=""></p> <p><a href="http://christiannightmares.tumblr.com/post/12544100098/christian-anti-abortion-social-justice-group">christiannightmares</a>:</p> <blockquote> <p>Christian anti-abortion ‘social justice’ group hands out fetus dolls for Halloween (For the story and video, click image or <a href="http://www.ajc.com/news/gwinnett/fetus-dolls-at-trick-1219703.html">here</a>; Found at <a href="http://www.jesusneedsnewpr.net/">Jesus Needs New PR</a>)</p> </blockquote> <p>Back in the radio station I worked in, we used to get all these things that were like Argos catalogues for God-botherers. You could buy bumper stickers like &ldquo;My other car is a HEAVENLY CHARIOT&rdquo; and stuff like that. At the back of the catalogue were all these pro-life tchotchkes. You could buy these plastic foetus models to hand out at anti-abortion rallies. You could buy them <em>in bulk</em>. Like 30 for $50.</p> <p>I always wanted to get a batch of the little ones, put them in the freezer, and use them instead of ice at parties. Except I&rsquo;m not sure I trust the manufacturers to use the kind of high-quality plastic that wouldn&rsquo;t give me cancer or whatever.</p> Do You Have Garbage Taste in Music? A Quiz → (http://www.theawl.com/2011/11/do-you-have-garbage-taste-in-music-a-quiz Mon, 07 Nov 2011 15:18:08 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/do-you-have-garbage-taste-in-music-a-quiz/ <p>I do.</p> The Vet and the n00b https://lowbrowculture.com/video/the-vet-and-the-n00b/ Mon, 07 Nov 2011 12:26:08 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/video/the-vet-and-the-n00b/ <div class="embed video-player"> <iframe class="youtube-player" type="text/html" width="640" height="385" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Gb2SNOeHuso" allowfullscreen frameborder="0"> </iframe> </div> <p>Cute ad for <em>Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3</em></p> My mom says I'm not pretty enough https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/my-mom-says-i-m-not-pretty-enough/ Mon, 07 Nov 2011 10:09:43 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/my-mom-says-i-m-not-pretty-enough/ <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/tumblr/12464017460_0.png" alt=""></p> <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/tumblr/12464017460_1.png" alt=""></p> <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/tumblr/12464017460_2.png" alt=""></p> <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/tumblr/12464017460_3.png" alt=""></p> Skinemax https://lowbrowculture.com/video/skinemax/ Thu, 03 Nov 2011 17:11:34 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/video/skinemax/ <div class="embed video-player"> <iframe class="youtube-player" type="text/html" width="640" height="385" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/VrU0S9IMT1E" allowfullscreen frameborder="0"> </iframe> </div> <blockquote> <p>STARRING KURT RUSSELL</p> <p>Skinemax is Koyaanisqatsi for a generation raised on late night television and B-movie VHS tapes. It&rsquo;s long form entertainment for short attention spans. An hour long VJ odyssey, it will move your body and warp your mind.</p> </blockquote> High-tech Spider https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/high-tech-spider/ Thu, 03 Nov 2011 15:15:26 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/high-tech-spider/ <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/tumblr/12285046988.jpg" alt=""></p> <p><a href="http://www.fraunhofer.de/en/press/research-news/2011/november/high-tech-spider.html">High-tech spider for hazardous missions</a></p> <p>KILL IT! KILL IT WITH FIRE!</p> Three stages of Tom Waits https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/12282464654/ Thu, 03 Nov 2011 13:00:56 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/12282464654/ <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/tumblr/12282464654.jpg" alt=""></p> Anonymous Bandana https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/anonymous-bandana/ Thu, 03 Nov 2011 10:09:00 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/anonymous-bandana/ <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/tumblr/12279693646.jpg" alt=""></p> <p>One of the problems for the fashion-conscious protester in 2011 is figuring out what message you want to send. A bandana sends one message. A <em>V For Vendetta</em>/Anonymous mask sends another message. What if you want to send both messages at once? A V mask wearing a bandana just looks stupid.</p> <p><a href="http://www.etsy.com/listing/85228426/ows-bandana-presale">Etsy user GiantEye has you covered</a>.</p> <blockquote> <p>Fold this bandana in half to transform into the famous fawksy provocateur from the comic pages. It&rsquo;s perfect for protecting yourself from sudden dust storms and outbreaks of authoritarianism. Keep your neck warm during those cold sit-ins. Use it as an impromptu rucksack to cart your gear from Zuccotti Park when the cleaners come. Cut eye holes to wear as a full face mask for added anonymity. Flag Fawkes. This is the hanky code for revolution.</p> </blockquote> <p>(via <a href="http://www.jwz.org/blog/2011/11/anonymous-bandana/">jwz</a>)</p> Poetry of Twitter Spam, Redux https://lowbrowculture.com/post/12267071492/ Thu, 03 Nov 2011 01:41:07 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/12267071492/ <p>A while ago, I wrote about <a href="http://lowbrowculture.com/2009/09/02/poetry-of-twitter-spam/">the poetry of Twitter spam</a>, where a particular spam-bot was generating an odd series of tweets that, strung together, looked like bad teenage poetry.</p> <p>That was two years ago. Technology has advanced. <a href="http://mrgan.tumblr.com/post/12247916586/horse-ebooks">Neven Mrgan points to @horse_ebooks</a> as an example of how Twitter spam-bots are now producing profoundly entertaining non-sequiturs that could be some of the most entertaining stuff found on the internet. In fact, some of these are so perfectly crafted I&rsquo;m having trouble believing that it isn&rsquo;t actually a person <em>pretending</em> to be a spam-bot.</p> <p>Some of my favourites from <a href="http://twitter.com/#!/horse_ebooks">@Horse_ebooks</a>:</p> <p>&ldquo;OBSESSED WITH GAMBLING&rdquo;</p> <p>&ldquo;1 2 You can use the power of your mind to find a shiny, cool car hidden in a paper bag. Your incredible mental powers&rdquo;</p> <p>&ldquo;The difficulty of seeing with very large instruments&rdquo;</p> <p>&ldquo;It s a FACT - Most Doctors, Nutrition Experts , Celebrity Chefs and Best Selling Authors are DEAD&rdquo;</p> <p>I&rsquo;m wondering what linking to a known spam account will do for what little Google-juice I have - whether Google is going to push me further down its search listings. But honestly, I&rsquo;ve enjoyed these tweets so much, I don&rsquo;t care. It&rsquo;s totally worth it.</p> Pauly D(og) https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/pauly-d-og/ Thu, 03 Nov 2011 01:15:21 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/pauly-d-og/ <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/tumblr/12265824955.jpg" alt=""></p> <p>Yeah, buddy!</p> <p>(via <a href="http://dooce.com/2011/11/01/halloween-2011">Halloween 2011 | dooce®</a>)</p> Reader redesign: Terrible decision, or worst decision? → http://brianshih.com/78073742 Thu, 03 Nov 2011 01:07:51 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/reader-redesign-terrible-decision-or-worst-decision/ <p>An ex-PM of Google Reader explains why the recent redesign/refactor is such a bad decision.</p> <p>I&rsquo;m glad to see someone with a bit of authority complaining about this a reasonable way. For the most part, the only comments I&rsquo;ve read about the changes have either been from people saying &ldquo;Eww, who uses Google Reader like <em>that</em>?&rdquo; or from crazy people calling for an &ldquo;<a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2011/10/28/occupy-google-reader-takes-to-the-streets/">Occupy Google Reader</a>&rdquo; protest. I was starting to feel like <em>I</em> was the odd one out.</p> Financial crisis forces Berlusconi to delay release of latest love song CD - The Guardian → http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/nov/02/financial-crisis-berlusconi-love-song?CMP=twt_gu Wed, 02 Nov 2011 17:06:00 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/financial-crisis-forces-berlusconi-to-delay-release-of-latest-love-song-cd-the-guardian/ <p>Seriously, this is an <em>actual fucking headline</em> in The Guardian.</p> <p>Someone should be ashamed about all this, but I&rsquo;m not sure who.</p> Explosions : Moneymaking https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/explosions-moneymaking/ Wed, 02 Nov 2011 12:37:11 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/explosions-moneymaking/ <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/tumblr/12238601671.jpg" alt=""></p> <p>Jerry Frankenhauser charts the correlation between explosions and profits in Michael Bay movies in his <a href="http://frankenspace.com/images/bayhem_internets.jpg">Formula for Complete and Utter BAYhem</a></p> Cult of Done Manifesto → http://www.brepettis.com/blog/2009/3/3/the-cult-of-done-manifesto.html Wed, 02 Nov 2011 08:58:22 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/cult-of-done-manifesto/ <blockquote> <blockquote> <ol> <li>There are three states of being. Not knowing, action and completion.</li> </ol> </blockquote> <blockquote> <ol start="2"> <li>Accept that everything is a draft. It helps to get it done.</li> </ol> </blockquote> <blockquote> <ol start="3"> <li>There is no editing stage.</li> </ol> </blockquote> <blockquote> <ol start="4"> <li>Pretending you know what you&rsquo;re doing is almost the same as knowing what you are doing, so just accept that you know what you&rsquo;re doing even if you don&rsquo;t and do it.</li> </ol> </blockquote> <blockquote> <ol start="5"> <li>Banish procrastination. If you wait more than a week to get an idea done, abandon it.</li> </ol> </blockquote> <blockquote> <ol start="6"> <li>The point of being done is not to finish but to get other things done.</li> </ol> </blockquote> <blockquote> <ol start="7"> <li>Once you&rsquo;re done you can throw it away.</li> </ol> </blockquote> <blockquote> <ol start="8"> <li>Laugh at perfection. It&rsquo;s boring and keeps you from being done.</li> </ol> </blockquote> <blockquote> <ol start="9"> <li>People without dirty hands are wrong. Doing something makes you right.</li> </ol> </blockquote> <blockquote> <ol start="10"> <li>Failure counts as done. So do mistakes.</li> </ol> </blockquote> <blockquote> <ol start="11"> <li>Destruction is a variant of done.</li> </ol> </blockquote> <blockquote> <ol start="12"> <li>If you have an idea and publish it on the internet, that counts as a ghost of done.</li> </ol> </blockquote> <blockquote> <ol start="13"> <li>Done is the engine of more.</li> </ol> </blockquote> </blockquote> Just wearing a funny hat https://lowbrowculture.com/quote/just-wearing-a-funny-hat/ Tue, 01 Nov 2011 23:03:58 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/quote/just-wearing-a-funny-hat/ <blockquote>I was trying to prove something to myself, too. It was like, "Am I genuinely eccentric? Or am I just wearing a funny hat?</blockquote> <p><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2006/oct/29/popandrock1">Tom Waits</a></p> The inside story of how Microsoft killed its Courier tablet - CNET → http://news.cnet.com/8301-10805_3-20128013-75/the-inside-story-of-how-microsoft-killed-its-courier-tablet/ Tue, 01 Nov 2011 18:59:40 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/the-inside-story-of-how-microsoft-killed-its-courier-tablet-cnet/ <p>This is a story I&rsquo;ve been waiting to read for a long time. Note: this is the setup in a two-part story. The actual &ldquo;why&rdquo; comes tomorrow.</p> 24 Hours Of Horror With Edgar Wright → http://www.avclub.com/articles/24-hours-of-horror-with-edgar-wright,63920/1/ Tue, 01 Nov 2011 11:50:34 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/24-hours-of-horror-with-edgar-wright/ <p>Now this is a heck of a marathon.</p> <p>This weekend was the annual <a href="http://horrorthon.com/">Horrorthon</a> here in Dublin which seems to have lost some of its momentum in the past few yeard. A lot of its programme had me scratching my head and thinking &ldquo;Is that really a horror film?&rdquo; (e.g. <em>Play Misty for Me</em> or <em>Akira</em>). As a result, I&rsquo;ve found myself weighing up the films I&rsquo;d actually be interested in seeing and the films I couldn&rsquo;t be bothered with and decided that &ndash; guest appearance by Michael Biehn not withstanding &ndash; it just wasn&rsquo;t worth my time.</p> <p>Edgar Wright&rsquo;s list might be a bit obvious in places, but I&rsquo;d be first in line at that marathon.</p> The Madness of Mission 6 https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/the-madness-of-mission-6/ Tue, 01 Nov 2011 11:26:59 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/the-madness-of-mission-6/ <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/tumblr/12193561297.jpg" alt=""></p> <p><a href="http://www.playthepast.org/?p=2048">The Madness of Mission 6: Making up Histories for Pixels</a></p> <p>This image is from a threadless t-shirt, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retroactive_continuity">retconning</a> a story onto <em>Pac-Man</em>. I love it. It reminds me of the amazing covers for 8-bit games that bore almost no relation to the actual game<sup id="fnref:1"><a href="#fn:1" class="footnote-ref" role="doc-noteref">1</a></sup>, but were just there to set the mood and provide the tiniest bit of context for the gameplay.</p> <div class="footnotes" role="doc-endnotes"> <hr> <ol> <li id="fn:1"> <p>The Atari 2600 game <em>Adventure</em> is the perfect example of this. <a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_InhWskkOXNU/R1I5bebVO8I/AAAAAAAAAJw/oltPWKcWtNg/s1600-R/Adventure_Color_front.jpg">The cover is beautifully illustrated, charming and evocative</a>. It&rsquo;s like an illustration you&rsquo;d find in a weird old German edition of <em>The Hobbit</em>. In the actual game, <a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-mC2eo2KWqYQ/TZljKWN936I/AAAAAAAABzo/j74UGnjG_kE/s320/adventure_duck.png">you play a fucking <em>square</em></a>.&#160;<a href="#fnref:1" class="footnote-backref" role="doc-backlink">&#x21a9;&#xfe0e;</a></p> </li> </ol> </div> Diablo Cody's Red Band Trailer https://lowbrowculture.com/video/diablo-codys-red-band-trailer/ Mon, 31 Oct 2011 11:31:03 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/video/diablo-codys-red-band-trailer/ <div class="embed video-player"> <iframe class="youtube-player" type="text/html" width="640" height="385" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/M0uY6TeKkMw" allowfullscreen frameborder="0"> </iframe> </div> <p>I would love to know who thought it would be a good idea to give Diablo Cody an interview show. I&rsquo;m sure she has many talents, but being a good interviewer is not one of them.</p> <p>Having said that, you should skip to 13:45 for one of the funniest things I&rsquo;ve ever seen.</p> No Content Found https://lowbrowculture.com/video/12121557229/ Sun, 30 Oct 2011 17:20:23 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/video/12121557229/ Minecraft - Weeping Angels mod https://lowbrowculture.com/video/minecraft-weeping-angels-mod/ Sun, 30 Oct 2011 00:31:51 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/video/minecraft-weeping-angels-mod/ <div class="embed video-player"> <iframe class="youtube-player" type="text/html" width="640" height="385" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Xj446LPEy7E" allowfullscreen frameborder="0"> </iframe> </div> Cuffs https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/cuffs/ Sat, 29 Oct 2011 01:33:50 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/cuffs/ <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/tumblr/12054962792.png" alt="Update 2024: If there was a story behind this picture, I have long since forgotten it"></p> <p>What the fuck? You call these cuffs?</p> Michael Wee Higgins → https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150311611638882.364474.660368881&type=3 Fri, 28 Oct 2011 14:03:43 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/michael-wee-higgins/ <p>Some of these are better than others, but they all made me laugh.</p> <p>Especially the bus one. Holy shit.</p> Hyperbole and a Half: Adventures in Depression → http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2011/10/adventures-in-depression.html Fri, 28 Oct 2011 07:54:23 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/hyperbole-and-a-half-adventures-in-depression/ <p>Heartbreaking.</p> Ecstasy of Order: The Tetris Masters https://lowbrowculture.com/video/ecstasy-of-order/ Thu, 27 Oct 2011 22:29:53 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/video/ecstasy-of-order/ <div class="standard"> <iframe src="https://player.vimeo.com/video/23398636" title="vimeo video" webkitallowfullscreen mozallowfullscreen allowfullscreen></iframe> </div> <p>Trailer for <a href="http://ecstasyoforder.com/">Ecstasy of Order: The Tetris Masters</a>, a documentary which looks like a perfect mix of <em>King of Kong</em> and <em>The Wizard</em>.</p> L-Studio - The Desk → http://www.imaginaryforces.com/featured-work/interactive/l-studio-the-desk/ Thu, 27 Oct 2011 22:11:54 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/l-studio-the-desk/ <p>Since moving home and doing all my work on an easy chair, I&rsquo;ve started to fetishize desks. This short video is all about the importance of a desk and what it says about the person who uses it. It&rsquo;s not helping at all.</p> The Stallman Dialogues → http://thestallmandialogues.com/ Thu, 27 Oct 2011 19:59:05 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/the-stallman-dialogues/ <p>There was some question in work about whether or not Richard Stallman is actually a plant by Microsoft &ndash; some long-game <em>Manchurian Candidate</em> shit &ndash; to discredit the free software movement. Evidence: <a href="https://secure.mysociety.org/admin/lists/pipermail/developers-public/2011-October/007647.html">Stallman&rsquo;s rider for talks</a>, <a href="http://stallman.org/rms-lifestyle.html">Stallman&rsquo;s personal FAQ</a>, <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I25UeVXrEHQ">Stallman eating his own toe-jam</a>.</p> Baggy Winecoat https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/baggy-winecoat/ Thu, 27 Oct 2011 10:41:48 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/baggy-winecoat/ <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/tumblr/11987054730.jpg" alt="Baggy Winecoat"></p> <p><a href="http://links.laughingsquid.com/post/11963140913/baggy-winecoat-a-portable-bag-in-box-wine-purse">laughingsquid</a>:</p> <blockquote> <p><a href="http://laughingsquid.com/baggy-winecoat-a-portable-bag-in-box-wine-purse/">Baggy Winecoat, A Portable Bag-In-Box Wine Purse</a></p> </blockquote> <p>I know what I&rsquo;m getting my wife for Christmas.</p> Iris 9000 https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/iris-9000/ Wed, 26 Oct 2011 10:52:15 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/iris-9000/ <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/tumblr/11945823260.jpg" alt=""></p> <p><a href="http://links.laughingsquid.com/post/11913168729/iris-9000-a-retro-futuristic-speakerphone-dock">laughingsquid</a>:</p> <blockquote> <p><a href="http://laughingsquid.com/iris-9000-a-retro-futuristic-speakerphone-dock-for-iphone-4s-and-siri/">Iris 9000, A Retro Futuristic Speakerphone Dock for iPhone 4S and Siri</a></p> </blockquote> sudo make me a sandwich https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/sudo-make-me-a-sandwich/ Wed, 26 Oct 2011 09:55:33 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/sudo-make-me-a-sandwich/ <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/tumblr/11944904728.jpg" alt="sudo make me a sandwich"></p> <p>(via <a href="http://autocowrecks.failblog.org/2011/10/22/mobile-phone-texting-autocorrect-root-privileges-are-the-programmer-version-of-please/">autocowrecks</a>)</p> The original iPod, 10 years later: a re-review → http://arstechnica.com/apple/reviews/2011/10/2001-to-2011-ars-re-reviews-the-original-ipod.ars Tue, 25 Oct 2011 12:54:01 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/the-original-ipod-10-years-later-a-re-review/ <p>Ars Technica re-reviews the original iPod. Bottom line: &ldquo;if you still have one of these original ones lying around, find a FireWire cable and plug it in. You might be surprised at how well it still works.&rdquo;</p> <p>Also, the industrial design of the first-gen iPod is <em>still</em> amazing.</p> It's just what it is https://lowbrowculture.com/quote/its-just-what-it-is/ Mon, 24 Oct 2011 14:24:36 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/quote/its-just-what-it-is/ <blockquote> <p>A waltz called “Last Leaf” — with Mr. Richards joining on vocals — celebrates the image of a lone leaf clinging to a tree: “The autumn took the rest but they won’t take me,” Mr. Waits sings. It’s tempting to hear it as a manifesto of stubborn persistence, but Mr. Waits shrugged that off.</p> <p>“It was a tree, and there was one leaf left on the tree, and I wondered: ‘Wow, if you can make it through winter, you may be here until next year. Wouldn’t that be great, if you were just the only guy that hung on?’ ” he said. “I guess you could say everything’s a metaphor for everything else, but sometimes it’s just what it is. It’s just what it’s about — about a tree.”</p> </blockquote> <p><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/23/arts/music/tom-waitss-new-album-bad-as-me.html?_r=1&amp;pagewanted=all">New York Times - A Grizzled Troubadour Dusts Off His Bowler</a></p> Adorable Zelda Cosplay https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/adorable-zelda-cosplay/ Mon, 24 Oct 2011 11:04:04 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/adorable-zelda-cosplay/ <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/tumblr/11860665134.jpg" alt="Adorable Zelda Cosplay"></p> <p>Adorable Zelda Cosplay is Breaking my Heart</p> <p>(via <a href="http://kotaku.com/5851615/adorable-zelda-cosplay-is-breaking-my-heart/">Kotaku</a>)</p> Style Goals https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/style-goals/ Mon, 24 Oct 2011 10:31:53 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/style-goals/ <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/tumblr/11860111669.jpg" alt=""></p> <p><a href="http://thesilentist.tumblr.com/post/11857622562">thesilentist</a>:</p> <blockquote> <p>So, I wasn’t really convinced about the denim and blazer look until I saw this photo. I might just thrown my jeans in the washing machine now.</p> </blockquote> <p>I&rsquo;m about as far away from being a dapper Asian gent as it&rsquo;s possible to be, but this is the exact look I want to aim for.</p> Alien 3 Concept Art https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/alien-3-concept-art/ Mon, 24 Oct 2011 09:59:29 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/alien-3-concept-art/ <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/tumblr/11859577107.jpg" alt=""></p> <p>I think part of the reason people reacted so badly to <em>Alien 3</em> (quite apart from the fact the final release got mangled by the studio) was because the <em>tone</em> of the film was so dramatically different to the other two movies. A penal <em>planet</em> populated by rapists, murderers and thieves is a tough sell.</p> <p>But before Fincher came in, <em>Alien 3</em> was set on &lsquo;a religious colony that had escaped the earth and inhabited an abandoned commercial facility deep in space&rsquo; who &lsquo;had adopted a Medieval way of life, without electricity or modern technology&rsquo;.</p> <p>Now, that would have been a much tougher sell.</p> <p>Regardless of how you feel about <em>Alien 3</em> it&rsquo;s hard to <a href="http://lebbeuswoods.wordpress.com/2009/02/03/alien-past/">look at these concept drawings</a> and not feel sad about what could have been.</p> Ice Cube on an Eames https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/ice-cube-on-an-eames/ Mon, 24 Oct 2011 09:38:24 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/ice-cube-on-an-eames/ <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/tumblr/11859257238.jpg" alt=""></p> <p>Frankly, there&rsquo;s no-one I&rsquo;d rather hear discussing the work of Ray and Charles Eames than <a href="http://la.curbed.com/archives/2011/09/ice_cube_celebrates_ray_charles_eames_is_really_happening.php">Ice Cube</a>.</p> Deep Sea https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/deep-sea/ Mon, 24 Oct 2011 09:35:18 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/deep-sea/ <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/tumblr/11859212016.jpg" alt=""></p> <p>(by <a href="http://www.27mm.net/work/wetphoto/freediving/play.php?num=5">enric adrian gener</a>)</p> On the Go Part 1 https://lowbrowculture.com/video/on-the-go/ Sun, 23 Oct 2011 23:36:50 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/video/on-the-go/ <div class="standard"> <iframe src="https://player.vimeo.com/video/30699717" title="vimeo video" webkitallowfullscreen mozallowfullscreen allowfullscreen></iframe> </div> <p>There&rsquo;s a technique to a good car chase. A <em>craft</em>. When it&rsquo;s done right, you&rsquo;re watching people working on the edge of control. Regardless of whether the baby-carriage shot is real or staged, the shot immediately after &ndash; of Gene Hackman&rsquo;s car ploughing through the garbage and almost hitting the camera &ndash; is real.</p> The Princess Bride Reunion https://lowbrowculture.com/video/the-princess-bride-reunion/ Sat, 22 Oct 2011 11:36:50 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/video/the-princess-bride-reunion/ <div class="embed video-player"> <iframe class="youtube-player" type="text/html" width="640" height="385" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/abBjXMNFHPY" allowfullscreen frameborder="0"> </iframe> </div> <p>&ldquo;The Princess Bride&rdquo; Reunion</p> Steve Jobs on Paul Rand https://lowbrowculture.com/video/steve-jobs-on-paul-rand/ Sat, 22 Oct 2011 11:19:21 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/video/steve-jobs-on-paul-rand/ <div class="embed video-player"> <iframe class="youtube-player" type="text/html" width="640" height="385" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/xb8idEf-Iak" allowfullscreen frameborder="0"> </iframe> </div> Google Reader is the best social network created so far → http://kirbybits.wordpress.com/2011/10/21/wherein-i-try-to-explain-why-google-reader-is-the-best-social-network-created-so-far/ Fri, 21 Oct 2011 22:42:48 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/google-reader-is-the-best-social-network-created-so-far/ <p>More than anything else I&rsquo;ve read on the topic, <a href="http://kirbybits.wordpress.com/2011/10/21/wherein-i-try-to-explain-why-google-reader-is-the-best-social-network-created-so-far/">Courtney Stanton does a great job of explaining why it&rsquo;s so sad that Google are nerfing Google Reader</a></p> <blockquote> <blockquote> <p>For me, this is the destruction of the only online space I truly give a shit about. (Sorry Twitter, Facebook, etc.) I’m actually really upset about this, as it’s eliminating a social space I’ve been participating in for several years.</p> </blockquote> </blockquote> <p>He also does a terrific job of explaining why &lsquo;plus&rsquo; isn&rsquo;t a great replacement for the functionality.</p> <blockquote> <blockquote> <p>I don’t care if Google wants Plus to get bigger, I care about me and my friends who seek to read and discuss the entire internet every day. Is there really no space for different kinds of people to form different kinds of social spaces in Google products? Are they really that fucking stupid about how communities work?</p> </blockquote> <blockquote> <p>Or, as I suspect, is it just that Buzz and gReader aren’t nearly as effective as Plus at collecting data about my internet use?</p> </blockquote> </blockquote> No YOU'RE crying https://lowbrowculture.com/quote/no-youre-crying/ Fri, 21 Oct 2011 14:35:29 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/quote/no-youre-crying/ <blockquote> <p>&ldquo;It was really strange, they were holding hands, and dad stopped breathing but I couldn&rsquo;t figure out what was going on because the heart monitor was still going,&rdquo; said Dennis Yeager. &ldquo;But we were like, he isn&rsquo;t breathing. How does he still have a heart beat? The nurse checked and said that&rsquo;s because they were holding hands and it&rsquo;s going through them. Her heart was beating through him and picking it up.&rdquo;</p> <p>&ldquo;They were still getting her heartbeat through him,&rdquo; said Donna Sheets. …</p> <p>&ldquo;They just loved being together,&rdquo; said Dennis Yeager.</p> </blockquote> <p><a href="http://www.kcci.com/news/29528191/detail.html">Couple Married 72 Years Dies Holding Hands</a></p> Keep Calm and ... https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/keep-calm-and/ Fri, 21 Oct 2011 11:14:05 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/keep-calm-and/ <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/tumblr/11729008466.jpg" alt="Keep Calm and &hellip;"></p> <p>(via <a href="http://gamovr.mx981.com/post/3157?utm_source=feedburner&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_campaign=Feed:%20Gamovr%20(GamOvr)&amp;utm_content=Google%20Reader">GamOvr</a>)</p> No. Just no. https://lowbrowculture.com/quote/no-just-no/ Wed, 19 Oct 2011 15:31:21 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/quote/no-just-no/ <blockquote> <p>I had been obliged to watch two hours of literally senseless violence being perpetrated on something I loved dearly. In fact, the sense of violation was so strong that it felt as though I had witnessed a rape.</p> </blockquote> <p>There are a few, horrible cases where this sentence would be justified. Sorry, Nicholas Lezard, but <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2011/oct/18/how-could-do-this-tintin">watching Tintin is not one of them</a>.</p> TV's best worst very special episodes https://lowbrowculture.com/video/tvs-best-worst-very-special-episodes/ Wed, 19 Oct 2011 11:05:32 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/video/tvs-best-worst-very-special-episodes/ <div class="embed video-player"> <iframe class="youtube-player" type="text/html" width="640" height="385" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/ABXnqhJDgJc" allowfullscreen frameborder="0"> </iframe> </div> <p><a href="http://poploser.org/post/11620643994">poploser</a>:</p> <blockquote> <p>TV’s best “very special episode” moments.</p> </blockquote> <p>I had NO IDEA Mr Belvedere was Roger De Bris from <em>The Producers</em>. My tiny mind is blown.</p> How does the iPhone 4S camera stack-up against other cameras? → http://campl.us/iPhone-Camera-Comparison Wed, 19 Oct 2011 10:48:32 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/how-does-the-iphone-4s-camera-stack-up-against-other-cameras/ <p>Great comparison of the cameras in each of the iPhones.</p> Generation X Doesn't Want to Hear It → http://www.emptyage.com/post/11591863916/generation-x-doesnt-want-to-hear-it Wed, 19 Oct 2011 09:49:48 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/generation-x-doesn-t-want-to-hear-it/ <p>Generation X is sick of your bullshit.</p> <blockquote> <p>In fairness, Generation X could use a better spokesperson. Barack Obama is just a little too senior to count among its own, and it has debts older than Mark Zuckerberg. Generation X hasn’t had a real voice since <strike>Kurt Cobain blew his brains out</strike>, <strike>Tupac was murdered</strike>, <strike>Jeff Mangum went crazy</strike>, <strike>David Foster Wallace hung himself</strike>, <strike>Jeff Buckley drowned</strike>, <strike>River Phoenix overdosed</strike>, <strike>Elliott Smith stabbed himself (twice) in the heart</strike>, Axl got fat.</p> </blockquote> Warner Bros buys the movie rights to a Reddit comment → http://www.variety.com/article/VR1118044449 Mon, 17 Oct 2011 10:32:50 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/warner-bros-buys-the-movie-rights-to-a-reddit-comment/ <p>As if <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1204976/">a movie based on the boardgame &lsquo;Monopoly&rsquo;</a> wasn&rsquo;t enough of a sign of creative bankruptcy in the movie industry, now Warner Brothers has bought the rights to a movie based on a <a href="http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/k067x/could_i_destroy_the_entire_roman_empire_during/c2giwm4">Reddit comment</a>.</p> <p>Don&rsquo;t get me wrong, it&rsquo;s a <em>really good</em> comment, but the point still stands.</p> The Guardian iPad edition design evolution → https://www.theguardian.com/media/gallery/2011/oct/13/guardian-ipad-edition-design-evolution Sun, 16 Oct 2011 13:03:04 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/the-guardian-ipad-edition-design-evolution/ <p>The Guardian design team shows the various stages of the evolution of their iPad app. This is one of the most beautifully designed newspaper applications I&rsquo;ve ever used - a perfect marriage of interface and content. I&rsquo;ll definitely be subscribing.</p> What's the matter with your world? https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/what-s-the-matter-with-your-world/ Sun, 16 Oct 2011 11:08:37 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/what-s-the-matter-with-your-world/ <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/tumblr/11519673013.jpg" alt=""></p> <p><a href="http://jsmooth995.tumblr.com/post/11370834759">jsmooth995</a>:</p> <blockquote> <p>what’s the matter with your world?</p> </blockquote> No Content Found https://lowbrowculture.com/video/11480556758/ Sat, 15 Oct 2011 15:57:35 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/video/11480556758/ <p>This is exactly how I would react too.</p> Throwable Panoramic Ball Camera → http://jonaspfeil.de/ballcamera Fri, 14 Oct 2011 16:01:04 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/throwable-panoramic-ball-camera/ <p>What a neat idea.</p> How Vimeo Lost Me → http://gamedesignreviews.com/scrapbook/how-vimeo-lost-me/ Fri, 14 Oct 2011 11:36:32 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/how-vimeo-lost-me/ <p>This is unfortunate. <em>Trauma</em> is a beautiful game, and one that screenshots can&rsquo;t do justice - you have to see the game in action to fully appreciate and understand it. I&rsquo;m really sad to read about the amount of hassle the developer went through.</p> <p>I appreciate Vimeo wanting to keep their site free from commercial abuse, but some of their rules honestly make me worry that pretty soon, their site will be nothing but <a href="http://vimeo.com/search/videos/search:test/st/50767478">videos of people testing their cameras</a>.</p> 100 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/11408772996/ Thu, 13 Oct 2011 21:49:00 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/11408772996/ <p>Last night, I saw my hundredth movie of 2011 - Paddy Considine&rsquo;s amazing directorial debut, <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1204340/"><em>Tyrannosaur</em></a>. I know this was my hundredth because I&rsquo;ve been keeping a spreadsheet of all the movies I&rsquo;ve watched this year, like some kind of weird, compulsive, anal-retentive nerd.</p> <p>I don&rsquo;t know why I started keeping a spreadsheet in the first place - it doesn&rsquo;t inform my choice of movies or anything. I&rsquo;ll still sit down and watch a piece of shit movie knowing it&rsquo;ll end up in the spreadsheet, like a permanent black mark against my better judgement.</p> <p>Anyway, some statistics:</p> <ul> <li> <p>100 movies in what? 41 weeks? Averaging out to 2.44 movies per week.</p> </li> <li> <p>I give six movies the highest score of &lsquo;5&rsquo; - The Arbor, Serpico, LA Confidential, My Neighbour Totoro, Bronson, Tyrannosaur.</p> </li> <li> <p>I gave seven movies the lowest score of &lsquo;1&rsquo; - Tron Legacy, Warhammer 40k, The Black Dahlia, The Fast and the Furious, Escape from the Planet of the Apes, Battle for Planet of the Apes, Conan the Barbarian (remake).</p> </li> <li> <p>The average score across all one hundred movies is 2.96. Which feels a lot higher than it should be, given the amount of absolute shite I&rsquo;ve been watching.</p> </li> </ul> <p>Anyway, if you&rsquo;d like to see the spreadsheet, <a href="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0ArCB75RbAr6XdEtTeWZRMEZfNVN1UGFPRk1FckJrdkE&amp;hl=en_GB">knock yourself out</a>. But don&rsquo;t you judge me. DON&rsquo;T YOU JUDGE ME.</p> Siri, what is the meaning of life? https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/siri-what-is-the-meaning-of-life/ Thu, 13 Oct 2011 09:17:21 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/siri-what-is-the-meaning-of-life/ <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/tumblr/11390428528.jpg" alt=""></p> <p>Siri&rsquo;s take on the meaning of life.</p> <p>One of <a href="http://thisismynext.com/2011/10/12/siri-weird-things-iphone-4s/">many easter eggs</a>.</p> No Content Found https://lowbrowculture.com/video/11286872572/ Mon, 10 Oct 2011 21:14:00 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/video/11286872572/ <p>The Ira Glass Sex Tape. So well done.</p> No Content Found https://lowbrowculture.com/video/11222335647/ Sun, 09 Oct 2011 11:07:52 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/video/11222335647/ <p>It is worrying how much I relate to this whole Louis CK bit.</p> No Content Found https://lowbrowculture.com/video/11136018813/ Fri, 07 Oct 2011 10:06:09 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/video/11136018813/ <p>As mentioned on this week&rsquo;s <a href="http://www.radiolab.org/">Radiolab</a> podcast.</p> Thank You Steve → http://www.aaronmahnke.com/post/11082113453 Thu, 06 Oct 2011 08:06:00 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/thank-you-steve/ <blockquote>![](http://www.wetfrogstudios.com/bling/jobs.jpg) > > <blockquote> <p>This is my favorite photo of Steve Jobs. Leaning forward to connect with his wife after his keynote presentation at the 2011 WWDC. You can almost feel the relief and accomplishment radiating from him.</p> </blockquote> <blockquote> <p>When I see this photo, I see a man who bent every fiber of his will toward a goal so lofty, so seemingly unattainable that no one thought it was possible, and at the end of that race, with the task completed, he closed his eyes and rested.</p> </blockquote> <blockquote> <p>Thank you Steve. I’ll miss you.</p> </blockquote> </blockquote> <p>For a man who guarded his personal brand so jealously, these moments &ndash; moments where the guard drops <em>just a little</em> and we see the man underneath &ndash; are really striking.</p> No Content Found https://lowbrowculture.com/video/11094968114/ Thu, 06 Oct 2011 07:58:12 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/video/11094968114/ No Content Found https://lowbrowculture.com/video/11062485979/ Wed, 05 Oct 2011 15:51:35 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/video/11062485979/ <p>Set to become the <a href="http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/dramatic-chipmunk-drama-prairie-dog">Dramatic Chipmunk</a> of 2011.</p> Alfred Hitchcock and Ina Balke https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/alfred-hitchcock-and-ina-balke/ Wed, 05 Oct 2011 12:08:27 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/alfred-hitchcock-and-ina-balke/ <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/tumblr/11058252382.jpg" alt=""></p> <p>Alfred Hitchcock and Ina Balke. I love this picture so much.</p> No Content Found https://lowbrowculture.com/video/11056165055/ Wed, 05 Oct 2011 09:41:29 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/video/11056165055/ <p>Happy 100th birthday, Flann O&rsquo;Brien/Brian O&rsquo;Nolan/Myles na gCopaleen.</p> <p>A Pint Of Plain Is Your Only Man (by <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nIrX5MfNedM&amp;feature=related">clarebannerman</a>)</p> No Content Found https://lowbrowculture.com/video/11056021253/ Wed, 05 Oct 2011 09:29:21 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/video/11056021253/ <p>Gorgeous timelapse of Dublin by <a href="http://vimeo.com/23560119">Richard Twomey</a></p> Fordlândia https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/fordlandia/ Wed, 05 Oct 2011 09:22:40 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/fordlandia/ <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/tumblr/11055942768.jpg" alt=""></p> <p><a href="http://scottchandler.ca/portfolio/fordlandia/">Scott Chandler&rsquo;s amazing photos of Fordlândia</a>. While I&rsquo;m at it, I should also recommend <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Fordlandia-Henry-Fords-Forgotten-Jungle/dp/B0052HKMUY/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1317806431&amp;sr=8-1">Greg Grandin&rsquo;s book about Fordlandia</a>. Honestly, Fitzcarraldo had nothing on Henry Ford.</p> Postmodern Warfare https://lowbrowculture.com/quote/postmodern-warfare/ Tue, 04 Oct 2011 19:50:05 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/quote/postmodern-warfare/ <blockquote> <p><strong>First Level</strong></p> <p>The first level is a flashback level where you are a old man retelling the events of the last level of the game to your grandson. Only your grandson doesn’t exist yet and it’s really you in the present day imagining what it’ll be like to be an old man retelling the last level of the game to your grandson. Then your grandson (who doesn’t exist) kills you.</p> </blockquote> <p><em>Levels in Call of Duty: Postmodern Warfare</em> via <a href="http://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/levels-in-call-of-duty-postmodern-warfare">McSweeney&rsquo;s</a></p> Congress Takes Group Of Schoolchildren Hostage https://lowbrowculture.com/post/congress-takes-group-of-schoolchildren-hostage/ Thu, 29 Sep 2011 16:56:29 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/congress-takes-group-of-schoolchildren-hostage/ <blockquote> <p>BREAKING: Witnesses reporting screams and gunfire heard inside Capitol building.</p> </blockquote> <p>A lot of people are saying <a href="http://boingboing.net/2011/09/29/onion-joke-about-screams-and-gunfire-inside-congress-backfires.html">that The Onion&rsquo;s series of tweets about a hostage situation in the Capitol building &lsquo;backfired&rsquo;</a> or that they were &lsquo;in bad taste&rsquo;. Capitol police are <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/crime-scene/post/capitol-police-issue-all-clear-following-onion-tweets-article/2011/09/29/gIQAYs4J7K_blog.html">launching an investigation</a>.</p> <p>Personally, I thought the whole thing was amazing. I love that they had the balls to say &ldquo;We&rsquo;re the fucking Onion, let&rsquo;s fuck with peoples&rsquo; heads.&rdquo; The whole thing reminded me of the stuff Chris Morris used to do on <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Day_Today"><em>The Day Today</em></a>. Like the time <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IOi7um5PtMY">John Major punched the Queen</a>. And sure, it took my mother <em>two full episodes</em> of <em>The Day Today</em> before she realised it was satire, but then she <em>loved it</em>.</p> <p>I guess the internet is just slower to spot satire than my sixty-something-year old mother. Want proof? Check out <a href="http://literallyunbelievable.org/">Literally Unbelievable</a>, which documents people posting Onion stories to their Facebook as if they were true.</p> <p>Then again, you&rsquo;ve got sites like <a href="http://onionlike.tumblr.com/">Onion-like headlines in real life</a>, which shows that the line between reality and satire is sometimes very hard to make out. Still, there&rsquo;s a real simple test here, internet: if you see &ldquo;The Onion&rdquo; credited anywhere on a news story &ndash; either in the URL or the twitter name &ndash; chances are, it&rsquo;s not real.</p> The internet is not your savior https://lowbrowculture.com/quote/internet-is-not-your-savior/ Thu, 29 Sep 2011 14:24:10 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/quote/internet-is-not-your-savior/ <blockquote>I just think that the internet has been sold to us as our savior. As a means to create a new economy, as our spiritual salvation, whatever. Everything is supposed to be bigger and better online. But what I think people have lost sight of — and I don’t think the internet has done a good job of self-evaluation in this respect — is the massive shift between the brave new internet world of the late ’90s and now. Its early philosophy seemed to be one where everyone was an individual whose opinions were respected. A decade later, everything is corporate-owned, advertising is incessant, and the diverse opinions of internet commentary are often shouted down. Now there’s much more online groupthink.</blockquote> <p><a href="http://www.wired.com/underwire/2011/09/dj-shadow/all/1">DJ Shadow: The Internet Is Not Your Savior - Wired.com</a></p> Edgar Wright’s Top Ten - The Criterion Collection → http://www.criterion.com/explore/161-edgar-wrights-top-ten Wed, 28 Sep 2011 17:17:13 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/edgar-wrights-top-ten-the-criterion-collection/ <p>Great selection of movies. And great explanations for why he chose these particular movies.</p> Safe House → http://www.designboom.com/weblog/cat/9/view/11219/kwk-promes-safe-house.html Wed, 28 Sep 2011 10:25:17 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/safe-house/ <p>Panic rooms are so passe. What you want is a panic <em>house</em>. When the zombie apocalypse finally comes, I&rsquo;m making a beeline for this place.</p> russell davies - the internet with things → http://russelldavies.typepad.com/planning/2011/09/what-i-meant-to-say-the-internet-with-things.html Tue, 27 Sep 2011 21:42:22 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/russell-davies-the-internet-with-things/ <p>Fascinating post about the approach of the &lsquo;internet of things&rsquo; - the idea that, with a little bit of hacking, you can shape the internet to do what <em>you</em> want it to and make it more personal and magic. (Incidentally, I think <a href="http://ifttt.com">if this then that</a> is pretty close to magic already). He gave this as a talk on <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/fourthought">the BBC&rsquo;s Four Thought radio series</a>.</p> 21 forgotten TV subplots - The A.V. Club → http://www.avclub.com/articles/and-no-one-will-ever-mention-it-again-under-penalt,61250/1/ Tue, 27 Sep 2011 11:12:56 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/21-forgotten-tv-subplots-the-a-v-club/ <p>You could almost do an entire article about the many forgotten subplots in <em>Lost</em> alone. I particularly like their write-up of the Tori Scott episodes of <em>Saved by the Bell</em></p> <blockquote> <p>When NBC ordered more episodes of the show’s already-wrapped senior year, Tiffani-Amber Thiessen and Elizabeth Berkley were already committed to other projects. So, employing its signature logic, <em>Saved By The Bell</em> allowed the characters to disappear completely, bringing in Leanna Creel’s motorcycle-riding tomboy Tori to replace them—and thus creating the “Tori Reality,” a parallel universe centered on Zack and Tori’s awkward courtship, a place where Kelly and Jessie simply did not exist.</p> </blockquote> Infographic: The Rise of E-Readers → http://www.good.is/post/infographic-the-rise-of-e-readers/ Mon, 26 Sep 2011 17:17:56 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/infographic-the-rise-of-e-readers/ <p>Pretty interesting stuff - overall, people who own e-readers read more books each year than those without. Although I&rsquo;m curious about the 1% of e-reader owners who read 0 books a year. What are they using it for?!</p> Transom » Radiolab: An Appreciation by Ira Glass → http://transom.org/?p=20139 Sat, 24 Sep 2011 14:41:14 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/transom-radiolab-an-appreciation-by-ira-glass/ <p>A fantastic article by Ira Glass discussing all the things that make Radiolab so great.</p> No Content Found https://lowbrowculture.com/video/10595558892/ Sat, 24 Sep 2011 13:33:59 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/video/10595558892/ <p>There are plenty of examples of movies with similar plots or themes coming out around the same time as each other. <em>Dante&rsquo;s Peak</em> and <em>Volcano</em>, <em>Deep Impact</em> and <em>Armageddon</em>, <em>Coco Chanel</em> and <em>Coco Before Chanel</em>. A lot of these can be dismissed as just coincidence. <em>Deep Impact</em> and <em>Armageddon</em> both have giant asteroids coming to wipe out life on earth, but that&rsquo;s where the similarities end.</p> <p>As the trailer mash-up shows, there&rsquo;s no way you can write off <em>Friends with Benefits</em> and <em>No Strings Attached</em> as just coincidence. They&rsquo;re just <em>so</em> similar, there has to be something more to it. So, having now seen both these movies, here&rsquo;s what I think.</p> <p>I think what happened is that after Natalie Portman won the Oscar for <em>Black Swan</em>, and Mila Kunis got nattin, the two of them got into a scrap and decided to see who was actually the better actress. And what&rsquo;s the best way to do this? With both of them making the <strong>exact same movie</strong>.</p> <p>Because there&rsquo;s no other explanation.</p> <p>Also, the Natalie Portman movie is better, by virtue of the fact that it&rsquo;s vaguely coherent.</p> The Gauntlet https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/the-gauntlet/ Thu, 22 Sep 2011 19:05:44 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/the-gauntlet/ <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/tumblr/10525631408.jpg" alt=""></p> <p><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0076070/"><em>The Gauntlet</em> (1977)</a></p> <p>I remember being fascinated by the cover for this video, with this poster, when I&rsquo;d see it over in Xtravision (or, more specifically, Dano&rsquo;s Video Shop - Edenmore represent!). Then I was slightly disappointed by the film afterwards. Not that <em>The Gauntlet</em> is a <em>bad</em> film. It&rsquo;s just not the film I imagined from the poster.</p> El Shaddai https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/el-shaddai/ Thu, 22 Sep 2011 08:26:00 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/el-shaddai/ <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/tumblr/10513811940.jpg" alt=""></p> <p><em><a href="http://elshaddaigame.com/">El Shaddai</a></em>&rsquo;s plot summary, according to Wikipedia:</p> <blockquote> <p>The story is inspired by the apocryphic Book of Enoch, and follows Enoch (イーノック), a priest seeking seven fallen angels to prevent a great flood from destroying mankind. He is helped in his quest by Lucifel (ルシフェル)(voiced by <strong>Jason Isaacs</strong>), a guardian angel in charge of the protection of the world who exists outside of the flow of time, and by four Archangels: Raphael (ラファエル), Uriel (ウリエル), Gabriel (ガブリエル), and Michael (ミカエル)</p> </blockquote> <p>Hello to Jason Isaacs.</p> <p>(via <a href="http://gamovr.mx981.com/post/3109?utm_source=feedburner&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_campaign=Feed:%20Gamovr%20(GamOvr)&amp;utm_content=Google%20Reader">GamOvr</a>)</p> No Content Found https://lowbrowculture.com/video/10490053435/ Wed, 21 Sep 2011 20:22:47 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/video/10490053435/ The Invention of the ship was also the invention of the shipwreck https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/the-invention-of-the-ship-was-also-the-invention-of-the-shipwreck/ Wed, 21 Sep 2011 15:47:37 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/the-invention-of-the-ship-was-also-the-invention-of-the-shipwreck/ <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/tumblr/10482381280.jpg" alt=""></p> Terremoto Movie Poster https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/terremoto-movie-poster/ Wed, 21 Sep 2011 12:59:15 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/terremoto-movie-poster/ <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/tumblr/10479243420.jpg" alt=""></p> No Content Found https://lowbrowculture.com/video/10477594787/ Wed, 21 Sep 2011 11:09:15 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/video/10477594787/ How many photos have ever been taken? | 1000memories → http://1000memories.com/blog/94-number-of-photos-ever-taken-digital-and-analog-in-shoebox Tue, 20 Sep 2011 20:54:16 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/how-many-photos-have-ever-been-taken-1000memories/ <p>According to these boffins, Facebook hosts around 4% of all the photos that have <em>ever been taken</em>. And roughly 20% of all the photos taken this year will be uploaded to Facebook.</p> <p>Kids &ndash; not even kids, <em>teenagers</em> &ndash; are growing up in a world where cameras are ubiquitous, they&rsquo;re just part of the device you carry around with you. And photography isn&rsquo;t some arcane, expensive hobby. It&rsquo;s been democratized.</p> <p>I can&rsquo;t wait to see what this means for the next generation of photojournalists.</p> Bye Rome :( https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/bye-rome/ Mon, 19 Sep 2011 23:31:17 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/bye-rome/ <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/tumblr/10420559940.jpg" alt=""></p> AV Club: Louis C.K. walks us through Louie’s second season (Part 1 of 4) → http://www.avclub.com/articles/louis-ck-walks-us-through-louies-second-season-par,61888/?utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=feeds&utm_source=avclub_rss_daily Mon, 19 Sep 2011 23:10:13 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/av-club-louis-c-k-walks-us-through-louies-second-season-part-1-of-4/ <p>I know people are probably sick of me linking to<br> a. The AV Club, and<br> b. Louis CK stories</p> <p>but honestly, this second season of Louie was one of the best seasons of TV I&rsquo;ve ever seen. (And &lsquo;Duckling&rsquo; was one of the best <em>episodes</em> of any TV show I&rsquo;ve ever seen). Reading this background on the production of the first couple of episodes is <em>fascinating</em>.</p> <p>Also, much as I hate to say &ldquo;X is the new Y&rdquo;, anyone else get the feeling that Louis CK is taking the reins left over from when Woody Allen packed up for Europe? No-one else is making New York seem so gorgeous.</p> Boom → http://zachholman.com/boom/ Mon, 19 Sep 2011 13:32:00 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/boom/ <p>Boom is a command-line key-value store written by Zach Holman. If you don&rsquo;t know what this is, you probably don&rsquo;t need it. Still, I really love the installation instructions:</p> <blockquote> <blockquote> <p>Hey, run this:</p> </blockquote> <blockquote> <p><code>$ gem install boom</code></p> </blockquote> <blockquote> <p>See? Now you can do this:</p> </blockquote> <blockquote> <p><code>$ boom</code></p> </blockquote> <blockquote> <p>Pretty easy. Like your mom.</p> </blockquote> </blockquote> <p>I wish more software developers were brave enough to make &lsquo;your mom&rsquo; jokes in their installation instructions.</p> No Content Found https://lowbrowculture.com/video/10399658905/ Mon, 19 Sep 2011 10:56:40 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/video/10399658905/ <p>A Vulture Tribute to Charlie Day’s Best <em>It’s Always Sunny</em> Screaming</p> No Content Found https://lowbrowculture.com/video/10203314251/ Wed, 14 Sep 2011 15:34:09 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/video/10203314251/ <p>The Dark Side of the Rainbow.</p> <p>Filed under &ldquo;Watch Later&rdquo;.</p> No Content Found https://lowbrowculture.com/video/9953415574/ Thu, 08 Sep 2011 10:43:30 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/video/9953415574/ <p><em>Waiting for Godot: The Videogame</em>.</p> No Content Found https://lowbrowculture.com/video/9914346191/ Wed, 07 Sep 2011 11:01:00 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/video/9914346191/ <p>Via <a href="http://www.theincomparable.com/">The Incomparable</a></p> Tumblr Extorting its user because of a browser plugin https://lowbrowculture.com/post/tumblr-extortion/ Fri, 02 Sep 2011 09:32:25 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/tumblr-extortion/ <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/tumblr/9701005979.png" alt="fumblr"></p> <p>This situation basically sums up 90% of the worries I had when I moved my blog to Tumblr.</p> <p><a href="http://post.ronenv.com/post/9670857338">ronenv-post</a>:</p> <blockquote> <p><em><strong>Is tumblr really holding a user’s personal account hostage to extort him into shutting down his service / competing UI? I cannot believe this.</strong></em></p> <p>For those of you who don’t know, “<strong><a href="http://missinge.infraware.ca/">missing e</a></strong>” is a great browser extension for tumblr. It’s a browser add-on for firefox/chrome/safari with an updated user interface that makes doing some things on tumblr easier. (ie, I can edit posts on my blogs from the permalink page, set reblogs to default to my reblog instead of my main/art blog, etc). Some features (such as keeping tags on reblogs) have even been adopted as ‘real’ tumblr features.</p> <p>Then tumblr called <a href="http://cutlerish.tumblr.com/">Jeremy Cutler</a>, the creator of “missing e” and asked him to stop distributing it, because they said it was violating the API agreement, hurting their business structure (by allowing users to hide the radar/ads) and ‘page-scraping’ which put a big load on their servers.</p> <p>So he took missing-e down, and fixed all of those problems. Missing-e no longer hides the radar, no longer scrapes pages, and no longer uses the API at all. In fact, it doesn’t even interact with tumblr— everything it does happens once tumblr is already loaded in your browser, between your browser and you.</p> <p>But apparently that wasn’t good enough. Because the page-scraping and API reasons weren’t tumblr’s real/only reasons— they didn’t like the UI changes missing-e implemented.</p> <p>Here’s where things got interesting:</p> <p><a href="http://blog.missinge.infraware.ca/post/9565502506">missing-e</a>:</p> <blockquote> <p>Moments ago, I participated in surprise conference call with Tumblr staff members. They have indicated to me that they continue to take issue with <strong>Missing e</strong> even with the removal of usage of the Tumblr API.  …  That’s their prerogative, I’m sure. Whether or not I have grounds to justly disagree with them on this, the fact remains that under the <a href="http://www.tumblr.com/policy/en/terms_of_service">Tumblr Terms of Service</a>, <em><strong>they are well within their rights to delete my Tumblr blogs as a punitive action should I continue to distribute the extension. They have informed me that this is the course of action they will take should I not acquiesce to their demands.</strong></em></p> </blockquote> <p>So, tumblr is threatening to delete his PERSONAL BLOG if he doesn’t meet their (unrelated to his personal blog) demands?</p> <p>Tumblr staff— I know you and you’re all smart, good people— is there a word for when you can’t get someone to do what you want, so you threaten to damage them personally in an unrelated way?</p> <p>Are you really <em>holding users’ accounts hostage</em> because <em>you don’t like the things that the things they build are popular with your users</em>?</p> <blockquote> <h2 id="_extortion_ikˈstôrshən"><em>ex·tor·tion</em>/ikˈstôrSHən/</h2> <p>Noun: The practice of obtaining something through threats.</p> </blockquote> <p>If you want to bring a cease-and-desist against missing-e, that’s your right. (And I suppose if you had a case, that’s what you would do.) But instead you’re threatening to delete a user’s personal account unless they remove a BROWSER add-on that doesn’t interact with your service and that thousands of your users love, because <em>you don’t like its features?</em></p> <p>Lots of people make lots of browser extensions for lots of sites, from youtube to facebook to everything else. The problem here seems to be that Jeremy’s extension is very popular. Wouldn’t the correct course of action be to, I don’t know, <em>hire him?</em></p> <p>Now, it’s true— I don’t have your side of the story. But that’s because tumblr hasn’t said anything publicly about this issue.</p> <p>So please— you’re all intelligent, good people—<em>** I would love to hear your side of this**</em>.</p> <p>Because given the positive experiences I’ve had with all of you, what I’m hearing just doesn’t make any sense to me.</p> </blockquote> Steve Jobs at home https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/steve-jobs-at-home/ Thu, 25 Aug 2011 09:47:29 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/steve-jobs-at-home/ <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/tumblr/9370332781.jpg" alt=""></p> Whyday is Friday → http://www.shopify.com/technology/3822402-whyday-is-friday Thu, 18 Aug 2011 07:40:55 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/whyday-is-friday/ <p>Even if you do nothing else to celebrate _why&rsquo;s anniversary, just <a href="http://viewsourcecode.org/why/">read some of the stuff he wrote</a>. I swear, the guy is what I imagine would have happened if David Foster Wallace had gotten really, really hooked on programming Ruby.</p> No Content Found https://lowbrowculture.com/video/9035972890/ Wed, 17 Aug 2011 10:53:22 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/video/9035972890/ <p>I dare you not to laugh.</p> <p>Although there are points where this video reminded me of the sex scene in <em>American Psycho</em>. Is that an association they were going for?</p> The rare auld times https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/the-rare-auld-times/ Tue, 16 Aug 2011 13:37:00 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/the-rare-auld-times/ <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/tumblr/8995403448.jpg" alt=""></p> <p>John Gibson has uploaded <a href="https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.222988857745697.61336.100001037529870&amp;type=1">some amazing photos of Dublin back in the 60s and 70s</a>. Every single one blew my mind. <a href="http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=223497884361461&amp;set=a.222988857745697.61336.100001037529870&amp;type=1&amp;theater&amp;pid=747143&amp;id=100001037529870">Grafton Street</a> is unrecognisable. Thankfully though, some things are <a href="http://www.aidan.co.uk/md/IeDLongHallPubInt7605.jpg">exactly the same now</a> as <a href="http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=234550246589558&amp;set=a.222988857745697.61336.100001037529870&amp;type=1">they were then</a>.</p> No Content Found https://lowbrowculture.com/video/8903391065/ Sun, 14 Aug 2011 10:32:28 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/video/8903391065/ <p><a href="http://www.broadsheet.ie">Broadsheet</a> points out that Alan Parker&rsquo;s <em>The Commitments</em> was released <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Commitments_%28film%29">on this day 20 years ago</a></p> <p>The Strokes&rsquo; <em>This is it</em> being 10 years old makes no sense to me. Nirvana&rsquo;s <em>Nevermind</em> being 20 years old makes even less sense. But somehow, <em>The Commitments</em> being 20 years old makes a lot of sense. In fact, it feels older. Watch it now. It&rsquo;s hard to believe Dublin could change so much (aesthetically, spiritually) in just 20 years.</p> Hard-shell cases for Professional Assholes https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/hard-shell-cases-for-professional-assholes/ Wed, 03 Aug 2011 19:06:35 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/hard-shell-cases-for-professional-assholes/ <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/tumblr/8436757906.jpg" alt=""></p> <p><a href="http://www.kungfugrippe.com/post/8433126406/douchealympics-medalist">merlin</a>:</p> <blockquote> <ul> <li>Black</li> <li>BMW</li> <li>NO Plates</li> <li>Parked IN a crosswalk</li> <li>Parked ON the curb</li> <li>Parked <em>IN THE FUCKING CURB CUT</em></li> </ul> <p>Black BMWs®: Hard-shell Cases for Professional Assholes™.</p> </blockquote> No Content Found https://lowbrowculture.com/video/8210840077/ Fri, 29 Jul 2011 10:33:29 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/video/8210840077/ <p>Attempts to shoehorn a sexual sub-plot into its ad aside, <a href="http://twelvesouth.com/products/bookbook_iphone/">TwelveSouth&rsquo;s BookBook</a> looks like a genuinely fantastic product. And I love the idea that wallets are now convergent devices.</p> <p>Although I&rsquo;m trying to figure out where I&rsquo;d put it. My phone goes in my front pocket and my wallet goes in the back. I&rsquo;d say the BookBook would lead to a few days of occasionally freaking out thinking I&rsquo;d lost one or the other.</p> No Content Found https://lowbrowculture.com/video/8064462549/ Tue, 26 Jul 2011 00:49:34 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/video/8064462549/ <p><a href="http://tumblr.thedailywh.at/post/8051371322">thedailywhat</a>:</p> <blockquote>**Sing-Along of the Day:** The cosplaying cast of _It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia_ do the “Dayman Song” for the Comic-Con crowd at yesterday’s Hall H panel. > > <blockquote> <p>[<a href="http://www.buzzfeed.com/gavon/the-cast-of-its-always-sunny-sings-day-man-at">buzzfeed</a>.]</p> </blockquote> </blockquote> Che Guevara of Power Eating https://lowbrowculture.com/quote/che-guevara-of-power-eating/ Mon, 25 Jul 2011 17:25:02 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/quote/che-guevara-of-power-eating/ <blockquote> <p>In person, Kobayashi is sweet, like a curious kid — unfailingly polite, charming and humble, with no brashness or other signs of rampaging ego. But he is hard on himself. He locks himself away performing dangerous feats because it is all he knows to do. He was the milk-drinking champ in school, the stew-eating champ in college, the winner of the biggest eating contest in Japan, then the Nathan&rsquo;s champ. Until he wasn&rsquo;t.</p> <p>&ldquo;Are you the Che Guevara of gurgitation or the Kenny Powers of power eating?&rdquo; I asked him.</p> <p>He paused, then laughed: &ldquo;I am both!&rdquo;</p> </blockquote> <p><a href="http://deadspin.com/5817573/the-lonesome-independence-day-of-kobayashi-eater-in-exile">The Lonesome Independence Day Of Kobayashi, Eater In Exile</a></p> No Content Found https://lowbrowculture.com/video/7971015455/ Sat, 23 Jul 2011 14:51:00 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/video/7971015455/ <p>Here&rsquo;s <a href="http://www.metafilter.com/105797/Va-Pensiero">MetaFilter&rsquo;s Cobalt describing what&rsquo;s happening</a></p> <blockquote> <blockquote> <p>Riccardo Muti was conducting Nabucco at the Opera di Roma, until -to his delight- he was forced to interrupt the performance by pressure from the crowd.</p> </blockquote> <p>As part of the massive celebrations for the 150th anniversary of the unification of Italy in 2011, the Opera was packed to the rafters to see Giuseppe Verdi&rsquo;s famous work. A political opera, it deals with the enslavement of Jews in Babylon. Its famous &ldquo;Va Pensiero&rdquo; chorus is the song of oppressed slaves, and symbolises the fight for freedom for many Italians, who struggled under the Habsburg empire in the 1860s and has become Italy&rsquo;s unofficial anthem. Rome&rsquo;s mayor, Gianni Alemanno, took the stage before the start and spoke passionately against the budget cuts to the arts and culture the central government had done, in essence railing against his own party and political allegiances, and setting the tone for a very special evening.</p> <p>The intensity was palpable and the audience was rapt. When the Va Pensiero chorus came, &ldquo;O my country, so lovely and so lost&rdquo;, the cries of &ldquo;Encore!&rdquo; and &ldquo;Viva Italia!&rdquo; began to sound. By the time it finished, the roar of the crowd was immense.</p> <blockquote> </blockquote> <blockquote> <p>Muti had allowed an Encore only once in his career, at La Scala in 1986, and he was not likely to do it again unless the occasion really deserved it, but the crowd had touched him deeply. He turned around and spoke: &ldquo;Yes, I agree, long live Italy, but…I&rsquo;m not 30 anymore, I&rsquo;ve lived my life and travelled the world, and it pains me to see what is happening to our country. So, I will accede to your request for an Encore, not only for the patriotism I feel, but because as the chorus was singing, I thought that if we allow this murdering of the culture on which our history was built, then it truly will be &ldquo;lovely and lost&rdquo;…..Let us now give this chorus a special meaning. We are home, at the theatre of Rome, let us all join together and sing.&rdquo;</p> </blockquote> <p>And so they did.</p> <blockquote> </blockquote> </blockquote> <p>I read about this somewhere &ndash; probably the Economist &ndash; and thought &ldquo;holy shit, I wish I&rsquo;d seen that, that sounds like it was really something.&rdquo;</p> <p>Now I&rsquo;ve seen it and, holy shit, it&rsquo;s really something.</p> No Content Found https://lowbrowculture.com/video/7964777450/ Sat, 23 Jul 2011 08:52:29 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/video/7964777450/ <p>Half-hour documentary about the Eli vs Envy freestyle battle.</p> <p>Read that again: a <em>half hour documentary</em>. Amazing. As <a href="http://waxy.org/links/">Andy Baio says</a>, we need this for every internet meme.</p> Targaryens as a bowling team https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/7880075273/ Thu, 21 Jul 2011 09:07:33 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/7880075273/ <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/tumblr/7880075273.png" alt=""></p> <p><a href="http://winteriscomingbitch.tumblr.com/post/7859608270">winteriscomingbitch</a>:</p> <blockquote> <p>I have no idea who is responsible for this. but good for them</p> <p><strong>THIS IS SO AMAZING, BUT THAT’S JUST LIKE MY OPINION, MAN.</strong></p> <p><strong><a href="http://ohgodshouting.tumblr.com/">#reader submission</a></strong></p> </blockquote> No Content Found https://lowbrowculture.com/video/7763128971/ Mon, 18 Jul 2011 15:43:11 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/video/7763128971/ <p>Leonard Maltin introduces the new Laserdisc company, Criterion.</p> No Content Found https://lowbrowculture.com/video/7609273967/ Thu, 14 Jul 2011 09:48:13 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/video/7609273967/ <p>A day in the life of John Lasseter. From a technology point of view, it&rsquo;s fascinating to see Pixar at work. Like how quickly they integrated the iPad into their workflow.</p> No Content Found https://lowbrowculture.com/video/7582251165/ Wed, 13 Jul 2011 19:24:42 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/video/7582251165/ <p>Thin Lizzy vs The Pixies. OH JESUS I&rsquo;M CONFUSED.</p> Spaghetti Policy https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/spaghetti-policy/ Tue, 12 Jul 2011 20:15:27 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/spaghetti-policy/ <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/tumblr/7543970440.png" alt=""></p> No Content Found https://lowbrowculture.com/video/7543511494/ Tue, 12 Jul 2011 20:02:52 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/video/7543511494/ <p><a href="http://seanbonner.tumblr.com/post/7512330211">seanbonner</a>:</p> <blockquote>Kenny Powers is the new CEO of K-Swiss > > </blockquote> <p>I&rsquo;m the CEO. You shut up.</p> Zooborns → http://www.zooborns.com/ Mon, 11 Jul 2011 15:42:32 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/zooborns/ <p>Daily dose of cuteness - keeping track of all the new arrivals at zoos around the world.</p> Gibsonton, Florida → http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gibsonton,_Florida Mon, 11 Jul 2011 08:33:00 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/gibsonton-florida/ <blockquote> <p>Gibsonton is an unincorporated census-designated place in Hillsborough County, Florida, United States. The population was 8,752 at the 2000 census.</p> <p>Gibsonton was famous as a sideshow wintering town, where various carnival &ldquo;freaks&rdquo; would spend the off season. It was home to Percilla the Monkey girl, the Anatomical Wonder, and the Lobster Boy. Siamese twin sisters ran a fruit stand here. At one time, it was the only post office with a counter for dwarves. Aside from the agreeable winter climate, Gibsonton offered unique circus zoning laws that allowed residents to keep elephants and circus trailers on their front lawns.</p> </blockquote> Japanese scientist invents burger made from human shit → http://gothamist.com/2011/06/16/video_japanese_scientist_makes_and.php Sun, 10 Jul 2011 09:19:00 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/japanese-scientist-invents-burger-made-from-human-shit/ <p>Related: <a href="http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/07/nasa-osmotic-water-bag/">NASA invents a bag to turn piss into a sports drink</a></p> <p>This is not the future I signed up for.</p> No Content Found https://lowbrowculture.com/video/7424278861/ Sat, 09 Jul 2011 18:04:39 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/video/7424278861/ No Content Found https://lowbrowculture.com/video/7424182273/ Sat, 09 Jul 2011 18:01:23 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/video/7424182273/ <p>They Might Be Giants cover Chumbawamba&rsquo;s &ldquo;Tubthumping&rdquo; as part of The AV Club&rsquo;s &lsquo;Undercover&rsquo; series. <a href="http://www.avclub.com/articles/they-might-be-giants-covers-chumbawamba,53068/">Check out the rest of the series</a>. Like <a href="http://www.avclub.com/articles/low-covers-toto,53049/">Low covering Toto&rsquo;s &ldquo;Africa&rdquo;</a>.</p> Monkey Selfie https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/monkey-selfie/ Tue, 05 Jul 2011 17:56:35 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/monkey-selfie/ <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/tumblr/7269401885.jpg" alt=""></p> <p><a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/8615859/Monkey-steals-camera-to-snap-himself.html">Monkey steals camera to snap himself</a></p> No Content Found https://lowbrowculture.com/video/7257948498/ Tue, 05 Jul 2011 08:06:39 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/video/7257948498/ <p>Sixteen bits!</p> YTTM → http://yttm.tv/ Tue, 05 Jul 2011 08:01:44 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/yttm/ <p>Using Youtube as a video time machine - pick a year, back to 1860, and check out all the cultural artifacts.</p> <p>Also: holy shit, The Dig came out in 1995?! Man, that makes me feel old.</p> The Hobo Lobo of Hamelin → http://hobolobo.net/ Mon, 04 Jul 2011 21:38:29 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/the-hobo-lobo-of-hamelin/ <blockquote> <p>Hobo Lobo of Hamelin is a thing by a dude, who’s all like, “I’M GONNA MAKE A THING.” And then he did. Or is doing. Or, you know, whatever. This dude can be found on the internet. He websites to put food on his family.</p> </blockquote> <p>This is the future of internet storytelling.</p> No Content Found https://lowbrowculture.com/video/7223292043/ Mon, 04 Jul 2011 09:24:38 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/video/7223292043/ <p><a href="http://tumblr.quisby.net/post/7044599112">nostrich</a>:</p> <blockquote>Here’s to feeling good all the time. > > </blockquote> Dear Nike https://lowbrowculture.com/post/7199274767/ Sun, 03 Jul 2011 19:15:21 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/7199274767/ <p>Dear Nike,</p> <p>Is that how these things are supposed to start? &ldquo;Dear Company&rdquo;? This is my first time writing to a large, faceless corporation, so I&rsquo;m not really sure of what the protocol is.</p> <p>Anyway, the reason I&rsquo;m writing is that I love Nike+. Like, a lot. Since I got my iPhone late October last year, I&rsquo;ve run almost 450km, which is great when you consider what a lazy cunt I am. Truth is, I never could have done it without Nike+.</p> <p>Seriously, there&rsquo;s something about watching that number go up and up that really works. Even though I run the same route every day and my GPS signal is so shitty that Nike+ often tells me I&rsquo;m finished when I know there&rsquo;s still a whole kilometre to go, it still works. It&rsquo;s part of its charm. Oh, Nike+, have you got a little lost? That&rsquo;s so <em>you</em>.</p> <p>The other things that work are the occasional voice congratulations. Lance Armstrong telling I&rsquo;ve just run a new personal best for the mile. Paula Radcliffe telling me I&rsquo;ve just run the furthest I&rsquo;ve ever run. The minute I hear these things, no matter how tired I am, I just want to get right back out there and see if I can beat my time again.</p> <p>Even Tracy Morgan works pretty well. It took some getting used to, but it&rsquo;s just nice to hear him act like he gives a shit that I just run three days in a row, or more times this week than I did last. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m proud of you&rdquo;, he says. I don&rsquo;t believe him, but it&rsquo;s still something nice to hear.</p> <p>Tonight, I got this: &ldquo;Hi, I&rsquo;m Dirk Nowitski… and… I just found out that you just got a run in? Awesome job!&rdquo;</p> <p>Did you just put a mic in front of this kid and ask him to freestyle the first things that came into his head? It sounds like totally he&rsquo;s winging this shit. Honestly, his &ldquo;I just found out that you got a run in&rdquo; is a <em>question</em>, like he&rsquo;s not sure if he heard the studio engineer right and so he&rsquo;s <em>guessing</em> what he&rsquo;s supposed to be saying.</p> <p>On the other hand though, if you&rsquo;ve given Dirk Nowitski a pager or something that sends him a message every time anyone anywhere goes for a run with their Nike+, then.., holy shit, that&rsquo;s amazing. You can just disregard the entire previous paragraph.</p> <p>Anyway, keep up the good work.</p> <p>I love you.</p> <ul> <li>John</li> </ul> Mull of Kintyre Test → http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mull_of_Kintyre_test Sun, 03 Jul 2011 11:17:55 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/mull-of-kintyre-test/ <p>via <a href="http://bestofwikipedia.tumblr.com/post/7152747760">bestofwikipedia</a>:</p> <blockquote> <p>The Mull of Kintyre test was an unofficial guideline said to have been used by the British Board of Film Classification in the United Kingdom to decide whether an image of a man’s penis could be shown. The BBFC would not permit the general release of a film or video if it depicted a phallus erect to the point that the angle it made from the vertical (the “angle of the dangle”, as it was often known) was larger than that of the Mull of Kintyre, Argyll and Bute, on maps of Scotland. (via <a href="http://rajandelman.tumblr.com/">rajandelman</a>)</p> </blockquote> <p>I love any Wikipedia entry that includes the term &ldquo;angle of the dangle&rdquo;.</p> Blood Bros - First Blood → http://soundcloud.com/maddecent/blood-bros-first-blood Thu, 30 Jun 2011 19:54:32 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/blood-bros-first-blood/ <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/tumblr_lnmbywXMj01qb40je.jpg" alt=""></p> <p>Do you like synth-heavy power-rock songs all about fighting for love/survival/glory? Then you&rsquo;ll love <a href="http://soundcloud.com/maddecent">maddecent&rsquo;s</a> 45-minute mix of all the best songs from 80s action movies. I went running with this just now and loved it. But at the same time, the training montage music from <em>Rocky 4</em> has been on my workout playlist for years now. That&rsquo;s just the kind of guy I am.</p> No Content Found https://lowbrowculture.com/video/7076696876/ Thu, 30 Jun 2011 08:51:05 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/video/7076696876/ <p><a href="http://theclearlydope.tumblr.com/post/7050337752">theclearlydope</a>:</p> <blockquote>**RIOT DOG!!!! ** > > </blockquote> <p>For Helena, who is weirdly captivated by Riot Dog.</p> No Content Found https://lowbrowculture.com/video/7058615698/ Wed, 29 Jun 2011 22:18:57 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/video/7058615698/ <p>Never mind the visuals. Nothing beats the <em>Jaaaaam</em> version of &lsquo;The Gush&rsquo;.</p> If You're Gonna Be Dumb, You Gotta Be Tough: An Ode to Jackass | Splitsider → http://splitsider.com/2011/06/if-youre-gonna-be-dumb-you-gotta-be-tough-an-ode-to-jackass Wed, 29 Jun 2011 10:52:11 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/if-you-re-gonna-be-dumb-you-gotta-be-tough-an-ode-to-jackass-splitsider/ <blockquote> <p>While it&rsquo;s certainly not what scholars might consider classic cinema, I&rsquo;d be willing to bet that Jackass will be shown as classic comedy for years to come. I think it showed a group of guys having the time of their lives and offering much needed release during a time in American history when it needed it the most.</p> </blockquote> <p>Agreed, 100%.</p> Why am I playing LA Noire (sic) when I could be watching a film? → http://www.irishtimes.com/blogs/screenwriter/2011/06/27/why-am-i-playing-a-la-noire-sic-when-i-could-be-watching-a-film/ Wed, 29 Jun 2011 08:59:39 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/why-am-i-playing-la-noire-sic-when-i-could-be-watching-a-film/ <p>Shit, even Donald Clarke gets it. Compare and contrast with <a href="http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/theticket/2011/0527/1224297830505.html">Joe Griffin&rsquo;s review from last month</a>.</p> <p>Can the Irish Times get Donald Clarke to review all its games from now on?</p> Fat Mac https://lowbrowculture.com/post/fat-mac/ Wed, 29 Jun 2011 08:49:13 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/fat-mac/ <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/tumblr/7039750159.jpg" alt="fat mac"></p> <p><a href="http://itsalwayssunny.tumblr.com/post/7019886383">itsalwayssunny</a>:</p> <blockquote> <p>First Look At Fat Mac For It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia</p> </blockquote> <p>[<a href="http://www.cinemablend.com/television/First-Look-Fat-Mac-It-Always-Sunny-Philadelphia-Season-6-33058.html">source</a>]</p> My Movie Watching, January - June 2011 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/7022209604/ Tue, 28 Jun 2011 22:11:23 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/7022209604/ <p>Since the beginning of the year, I&rsquo;ve been keeping a mostly complete, mostly chronologically correct spreadsheet of all the films I&rsquo;ve watched along with a score between 1 (awful) and 5 (great). We&rsquo;re almost halfway through the year, so here&rsquo;s how I&rsquo;m doing so far:</p> <p>Total films watched: <strong>68</strong></p> <p>Number of 5s: 4</p> <p>Number of 4s: 15</p> <p>Number of 3s: 25</p> <p>Number of 2s: 19</p> <p>Number of 1s: 4</p> <p>Average score: 2.94029850746269</p> <p>For giggles, here&rsquo;s the full list:</p> <ul> <li> <p><em>Buried</em> - 2</p> </li> <li> <p><em>Easy A</em> - 2</p> </li> <li> <p><em>Never Let me Go</em> - 3</p> </li> <li> <p><em>Black Swan</em> - 2</p> </li> <li> <p><em>Tron Legacy</em> - 1</p> </li> <li> <p><em>Mama Mia</em> - 3</p> </li> <li> <p><em>The King&rsquo;s Speech</em> - 4</p> </li> <li> <p><em>Red</em> - 4</p> </li> <li> <p><em>Yankee Doodle Dandy</em> - 4</p> </li> <li> <p><em>How to Train Your Dragon</em> - 3</p> </li> <li> <p><em>Death Proof</em> - 3</p> </li> <li> <p><em>White Lightning</em> - 2</p> </li> <li> <p><em>Last of the Mohicans</em> - 3</p> </li> <li> <p><em>National Treasure 2</em> - 2</p> </li> <li> <p><em>Where Eagles Dare</em> - 3</p> </li> <li> <p><em>The Kids are Alright</em> - 3</p> </li> <li> <p><em>The Freebie</em> - 3</p> </li> <li> <p><em>Peeping Tom</em> - 3</p> </li> <li> <p><em>Blue Valentine</em> - 4</p> </li> <li> <p><em>Warhammer 40k</em> - 1</p> </li> <li> <p><em>The Losers</em> - 3</p> </li> <li> <p><em>Hellboy 2</em> - 3</p> </li> <li> <p><em>Winter&rsquo;s Bone</em> - 4</p> </li> <li> <p><em>Happy-go-lucky</em> - 4</p> </li> <li> <p><em>Maguyver: Treasure of Atlantis</em> - 2</p> </li> <li> <p><em>Richard Pryor live</em> - 3</p> </li> <li> <p><em>Idiocracy</em> - 3</p> </li> <li> <p><em>Shogun Assassin</em> - 4</p> </li> <li> <p><em>Wendy and Lucy</em> - 4</p> </li> <li> <p><em>Silent Running</em> - 3</p> </li> <li> <p><em>Super Troopers</em> - 2</p> </li> <li> <p><em>The Arbor</em> - 5</p> </li> <li> <p><em>Il Rito</em> (<em>The Rite</em>, in Italian) - 2</p> </li> <li> <p><em>V for Vendetta</em> - 3</p> </li> <li> <p><em>Battle: Los Angeles</em> - 2</p> </li> <li> <p><em>Sherlock Holmes</em> - 3</p> </li> <li> <p><em>Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows pt 1</em> - 3</p> </li> <li> <p><em>Dungeon Masters</em> - 2</p> </li> <li> <p><em>Source Code</em> - 4</p> </li> <li> <p><em>The Suspicions of Mr Whicher (TV)</em> - 2</p> </li> <li> <p><em>Red Dawn</em> - 2</p> </li> <li> <p><em>Tron Legacy</em> - 2</p> </li> <li> <p><em>MacGruber</em> - 2</p> </li> <li> <p><em>Dog Day Afternoon</em> - 4</p> </li> <li> <p><em>The Princess Diaries</em> - 3</p> </li> <li> <p><em>Serpico</em> - 5</p> </li> <li> <p><em>Star Trek: First Contact</em> - 3</p> </li> <li> <p><em>LA Confidential</em> - 5</p> </li> <li> <p><em>Miller&rsquo;s Crossing</em> - 3</p> </li> <li> <p><em>Arthur</em> - 2</p> </li> <li> <p><em>The Tree of Life</em> - 4</p> </li> <li> <p><em>Kiss Kiss Bang Bang</em> - 4</p> </li> <li> <p><em>The Tunnel</em> - 4</p> </li> <li> <p><em>The Black Dahlia</em> - 1</p> </li> <li> <p><em>Black Death</em> - 2</p> </li> <li> <p><em>The Siege</em> - 3</p> </li> <li> <p><em>True Grit</em> - 4</p> </li> <li> <p><em>Cruise of the Gods (TV)</em> - 2</p> </li> <li> <p><em>Minority Report</em> - 3</p> </li> <li> <p><em>Teen Wolf</em> - 3</p> </li> <li> <p><em>Valley Girl</em> - 2</p> </li> <li> <p><em>The Bourne Supremecy</em> - 4</p> </li> <li> <p><em>My Neighbour Totoro</em> - 5</p> </li> <li> <p><em>Forgetting Sarah Marshall</em> - 3</p> </li> <li> <p><em>Cyrus</em> - 3</p> </li> <li> <p><em>Wet Hot American Summer</em> - 2</p> </li> <li> <p><em>The Fast and the Furious</em> - 1</p> </li> </ul> <p>Note: The first time I saw <em>Tron: Legacy</em> was in a cinema where the house lights stayed on for the first fifteen minutes and I had to go out and ask someone to shut them off. So it gets a 1. The second time was on a blu-ray in my house. It was only slightly better, so it got a 2.</p> No Content Found https://lowbrowculture.com/video/7019675021/ Tue, 28 Jun 2011 19:55:58 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/video/7019675021/ <p><a href="http://tumblr.quisby.net/post/6972883255">nostrich</a>:</p> <blockquote>This is simultaneously fucking terrifying and oddly erotic. > > <blockquote> <p>(via <a href="http://www.metafilter.com/104973/First-she-rises-then-she-hops-and-then-she-eats-you">Metafilter</a>)</p> </blockquote> </blockquote> <p>I&rsquo;d love to see <em>Honey, I Shrunk the Kids</em> re-cut to the music of Serge Gainsbourg.</p> Apologies to RSS Readers https://lowbrowculture.com/post/apologies-to-rss-readers/ Tue, 28 Jun 2011 19:50:24 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/apologies-to-rss-readers/ <p>I&rsquo;m moving my blog to Tumblr, which has caused my RSS feed to go completely bananas and start posting things from months ago. Sorry guys!</p> Actors with Action Figures → http://actorswithactionfigures.tumblr.com Tue, 28 Jun 2011 18:32:27 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/actors-with-action-figures/ <p><a href="http://actorswithactionfigures.tumblr.com"><img src="http://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lnhxvord4P1qdwfop.jpg" alt=""></a></p> <blockquote> <p>Narcissistic? Maybe. Self-indulgent? Perhaps a little. But I mean, come on - having your own action figure would be undeniably awesome.</p> </blockquote> How we treat our computers https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/7016882423/ Tue, 28 Jun 2011 18:31:51 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/7016882423/ <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/tumblr/7016882423.jpg" alt=""></p> <p><a href="http://links.laughingsquid.com/post/7009592547">laughingsquid</a>:</p> <blockquote> <p><a href="http://www.stickycomics.com/how-we-treat-our-computers/">How we treat our computers…</a></p> </blockquote> Books and e-books, again https://lowbrowculture.com/post/books-and-ebooks-again/ Tue, 28 Jun 2011 10:02:15 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/books-and-ebooks-again/ <p>In an editorial for the Independent, <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/johann-hari/johann-hari-how-to-survive-the-age-of-distraction-2301851.html">Johann Hari laments the decline in &lsquo;physical&rsquo; books</a> and the progression towards a more digital age. It&rsquo;s the usual kind of thing we&rsquo;re used to seeing. A &ldquo;nothing can beat a good book &ndash; <strong>nothing</strong>, you hear me?&rdquo; kind of thing. It&rsquo;s the sort of thing we&rsquo;re used to hearing from 70 year old luddites. Except Johann Hari is only 32 years old. He&rsquo;s never known a world without colour TV, without videogames, without all sorts of gadgets. So the whole piece is a little strange from that point of view. From another point of view &ndash; the point of view of being a well-reasoned argument &ndash; it&rsquo;s a complete shambles.</p> <p>Hari begins with a reference to <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Super-Sad-True-Love-Story/dp/0812977866/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1309193528&amp;sr=8-1">Gary Steynghart&rsquo;s <em>Super Sad True Love Story</em></a>, in which everyone is &ldquo;obsessed with their electronic Apparat – an even more omnivorous i-Phone with a flickering stream of shopping and reality shows and porn&rdquo;. I know it&rsquo;s hard, but look past his hyphenating of &lsquo;iPhone&rsquo; (on his website, he also refers to &lsquo;i-Tunes&rsquo; - nnngggg), and you&rsquo;ll see an implicit association of technology with consumerism and porn. Never mind global connectedness, a wealth of knowledge and a truly democratic press; this is <em>really</em> all the internet has given us: an easier way to buy Kleenex for all the porn we&rsquo;re watching.</p> <p>At least he gives us an idea of what we&rsquo;re dealing with here.</p> <p>He talks about moving house and hauling all the books, comparing it to the audiophiles still jealously clinging to their vinyl while most other people have moved onto MP3s. &ldquo;Does it matter?&rdquo; he asks. &ldquo;What was really lost?&rdquo; I had to re-read the entire article a couple of times before I realised this wasn&rsquo;t a rhetorical question. He actually thinks he&rsquo;s answered it by suggesting that there&rsquo;s a lot more to be lost as books move towards digital formats. Now, I&rsquo;m no audiophile, but I&rsquo;ll just say this: hogwash.</p> <p>As a very happy Kindle customer, I can say that my reading habits have changed completely since getting the magical little device. I&rsquo;m reading more than ever before. I&rsquo;m <em>consuming</em> books at a rate I never would have believed I was capable of.</p> <p>But not only that, the Kindle has completely changed my attitude towards books. I used to love buying books. I used to hoard them, fetishise them. Living in a different country, English-language books become things to be treasured. When you even find something simple, like an Agatha Christie, you hold onto it because God knows when you&rsquo;ll find something like it again.</p> <p>The Kindle has taught me that almost all of the things I read, the physical book itself &ndash; the delivery mechanism &ndash; isn&rsquo;t important, the writing is. And I can read that in whatever format I want, it&rsquo;ll still be the same. Whether this is smoke signals, semaphore, a dead-tree book or e-ink, they&rsquo;re the same words and they have the same meaning. The only difference between all of these methods is that when I&rsquo;m finished with a physical book, I&rsquo;m left with something that will go back on my shelf, probably never to be touched again. Imagine after making your dinner, you went and put the empty packet back on the shelf. Same thing.</p> <p>This isn&rsquo;t true of all books though, and I still fetishise certain books, but mainly the ones whose physicality is intrinsic to their story and experience. For example, I recently bought <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Atlas-Remote-Islands-Judith-Schalansky/dp/014311820X">Judith Schalansky&rsquo;s <em>Atlas of Remote Islands</em></a>, which won a prize in Germany as &lsquo;most beautiful book of the year&rsquo;. In fact, fire up its Amazon page and see how many times it&rsquo;s described as &lsquo;beautiful&rsquo;. Seriously, it&rsquo;s a gorgeous book and one that couldn&rsquo;t be replicated in today&rsquo;s technology. Maybe someday down the line it will and then I&rsquo;ll discard my physical copy, just like the 100-something other books I got rid of after getting my Kindle.</p> <p>Of course, Hari is afraid of the Kindle.</p> <blockquote> <p>The more they become interactive and linked, the more they multitask and offer a hundred different functions, the less they will be able to preserve the aspects of the book that we actually need. An e-book reader that does a lot will not, in the end, be a book.</p> </blockquote> <p>I understand my Kindle can do a lot. It&rsquo;s got built-in 3G, so I can browse the internet, check my email, update my Twitter. All from anywhere in the world. Except I don&rsquo;t. I use the 3G to grab the books Amazon sends to it. I use the Kindle for reading books and the occasional long article. That&rsquo;s it.</p> <p>But by Hari&rsquo;s definition, a book also does a lot of things that are distinctly un-book-like. For example, it can be a colouring book for when I really need to unleash my creative juices. It can be a prop for when I need it to raise the height of my monitor (thanks, <em>Programming Python</em> and <em>Essential Systems Administration</em>!). It can be an emergency Kleenex substitute for when I&rsquo;ve wiped myself out from all the porn on my &lsquo;i-Phone&rsquo;.</p> <p>The point is, it&rsquo;s none of these things for me. It&rsquo;s just something to read. It&rsquo;s a book. Just as the Kindle may be able to do a lot of things, but to me, it&rsquo;s just something to read. It&rsquo;s a book.</p> <p>Hari ends his article by lauding <a href="http://macfreedom.com/">Freedom</a>, a piece of software that disconnects you from the internet for a set period of time. In other words, he associates his computer with lots of different things &ndash; email, Facebook, Twitter, funny cat videos and, yes, writing &ndash; and the only way he cannot be distracted is if he forcibly removes his access to all these distractions. For him, a book is the same thing: a forcible removal from all the distractions a Kindle could possibly present.</p> <p>A &lsquo;digital diet&rsquo; is a strange answer, Johann. If you&rsquo;ve got self-control enough to detach yourself from your digital devices, why not apply that same self-control to all the bells and whistles that keep you from enjoying digital books.</p> <p>Come on in, the water&rsquo;s fine.</p> Go the F**k to sleep https://lowbrowculture.com/quote/go-the-fxxk-to-sleep/ Tue, 28 Jun 2011 07:03:13 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/quote/go-the-fxxk-to-sleep/ <blockquote>Imagine if this were written about Jews, blacks, Muslims or Latinos</blockquote> <p><a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2011/OPINION/06/27/zacharias.kid.book/">CNN doesn&rsquo;t &lsquo;get&rsquo; Go the F**k to Sleep</a></p> No Content Found https://lowbrowculture.com/video/6987331566/ Mon, 27 Jun 2011 21:39:56 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/video/6987331566/ <p>Trailer for Pixar&rsquo;s <em>Brave</em>. Character design really reminds me of <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0485601/"><em>The Secret of Kells</em></a></p> No Content Found https://lowbrowculture.com/video/6939837098/ Sun, 26 Jun 2011 15:54:21 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/video/6939837098/ <p><a href="http://inutilidettagli.tumblr.com/post/6938394897">inutilidettagli</a>:</p> <blockquote> <p>Il cielo in una stanza.</p> <p>Stavo cercando il testo della canzone per la mia lezione di domani e sono rimasta folgorata da qesto video di Mina. Non lo so perchè, credo per le mani. O per gli occhi chiusi. o perchè è perfetta. Vedete un pò voi.</p> </blockquote> <p>Pam, I&rsquo;ll see your Mina and raise you Mike Patton:</p> Furious Hug in Totoro https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/furious-hug-in-totoro/ Thu, 23 Jun 2011 22:50:28 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/furious-hug-in-totoro/ <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/tumblr/6842622627.png" alt="A Furious Hug"></p> <p>This one frame in <em>Totoro</em> gets me every time.</p> Feeling Better https://lowbrowculture.com/post/feeling-better/ Sat, 14 May 2011 17:27:19 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/feeling-better/ <p>When I was 19, I got more drunk than I have ever been in my life. It’s still a high water mark of my drinking career. It was a Christmas, and someone thought it would be a good idea to give me a bottle of really good tequila, a bottle of black sambuca, and &ndash; oh God &ndash; a bottle of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poit%C3%ADn">poitín</a>. The tequila and the poitín were almost impossible to drink. At least, they were at the beginning. I remember hitting on the great idea of just mixing all three into one glass to maybe, <em>maybe</em> make it the whole thing easier to digest. I can just remember brief flashes of images: swigging tequila out of the bottle and thinking I was just like Jim Morrison (followed by thinking &lsquo;I fucking hate Jim Morrisson&rsquo;); sitting outside in the back garden as my friend threw a glass at me, missing my head by inches and the two of us cracking up at how hilarious this near-accident was. Then, nothing. I woke up in my friend’s locked bathroom with vomit <em>everywhere</em>, under the towels on the radiator and everything. I don’t know if it was my vomit (that I&rsquo;m not sure is my one glimmer of hope from the entire evening).</p> <p>Just as sure as night follows day, my worst ever drunkenness was followed by my worst ever hangover. I managed to get home and crawl to the living room where I spent about 8 hours lying on the couch, shaking and sweating and writhing in pain. I felt like I was never going to recover. (Looking back now, I’m sure it actually <em>was</em> touch-and-go for a while.)</p> <p>That evening, around 7pm, the film <em>Without a Clue</em> came on the TV, and everything changed. I wasn&rsquo;t feeling any better, but I knew I wasn&rsquo;t feeling any worse. My hangover had crested. Right at that exact moment, my ma poked her head in the door and said, “Would you like some rashers and sausages?” And right then, that’s when my worst possible experience turned into one of my most cherished memories. I think I actually cried with happiness, knowing that I was suddenly on the mend. Now, whenever I watch <em>Without a Clue</em>, I get hit with a wave of positive emotions. An entirely Pavlovian response that has now transformed this slightly shaky B-comedy into one of my favourite movies.</p> <hr> <p>The other night, we went for Ethiopian food in a place called <a href="http://www.mesob.it/">Mesob</a>, which got a <a href="http://travel.nytimes.com/2011/04/03/travel/03bites-mesob.html">really good review from the New York Times</a> a few weeks ago. And yeah, the food there was pretty damn great. The menu wasn&rsquo;t entirely clear and we spent a good part of the night feeling a bit awkward and &lsquo;what do we do now?&rsquo; but once the food came and we were getting nicely toasted, it all worked out just fine.</p> <p>Except I managed to find a stray chilli pepper in one of the dishes.</p> <p>Okay, so listen, I was a little tired, a little drunk, and I wasn’t really paying attention. When my mouth started chomping down on something crunchy, no alarm bell rang in my head to warn me that it could be potentially terrible. I thought maybe it could be a bit of celery. I only realised I’d eaten an entire pepper after I’d swallowed the last bite. It was then that my tastebuds managed to place that weird flavour.</p> <p>My tongue started burning. My eyes started welling up. My nose started watering. Sweat started pumping from my head. If a part of my body could secrete something, it decided now was a good time to do so. To make it clear, I love spicy food. I’m a huge fan of jalapeno peppers and I can eat them fairly handily without any issue. This was no simple jalapeno. This was something else. This pepper really blew my socks off. I spent ten minutes thinking I was going to die, and wondering how I could ask where the nearest hospital was without opening my mouth, which felt like it had started bleeding. I thought my tongue had turned white-hot and was about to melt out the underside of my jaw.</p> <p>It was such an intense level of pain that I could tell immediately when it peaked and started going away. When this happened, I was hit by a wave of euphoria. Now, the pain didn&rsquo;t go away immediately. It must have taken a half an hour for things to return to normal, but that didn&rsquo;t matter. I suddenly knew that, regardless of how long it would take to get better, everything was going to be okay, I’d survived the worst of it and I’d soon be back in the clear again. Such a feeling of joy and well-being as I&rsquo;ve never experienced eating food before. Is this why people love absurdly, obscenely spicy foods? I can only imagine how <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u9cB6Tu5_28">this lady felt</a>.</p> Looking for Murder in His Eyes → http://www.themorningnews.org/archives/profiles/looking_for_murder_in_his_eyes.php# Sat, 14 May 2011 09:52:37 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/looking-for-murder-in-his-eyes/ <p>I&rsquo;ve spoken to a few people about how Osama bin Laden was a handsome man. It&rsquo;s a difficult topic to untangle. Elizabeth Kiem does a great job of separating the image of bin Laden from the <em>image</em> of bin Laden.</p> Battles - Ice Cream https://lowbrowculture.com/video/battles-ice-cream/ Sat, 14 May 2011 07:48:23 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/video/battles-ice-cream/ <iframe width="560" height="349" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/3FsvMyQeC-Q" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> Joe Griffin Must Be Stopped https://lowbrowculture.com/post/joe-griffin-must-be-stopped/ Fri, 13 May 2011 16:21:03 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/joe-griffin-must-be-stopped/ <p>Look, I really, <em>really</em> don&rsquo;t want this to descend into a personal attack on someone I don&rsquo;t even know, so let me just start off by saying that I don&rsquo;t have a problem with Joe Griffin <em>in general</em>. I think that when he sticks to writing about things he genuinely seems to know something about, like movies, he&rsquo;s absolutely fine. Check out his blog, <a href="http://www.joegriffinwrites.blogspot.com/">Moviedrome</a>. As personal movie blogs go, it&rsquo;s not terrible. I really wanted to hate it, but the best I can muster is a profound indifference.</p> <p>What I don&rsquo;t like is when he steps outside of his comfort zone and starts writing about videogames. Which he does every Friday as part of the Irish Times&rsquo; &lsquo;The Ticket&rsquo; culture/entertainment supplement. He&rsquo;s clearly out of his depth and represents everything I hate about the way videogames are covered by traditional media. For example, take a look at <a href="http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/theticket/2011/0429/1224295653857.html">his recent review of <em>Portal 2</em></a>, which is somewhere between a hot mess and a 300-word syntactic nightmare. Here&rsquo;s my favourite line of the entire thing:</p> <blockquote> <p>This is a clever, captivating and sometimes hilarious sci-fi game, with compulsive gameplay. Here’s hoping I don’t have nightmares about GLaDos.</p> </blockquote> <p>While you&rsquo;re reading this review, please bear in mind that the Irish Times is <em>supposed</em> to be Ireland&rsquo;s &rsquo;newspaper of record&rsquo;. Can you imagine if it treated all of its arts coverage this way? Can you imagine if their review of <em>There Will Be Blood</em> ended with &ldquo;I hope I don&rsquo;t have nightmares about Daniel Plainview.&rdquo; It&rsquo;s ridiculous.</p> <p>Now, it&rsquo;s completely <em>possible</em> that Joe is merely writing within a set of constraints set by the Irish Times. It may well be that Madam Editor called Joe into her office, sat him down and said &lsquo;Listen, Joe, we still think videogames are for children, so we want 300 words written in the same tone you&rsquo;d use if you were reviewing a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Scarry">Richard Scarry</a> book.&quot; I suppose this is <em>possible</em>, but why, then, does their other videogames correspondent, Ciara O&rsquo;Brien, do such a better job?</p> <p>The other thing that makes me say that Joe Griffin is out of his depth writing about videogames is the amount of times he has gotten the facts wrong. Just basic factual details that he&rsquo;s either deliberately or carelessly missed. For example, in his <a href="http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/theticket/2011/0422/1224295207332.html">editorial about videogame adaptations of literature</a> from Friday, April 22nd 2011, he writes (emphasis mine):</p> <blockquote> <p>There was some excitement this year when the Great Gatsby videogame resurfaced online. <em>Originally an 8-bit title for the old Nintendo</em>, the game is a platform adventure in which Nick Carraway fends off malevolent butlers and hobos.</p> </blockquote> <p>First, since we&rsquo;re on it: &lsquo;old Nintendo&rsquo;? There have been four consoles since the original NES. Any one of them could be referred to as &lsquo;old Nintendo&rsquo;. I remember talking to someone and they used &lsquo;old Nintendo&rsquo; to refer to the Nintendo 64 (God, did that make me feel old). But this is all beside the point. One quick google search for &ldquo;<a href="http://www.google.it/search?q=great+gatsby+nes&amp;ie;=utf-8&amp;oe;=utf-8&amp;aq;=t&amp;rls;=org.mozilla:en-US:official&amp;client;=firefox-a">Great Gatsby NES</a>&rdquo; and you&rsquo;ll see the first result is the game itself and the rest of the results are links to that game, with each one explaining how the game is a modern creation made to <em>look</em> like an old NES game. It&rsquo;s a retcon, a fake artifact from a &ldquo;parallel reality&rdquo;. <a href="http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/107870-The-Great-Gatsby-NES-Game-Discovered">The Escapist explains it well</a>:</p> <blockquote> <p>In reality, Hoey created the game on a whim after creating an 8-bit tribute to the classic novel&rsquo;s cover. They simply couldn&rsquo;t stop, and eventually ended up with 4 levels of Gatsby-themed glory. The game includes several characters, places, and lines from the book, and even has a few short cut-scenes.</p> </blockquote> <p>Know how much I get paid to write this blog? Nothing. Know how much I get paid to write about videogames at all? Not a penny. Know how many people read this blog? I don&rsquo;t actually keep track, but it&rsquo;s safe to say it&rsquo;s statistically insignificant compared to the number that read The Irish Times. How hard would it be for Joe to just either (a) keep on top of the subject he&rsquo;s getting paid to write about, or (b) do one quick google search before banging out an article?</p> <p>Onwards and downwards.</p> <p><a href="http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/theticket/2011/0506/1224296189076.html">Friday, May 6th, 2011</a></p> <blockquote> <p>PORTAL 2 HAS been the subject of some rave reviews, but one innovation seems to have escaped critics: the villain’s voice is American and one of the sympathetic voices is English. This is very rare.</p> </blockquote> <p>Reading his <em>Portal 2</em> review, I thought &ldquo;you know, this is all just fluffy bullshit that you could extrapolate from reading the back of the box - I don&rsquo;t think this guy has actually <em>finished</em> the game.&rdquo; This article, which appeared a week after his review, clinched it for me. I would bet cash money that Joe has not actually finished the 8-hour game he has been paid to write about. Actually, forget about &lsquo;finishing&rsquo; the game, I would bet he hasn&rsquo;t actually played the game for more than 4 hours. Does anyone have his Xbox Gamertag or Steam/PSN account name? It would be easy to tell how much of the game he&rsquo;s finished from any of these. Why do I say this? Because if you do play the game for that long, you&rsquo;d realise that there&rsquo;s a glaring error with Joe&rsquo;s statement. There&rsquo;s a second-act twist, which happens roughly three-to-four hours in, and he is completely oblivious to.</p> <p>I&rsquo;m not saying that reviewers need to finish all games to completion before reviewing them. This is completely unworkable. How would anyone ever review something like <em>World of Warcraft</em> which, in effect, has no ending? But I think it&rsquo;s a genuine disgrace when someone can&rsquo;t be bothered to finish a short game like <em>Portal 2</em> &ndash; or even to play it for four hours &ndash; but will happily accept money to review it. It&rsquo;s like a restaurant reviewer saying &ldquo;Well, technically, I didn&rsquo;t <em>eat</em> there, but I looked in the window and it seemed nice enough.&rdquo;</p> <p>Again, I just want to reiterate that I don&rsquo;t want this to be a personal attack on Joe Griffin. I&rsquo;m sure he&rsquo;s a lovely bloke and, like I said, when he&rsquo;s writing about movies, he&rsquo;s fine. I&rsquo;ve even heard him talk about movies on <a href="http://www.rte.ie/radio1/arena/">Arena</a> and I thought he was one of the better guests they&rsquo;ve had on there. He was well-informed and articulate.</p> <p>It&rsquo;s just a shame that he can&rsquo;t be the same when he&rsquo;s writing about videogames. It&rsquo;s even more of a shame given the amount of genuinely talented Irish people who are writing passionately and thoughtfully about videogames (e.g. the guys at <a href="http://gamestoaster.com/">Games Toaster</a> or <a href="http://www.shoryuken.ie">Shoryuken</a>) and who would gladly write for free to get their stuff in The Irish Times.</p> <p>Article updated at 21:43GMT+1 to tone down some things that were a little too mean</p> Tiny, Lego-style Apartment → http://faircompanies.com/videos/view/lego-style-apartment-transforms-into-infinite-spaces/ Fri, 13 May 2011 15:53:19 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/tiny-lego-style-apartment/ <p>I would spazz right the fuck out if I had to live in just 24 square metres (shit, all my videogame stuff alone probably takes up about 20 square metres), but fair play to this guy, he seems to be totally zen and came up with a pretty good solution.</p> NYU Game Centre Interview with Erik Wolpaw → http://vimeo.com/23534126 Thu, 12 May 2011 14:28:27 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/nyu-game-centre-interview-with-erik-wolpaw/ <p>Obviously, spoilers abound for <em>Portal 2</em></p> <p>THere&rsquo;s more on the from <a href="http://vimeo.com/user6998742">NYU Game Center Vimeo</a>.</p> Starbuck and Starbuck at Starbucks https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/starbuck-and-starbuck-at-starbucks/ Wed, 11 May 2011 18:09:49 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/starbuck-and-starbuck-at-starbucks/ <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2011/05/starbucks1.jpg" alt="starbucks.jpg"></p> <p><a href="http://www.toplessrobot.com/2011/05/starbucks_and_starbuck_in_starbucks.php">via Topless Robot</a></p> Portal 2 Authoring Tools → https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Portal_2/Authoring_Tools Wed, 11 May 2011 16:07:33 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/portal-2-authoring-tools/ <p>&ldquo;The Portal 2 Authoring Tools include versions of the same tools we used to make Portal 2. They&rsquo;ll allow you to create your own singleplayer and co-op maps, new character skins, 3D models, sound effects, and music.&rdquo;</p> <p>PC-only right now. But still: oh wow.</p> Everything Tracy Jordan said in Season 5 of 30 Rock → Tue, 10 May 2011 20:19:15 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/everything-tracy-jordan-said-in-season-5-of-30-rock/ <p>Can we cut everything but Tracy Jordan from 30 Rock? Even without context, he&rsquo;s hilarious. The rest of the show? Not so much.</p> Re-watching Star Trek: The Next Generation, 17 years later https://lowbrowculture.com/post/re-watching-star-trek-the-next-generation-17-years-later/ Tue, 10 May 2011 08:08:49 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/re-watching-star-trek-the-next-generation-17-years-later/ <p>I don&rsquo;t know what triggered it, but I decided to start re-watching all of <em>Star Trek: The Next Generation</em>. There&rsquo;s something about this show that still manages to evoke certain emotions in me. Like it&rsquo;s hitting a part of my brain that hasn&rsquo;t been touched since I was a kid. Even now, the sound of that theme song makes me feel like I&rsquo;m 16 again and I&rsquo;m just about to sit down and watch a quick episode on BBC2 before I start my homework. I&rsquo;ve made it through the first season, and here are some of the things I&rsquo;ve noticed so far.</p> <ul> <li>When it first aired, I remember thinking how technically impressive this show was, especially compared to the original series. The effects were great, the make-up was mind-blowing. Was I high? This is terrible! I can&rsquo;t count the amount of times I&rsquo;ve watched Worf&rsquo;s prosthetic head-piece wobble almost completely off his head.</li> <li>Speaking of Worf, who decided this guy was supposed to be a big, tough badass? So far, he&rsquo;s lost every fight he&rsquo;s gotten into.</li> <li>Fuck Wesley. The majority of the episodes in the first season - especially in the first half - are solved by Wesley pulling some <em>deus ex machina</em> bullshit in the last five minutes.</li> <li>Picard is a bit eager to pull the Enterprise&rsquo;s self-destruct trigger, isn&rsquo;t he? I think he&rsquo;s done it three times in the first season. In the twenty-something episodes of the first season, that means there&rsquo;s a one-in-ten chance that Picard will try to blow up the ship. I know this is cheating, but there&rsquo;s an episode in the second season, where the Enterprise is being treated like a rat in a maze, being tested by some huge cosmic being. Picard lasts all of about fifteen minutes before saying &ldquo;fuck this&rdquo; and engaging the auto-destruct.</li> <li>How the fuck did I never realise how racist this show is? Each new alien is a thinly-veiled cipher for the writer&rsquo;s unique brand of xenophobia. The Ferengi alone should have warranted some kind of action from the Anti-Defamation League.</li> <li>I loved where they brought in Michael Berryman, drew a line down his face with a sharpie and then suddenly they&rsquo;ve got one of the most believable, fucked-up looking aliens the show has ever seen.</li> </ul> Italian Style https://lowbrowculture.com/post/italian-style/ Mon, 09 May 2011 20:48:09 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/italian-style/ <p><a href="http://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/style/articles/2011-05/05/gq-italian-style-the-sartorialist-scott-schuman">Interesting post by Scott Schuman over at GQ on &lsquo;Italian Street Style&rsquo;</a></p> <blockquote> <p>Now, some people will discredit this and call it &ldquo;effortless style,&rdquo; or write it off by saying, &ldquo;These Italians are just born with it.&rdquo;</p> </blockquote> <blockquote> <p>But it&rsquo;s quite the opposite. There is nothing effortless about their style, or their look. What&rsquo;s unique is that they put an extreme amount of effort into their look when they buy the clothes, when they have the clothes altered by their tailor, and when they put them on in the morning.</p> </blockquote> <p>It&rsquo;s true, Italians <em>do</em> dress better than other nationalities. Even if Rome isn&rsquo;t the centre of Italian fashion, and they don&rsquo;t dress as nicely as they do in, say, Milan, the basic level of casual dress is so much higher than the basic level of casual dress in DublinAlthough maybe this isn&rsquo;t saying much. Before we moved to Rome, I was living in Stoneybatter in Dublin. A place where people would go shopping in their pyjamas. In fact, I saw one girl walking down the street still wrapped in her duvet. My theory behind pyjamas-as-casual-wear is probably best saved for another post. Shirts are more common than hoodies on twenty-something men, and tracksuits are almost non-existent. And Schuman is completely right in what he says about the care that people give to their clothes here. Instead of spending €200 each on a few good-enough suits that will look ratty in a couple of months, Italians would rather spend €1000+ on one fantastic suit that will last them for yearsBut then, they do this with all of their possessions, not just clothes. Theories behind this also best saved for another post.</p> <p>But there&rsquo;s one thing that Schuman misses. Perhaps he can&rsquo;t see it because it&rsquo;s being obscured by his enormous boner for Italian style. Yes, the men clearly spend a long time making their style look completely effortless, and their shirts are never anything less than spotlessly clean and perfectly pressed - something you rarely see in Dublin, where crumpled, uncared-for shirts are the norm - but you know what? It&rsquo;s not the men who are putting in the effort. Their clothes are perfect, but that&rsquo;s not a challenge when you live with their mother who cleans and irons for you and generally make sure your clothes are perfect for youI know this isn&rsquo;t true in all cases, but as George Clooney says in <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1193138/">Up in the Air</a>, &ldquo;I&rsquo;m like my mother, I stereotype. It&rsquo;s faster.&rdquo;. I see this a lot at the various functions I go to. I see men whose clothes look fantastic, like they just stepped off a catwalk, while I&rsquo;m there looking like I woke up in a ditch in my suit and rolled along to crash whatever reception I just found myself at. But you can just tell that these men have no idea how an iron works. They just open their wardrobe and see whatever <em>Mama</em> has left for them.</p> <p>As great as Italian style is, there&rsquo;s also something to be said for people who usually look like a dog&rsquo;s dinner and then suddenly put in a bit of work. Yes, Italian style is effortless, but sometimes, knowing the wearer has put in a little bit of effort can look good too.</p> <p><em>This post brought to you with a healthy dose of Irish begrudgery</em>.</p> What's That in Danzigs? → http://hudsonhongo.com/danzig/ Fri, 06 May 2011 11:49:49 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/whats-that-in-danzigs/ <p>Fuck imperial. I&rsquo;m measuring everything in Danzigs from now on.</p> Life Imitating Art Imitating Life https://lowbrowculture.com/post/life-imitating-art-imitating-life/ Mon, 02 May 2011 14:37:37 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/life-imitating-art-imitating-life/ <p>Is it just me, or are modern ads starting to resemble the kind of ads we see coming out of Sterling-Cooper-Draper-Pryce on <em>Mad Men</em>? Pretty soon, the only way you&rsquo;re going to tell an ad is current is the presence of a URL.</p> <p>I can&rsquo;t decide if this is a bad thing. I <em>love</em> these hand-drawn technicolor illustrations, but I don&rsquo;t know if they work for everything. It&rsquo;s a bit of a double-edged sword. For a beer, it works because the ad is aspirational, it makes me want to be a part of that scene. For a sports equipment company, it just makes me wonder if your company is still in business.</p> <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2011/04/stella_4_04.jpg" alt="Stella"></p> <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2011/04/ellesse-italia-big.jpg" alt="Elesse"></p> <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2011/04/tumblr_ljmvdcpsIC1qbxj23o1_500.jpg" alt="Nike"></p> Erik Wolpaw on Portal 2 → https://www.eurogamer.net/portal-2-lets-make-caddyshack-interview Mon, 02 May 2011 14:18:21 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/erik-wolpaw-on-portal-2/ <p>Great interview, but lots of spoilers for Portal 2. Favourite line of the whole thing: &ldquo;I&rsquo;d really like to make a really credible comedy game. People seem to be skipping straight to the pure art, and yet nobody&rsquo;s made the Caddyshack in games yet, right? So I&rsquo;m like, woah woah woah, let&rsquo;s put on the brakes – let&rsquo;s make Caddyshack, and then we can make Anna Karenina or whatever.&rdquo;</p> Interview with Val Kilmer → Mon, 02 May 2011 14:13:19 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/interview-with-val-kilmer/ <p>I watched two Val Kilmer movies this weekend while I was sick - <em>Top Secret</em> and <em>MacGruber</em> - and I honestly had no idea he was this insane-slash-amazing. E.g.</p> <blockquote> <p>Time itself is a concept. It&rsquo;s just because we&rsquo;re lame, because we can&rsquo;t see that fast, because we can&rsquo;t imagine that fast-we think that fast, but it&rsquo;s hard for us to articulate it. That doesn&rsquo;t mean you misapprehend it. It just means that you can&rsquo;t diagnose it with the same language. The human language is lame. It&rsquo;s lame, I say! That&rsquo;s as deep as I can get without dinner.</p> </blockquote> Make Believe → https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yXbHVZngatw Sat, 30 Apr 2011 07:24:48 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/make-believe/ <p>This looks like a great documentary. I went to school with a guy who was big into his magic. His nickname was &ldquo;Presto&rdquo;. 18 years old and he would be doing magic tricks for people in the halls before class. Thinking back, he took an awful lot of shit for this thing he was deeply passionate about.</p> <p>The last time I saw him, it was when Uri Gellar played in Dublin back in 2007 or so. He&rsquo;d gotten all into Nu-Metal, he&rsquo;d been arrested a few times and I&rsquo;m fairly sure he was off his face on meth at the time.</p> <p>Still - this looks like a great documentary.</p> Everyday https://lowbrowculture.com/post/everyday/ Mon, 18 Apr 2011 20:52:00 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/everyday/ <p>I&rsquo;m a man of good intentions. You should see my to-do list, it&rsquo;s full of good - nay, <em>great</em> - intentions. Chances are I&rsquo;ll get around to half of them. I start a project and lose interest halfway through. I&rsquo;d like to say that it&rsquo;s because I&rsquo;m like Jay-Z, I do one thing then <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WM1RChZk1EU">I&rsquo;m on to the next one</a>. For example, I was so impressed by <a href="http://bblinks.blogspot.com/2011/01/life-calendar-how-was-your-day.html">Brigada Creative&rsquo;s Life Calendar</a> that I spent a few hours and <a href="http://lowbrowculture.com/mood/">knocked together a version in PHP</a>. As you can see, that lasted all of nine days, before I got bored with that and moved onto the next thing.</p> <p>But I think we both know that&rsquo;s not true. The problem is that I&rsquo;m easily distracted and this affects my follow-through. With the life calendar thing, once the novelty wore off, I started to forget it was there and I forgot to update it. I could have set a reminder in my calendar, telling me to update it, but this would involve clicking &ldquo;okay&rdquo; to the reminder, firing up a browser, logging into the back-end, and then updating it. That&rsquo;s at least two steps too many for me. My browser would launch and I&rsquo;d forget what I opened it for and then I&rsquo;d get sucked into my Google Reader.</p> <p>What I love about the <a href="http://everyday-app.com/">Everyday App</a> is that it&rsquo;s just the right amount of steps for me, for my weaknesses. It reminds me to take a photo of myself each day, and from the reminder, I can immediately take a photo of myself. It&rsquo;s frictionless. It&rsquo;s perfect for people like me.</p> <p>Plus, I don&rsquo;t mind taking photos in my lift with its really unflattering fluorescent light just after I have gone running and when I <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/thrillho/5632122167/">look like a sweaty, exercising hobo</a>. Win-win.</p> Quora - What are the best travel hacks? → https://www.quora.com/Travel-Hacks/What-are-the-best-travel-hacks Wed, 06 Apr 2011 19:21:21 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/quora-what-are-the-best-travel-hacks/ <p>Tons of great tips in here. I particularly like this one from Josh Sprague: &rsquo;learning to say &ldquo;How much,&rdquo; &ldquo;That&rsquo;s too high,&rdquo; &ldquo;This one&rdquo; and &ldquo;That one&rdquo; is way more useful to the short-term traveler than &ldquo;Hello, how are you?&rdquo;&rsquo;. And also &lsquo;Eat it before asking what it is.&rsquo; (via <a href="http://taint.org/2011/04/06/180502a.html">Justin Mason</a>)</p> Brandon Boyer's GDC Microtalk → http://vimeo.com/21402998) from [brandonnn](http://vimeo.com/brandonnn) on [Vimeo](http://vimeo.com Mon, 28 Mar 2011 11:06:31 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/brandon-boyers-gdc-microtalk/ <p>Brandon Boyer sums up everything I love and hate about videogames - I wish I could frame his talk and hang it in my house.</p> Facebook on Friendship https://lowbrowculture.com/quote/facebook-on-friendship/ Mon, 21 Mar 2011 08:16:42 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/quote/facebook-on-friendship/ <blockquote> <p>Facebook runs on a very stiff, crude model of what people are like. It herds everybody — friends, co-workers, romantic partners, that guy who lived on your block but moved away after fifth grade — into the same big room. It smooshes together your work self and your home self, your past self and your present self, into a single generic extruded product. <strong>It suspends the natural process by which old friends fall away over time, allowing them to build up endlessly, producing the social equivalent of liver failure</strong>. On Facebook, there is one kind of relationship: friendship, and you have it with everybody. You&rsquo;re friends with your spouse, and you&rsquo;re friends with your plumber.<br> <a href="http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/printout/0,29239,2036683_2037183_2037185,00.html">&ndash; Time.com profile of Mark Zuckerberg, their person of the year 2010</a></p> </blockquote> A Response to Mark Harris https://lowbrowculture.com/post/a-response-to-mark-harris/ Fri, 11 Mar 2011 13:34:46 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/a-response-to-mark-harris/ <p>There&rsquo;s a lot that could be said about Mark Harris&rsquo; recent article for GQ, <a href="http://www.gq.com/entertainment/movies-and-tv/201102/the-day-the-movies-died-mark-harris?printable=true&amp;currentPage;=all">The Day the Movies Died</a>, but I&rsquo;m just going to say a couple of things.</p> <p>First is to say that articles like this are so regular, I think they&rsquo;re the basis of the calendar in some civilizations. Every year, around Oscar time, someone comes out and proclaims that movies have finally reached bottom, as if things have changed suddenly since the previous year, when they proclaimed the exact same thing. Just like the year before. And the year before that, too. These are are nothing more than trolling articles. They&rsquo;re designed to cause controversy, rather than to put forward a legitimate argument. In a way, it&rsquo;s sort of ironic: writers complaining about Hollywood&rsquo;s selling out the last of their artistic integrity in favour of a few extra bums in seats by churning out deliberately &lsquo;shocking&rsquo; bullshit-pieces like this in favour of chasing a few extra page views.</p> <p>That&rsquo;s not to say that he doesn&rsquo;t make some valid points. For example, his discussion of Hollywood&rsquo;s segmentation of the markets and preference for kid-friendly movies has been justified this week, with the news that <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2011/03/guillermo-del-toro-madness-has-gone-dark.html#ixzz1G2RUV3Lt">Guillermo del Toro&rsquo;s film of At the Mountains of Madness has been cancelled</a> because the director was demanding an &lsquo;R&rsquo; rating, while the studios were pushing for a PG-13. As Roger Ebert puts it, &ldquo;<a href="https://twitter.com/ebertchicago/status/45335566551748608">Hollywood holds Del Toro hostage to 13-year-olds, or, the death of movies for grown-ups</a>&rdquo;.</p> <p>Still, that doesn&rsquo;t excuse bullshit like this:</p> <blockquote> <p>That kind of thinking is why Hollywood studio filmmaking, as 2010 came to its end, was at an all-time low—by which I don&rsquo;t mean that there are fewer really good movies than ever before &hellip; but that it has never been harder for an intelligent, moderately budgeted, original movie aimed at adults to get onto movie screens nationwide.</p> </blockquote> <p>Ugh.</p> <p>First off, alarm bells should be sound every time you see a blanket statement like &ldquo;Hollywood studio filmmaking was at an all-time low in 2010&rdquo; without any sort of facts or figures to support it. Since it takes all of three minutes to fire up IMDb and find out if he&rsquo;s right, let&rsquo;s take a look for ourselves. I guess I&rsquo;ll use <a href="http://www.imdb.com/company/co0026840/">Warner Bros.</a> (not counting its subsidiaries) as an example. Ignoring any shorts, or direct-to-video movies, Warner Bros. distributed 25 films in 2010, 17 of which were original properties &ndash; i.e., not sequels, remakes or based on an existing property. In 2009, they distributed 24 films, only 13 of which were original properties. 2008 was worse still. Again, they distributed 24 films, only 10 of which were original properties. I&rsquo;m not saying 2010 was a particularly great year for original films, or that it even holds a candle to, say, 2001, but we can easily demonstrate that Harris was completely wrong in saying that &ldquo;Hollywood studio filmmaking was at an all-time low in 2010&rdquo; - why should we trust the rest of his article?</p> <blockquote> <p>So here&rsquo;s what&rsquo;s on tap two summers from now: an adaptation of a comic book. A reboot of an adaptation of a comic book. A sequel to a sequel to an adaptation of a comic book. A sequel to a reboot of an adaptation of a TV show. A sequel to a sequel to a reboot of an adaptation of a comic book. A sequel to a cartoon. A sequel to a sequel to a cartoon. A sequel to a sequel to a sequel to a cartoon. A sequel to a sequel to a sequel to a sequel to a movie based on a young-adult novel.</p> </blockquote> <p>While this is all true it&rsquo;s worth pointing out that Warner Brothers have 51 <em>completely original properties</em> lined up for 2012. And those are just the ones that are big enough to warrant a listing this far in advance. Also, let&rsquo;s just remember, that&rsquo;s 51 films from just one studio - I really can&rsquo;t be bothered going through all the rest and counting them all. Point is: yes, there&rsquo;s a lot of recycling, but really, nine films?</p> <blockquote> <p>&hellip; And soon after: Stretch Armstrong. You remember Stretch Armstrong, right? That rubberized doll you could stretch and then stretch again, at least until the sludge inside the doll would dry up and he would become Osteoporosis Armstrong? A toy that offered less narrative interest than bingo?</p> </blockquote> <p>Remember when it was announced that Hollywood would be making a movie based on Facebook? Remember the jokes? &ldquo;Oh, it&rsquo;s going to be two hours of someone sitting at a computer click &ldquo;like&rdquo; on things?&rdquo; It turned out to be one of the best movies of the year. I&rsquo;m not going to be rushing to Paddy Power to put money on <em>Stretch Armstrong</em> picking up the &lsquo;best picture&rsquo; oscar. I&rsquo;m just saying that you shouldn&rsquo;t write it off just because you can&rsquo;t see the possibilities.</p> <blockquote> <p>So cable has become the custodian of the &ldquo;good&rdquo; niche; entities like HBO, Showtime, and AMC have found a business model with which they can satisfy a deep public appetite for long-form drama.</p> </blockquote> <p>AMC? The same AMC that dropped the jaw-droppingly superb and completely original <em>Rubicon</em> in favour of the dreadful, painfully derivative, &ldquo;zombies are popular now, right?&rdquo; fanboy-appealing <em>Walking Dead</em>? <strong>That</strong> AMC, Mark?</p> <p>I realise this is entirely personal because I <strong>loved</strong> <em>Rubicon</em>, and I&rsquo;m still gutted that AMC killed it before audiences had a chance to discover it. And so I think that holding AMC up as a bastion of original storytelling is just stupid.</p> <p>(Now, if you don&rsquo;t mind, I&rsquo;ll be over here burning candles in my shrine to <em>Rubicon</em>, <em>Party Down</em> and <em>Terriers</em>.)</p> Interview with the designer of the "Ultimate Pirate Ship Bedroom" → Thu, 10 Mar 2011 12:56:37 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/interview-with-the-designer-of-the-ultimate-pirate-ship-bedroom/ <p>We need more parents wilfully ignoring health and safety in favour of giving their kids a more amazing childhood.</p> Frontier Life in the West 1887 - 1892 → https://www.vintag.es/2013/03/old-photos-of-frontier-life-in-west.html Wed, 09 Mar 2011 12:50:27 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/frontier-life-in-the-west-1887-1892/ <p>The <em>Deadwood</em>/<em>Red Dead Redemption</em> part of me is <strong>loving</strong> this.</p> Alphabet Malfunction https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/alphabet-malfunction/ Fri, 04 Mar 2011 18:38:53 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/alphabet-malfunction/ <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2011/03/apple-sorting.jpg" alt="apple-sorting.jpg"></p> Thinking Different https://lowbrowculture.com/quote/thinking-different/ Thu, 03 Mar 2011 10:08:48 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/quote/thinking-different/ <blockquote>This is worth repeating. It’s in Apple’s DNA that technology is not enough. It’s tech married with the liberal arts and the humanities. Nowhere is that more true than in the post-PC products. Our competitors are looking at this like it’s the next PC market. That is not the right approach to this. These are post-PC devices that need to be easier to use than a PC. More intuitive.</blockquote> <p><a href="http://www.apple.com/ipad/">Steve Jobs, announcing the iPad 2</a></p> Mr. Skin's Anatomy Awards → https://www.mrskin.com/anatomy-awards-2011 Thu, 24 Feb 2011 23:40:50 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/mr-skins-anatomy-awards/ <p>&ldquo;A One-Armed Salute to 2010’s Most Skintastic Achievements in Motion Picture and Television Sex and Nudity&rdquo;. You have to admire any awards with a specific category for &lsquo;Best Nude Parasailing&rsquo;.</p> Endnotes: David Foster Wallace → http://lowbrowculture.com/Endnotes%20-%20David%20Foster%20Wallace.mp3 Wed, 23 Feb 2011 08:18:03 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/endnotes-david-foster-wallace/ <p>Episode of the BBC radio show, <em>Endnotes</em>, focusing on David Foster Wallace. Features a load of interviews with DFW himself, a bunch of other authors and his editor, his agent and his sister. I&rsquo;ve yanked the audio from the Vimeo so I can listen to it on my iPod.</p> CGI and the Death of Urgency https://lowbrowculture.com/post/cgi-and-the-death-of-urgency/ Thu, 17 Feb 2011 10:20:36 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/cgi-and-the-death-of-urgency/ <p>Have I mentioned before how much of a huge Indiana Jones fan I am? <a href="http://lowbrowculture.com/?s=indiana+jones">I think I may have said it once or twice</a>. I&rsquo;ve also <a href="http://lowbrowculture.com/2009/07/09/fan-service/">briefly mentioned</a> my feelings on <em>Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull</em> (short version: I liked it well enough, despite some huge flaws).</p> <p>Of all the things to not like about <em>Crystal Skull</em>, the thing that annoyed me most was the way Señor Spielbergo backpedalled about mostly relying physical effects, to keep it stylistically in line with the rest of the films in the series. Now, rather than having Terry Leonard <em>actually</em> getting dragged along behind an <em>actual</em> giant truck, hardly a shot went by in <em>Crystal Skull</em> without some sort of digital touch-up, whether it&rsquo;s a set they couldn&rsquo;t be bothered to build or a fucking monkey with a 1950s greaser haircut (really?).</p> <p>All that said, here are my least favourite 16 seconds of that entire movie, the part that almost makes me give up entirely. Fortunately, they happen right at the end, so I can watch most of the movie without wanting to throw something at my TV.</p> <p>Here we have a set of giant cogs closing in, destroying the only way out. Bad news, right? Except watch the way the characters react to this. Watch <em>Harrison Ford&rsquo;s</em> reaction. Everyone just strolls along, as if this kind of thing happens all the time, so why worry about itI also have a pet theory, which I don&rsquo;t think I&rsquo;ve ever written about before. Watch Marion in this movie. Watch her stupid grin as she drives them over the waterfall. I&rsquo;m convinced that she has somehow come to the realisation that she&rsquo;s one of the protagonists in an action movie and she cannot die. If it&rsquo;s deliberate, it&rsquo;s brilliantly post-modern. If it&rsquo;s accidental, it&rsquo;s a testament to <em>just how much</em> cocaine Karen Allen did in the 80s? Christ, I&rsquo;ve seen people more stressed out about setting the alarm and leaving the house before the timer runs out. Where&rsquo;s the sense of urgency? Without urgency, where&rsquo;s the sense of danger?</p> <p>I bet this is how it went: Señor Spielbergo said to the actors &ldquo;Listen guys, I know you&rsquo;re all old and tired, so don&rsquo;t sweat it. Take your time. It doesn&rsquo;t matter how long you take to get across here, we&rsquo;ll get the ILM guys to make it so that the cogs close just behind you.&rdquo; Compare this to the opening scene of <em>Raiders of the Lost Ark</em>, where Indiana Jones is running from a boulder. Although it was only made out of fibreglass, that boulder <a href="http://www.theraider.net/films/raiders/making_5_production.php">weighed around 300 pounds</a>. And you know what? That&rsquo;s real fear you see on Harrison Ford&rsquo;s face as he&rsquo;s running. That&rsquo;s real urgency in his movements.</p> <p>Some things you just can&rsquo;t fix in post-production.</p> Dead Island Trailer → http://www.twitlonger.com/show/8shr5c Thu, 17 Feb 2011 09:09:42 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/dead-island-trailer/ <blockquote>If the GAME makes me feel like the trailer, hail to the new kings! How amazing! <p>If the GAME, great as it may be, is nothing like the trailer then here we freaking go again. And I&rsquo;ll say it again:</p> <p>If our medium isn&rsquo;t capable of generating compelling enough content that trailers have to sell something totally different than the actual product they are advertising, then we have a very serious problem.</blockquote></p> Ireland is a small island in a big ocean → https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8JPT3feipJ8 Tue, 15 Feb 2011 11:50:54 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/ireland-is-a-small-island-in-a-big-ocean/ <blockquote> <p>We engage in unnecessary, often criminal behaviour and justify it by calling it &rsquo;the craic'.</p> </blockquote> <p><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wdjLBXlieI0">Context</a>.</p> Fat, Ugly or Slutty → http://fatuglyorslutty.com/ Tue, 15 Feb 2011 08:01:28 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/fat-ugly-or-slutty/ <p>A collection of the abuse recorded by girls playing videogames. If you&rsquo;ve ever spent any time on Xbox Live, you know how ridiculous it can be, but you&rsquo;ve never seen anything like the stuff these girls put up with. E.g. &ldquo;<a href="http://fatuglyorslutty.com/2011/02/08/bewilderment/">im going to stick an egg in ur vaginal canal and punch it-</a>&rdquo;</p> R.I.P. Kenneth Mars → https://www.latimes.com/local/obituaries/la-xpm-2011-feb-15-la-me-passings-20110215-story.html Tue, 15 Feb 2011 07:45:30 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/r-i-p-kenneth-mars/ <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2011/02/kennethmars.jpg" alt="Kenneth Mars in The Producers"></p> <p>You have no idea what a big deal <em>The Producers</em> was in my house growing up. I didn&rsquo;t get half the jokes, and I had no clue what the hell a Nazi was, but goddammit, I knew that Kenneth Mars guy was <em>funny</em>.</p> Baba Yetu → http://www.strategyinformer.com/news/10982/civilization-iv-wins-grammy-award Mon, 14 Feb 2011 08:56:37 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/baba-yetu/ <p>If you didn&rsquo;t think <em>Civilization IV</em> had an embarrassment of riches, last night, Christopher Tin&rsquo;s &lsquo;Baba Yetu&rsquo; &ndash; the theme song for <em>Civ IV</em> &ndash; became the first ever piece of music written for a videogame to ever win a grammy.</p> Playing the Rape Card: ‘Media Psychiatrist’ Ratchets Up Anti-Videogame Rhetoric → http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2011/02/rape-videogames-carole-lieberman/ Sat, 12 Feb 2011 09:21:14 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/playing-the-rape-card-media-psychiatrist-ratchets-up-anti-videogame-rhetoric/ <blockquote> <p>Games like Bulletstorm cause violent behavior and, since rape is a violent crime &hellip; ergo, there is no question that [violent videogames] cause an increase in rape.</p> </blockquote> <ul> <li>all this without a single report that links violent videogames to criminal violence of any kind.</li> </ul> <p>By the same logic: &ldquo;I&rsquo;m eating an apple. Apples are fruit. Bananas are also fruit. Ergo, I am eating a banana. Q.E.D. PEACE OUT, BITCHES.&rdquo;</p> Real-Life Mario Kart → https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KT1pWo0WZJE Sat, 12 Feb 2011 07:53:00 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/real-life-mario-kart/ <p>Rémi Gaillard takes Mario Kart cosplay onto the real streets.</p> Roma Sparita https://lowbrowculture.com/post/roma-sparita/ Thu, 10 Feb 2011 16:03:55 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/roma-sparita/ <p>Boy, is my face red. I&rsquo;ve been living around the corner &ndash; literally a 20 metre walk &ndash; from <em>Roma Sparita</em> for the past 3 years, and I never once popped in to give it a go.</p> <p>To be fair, it&rsquo;s not like I should have expected much. From the outside, it&rsquo;s just another unassuming restaurant in the corner of a piazza with a menu advertising the same <em>cucina Romana</em> you find in on every street and every piazza in Rome. There&rsquo;s nothing that stands out about its menu. Plus, there are two major flags that I tend to watch out for when judging a restaurant. First, it&rsquo;s beside a fairly solid tourist attraction &ndash; Santa Cecelia &ndash; which is usually a sure sign of a shithole that doesn&rsquo;t care about quality (Trying to find a good place to eat around St. Peter&rsquo;s is like walking through a culinary minefield). Secondly, it&rsquo;s within spitting distance from Piazza dei Mercanti. Have you ever seen the restaurants there? One of them is decked out with a bunch of fake crap on the walls which is supposed to make it look like a ye olde trattoria but actually makes it seem like you&rsquo;re eating right in the <em>Pirates of the Caribbean</em>. The other puts on a pantomime show during the summer, with people opening the windows of the building and shouting out of them. The whole thing is like a weird, distracting 18th century <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iZ8Vrvy0VeE">Rowan and Martin&rsquo;s Laugh-in</a>. Both restaurants are extremely gimmicky and going heavily after the tourist market. Not that there&rsquo;s anything wrong with that, and they both seem like they do great business there. But it also means that I&rsquo;ve been painting <em>Roma Sparita</em> with the same brush.</p> <p>Here&rsquo;s the embarrassing part: it took an episode of Anthony Bourdain&rsquo;s <em>No Reservations</em> to get me to check out <em>Roma Sparita</em>. Or, more specifically, their cacio e pepe. Now, cacio e pepe is my favourite pasta dish. It&rsquo;s the one I always pounce on when I see it on a menu. Up until now, <em>Da Augusto</em> has been my favourite, by a long way. So my wife and I are watching <em>No Reservations</em> and we see Piazza Santa Cecilia and both shout &lsquo;Hey! That&rsquo;s Piazza Santa Cecilia!&quot; But when they brought out the cacio e pepe, I leaned a little closer. Okay, so the whole thing is a little gimmicky, coming in a edible bowl made of parmesan. Then Bourdain started eating and his hyperbole glands kicked in. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m sure this is illegal somewhere,&rdquo; &ldquo;This could be the greatest thing in the history of the world&rdquo; (ACTUAL QUOTE), &ldquo;In order to enjoy this plate of food, what would I be willing to sacrifice from my past? &hellip; Catcher in the Rye&hellip; My third, fifth, seventh and ninth acid trips&hellip; my first sexual experience, definitely.&rdquo; You get the picture.</p> <p>So we took a stroll around last night. We got there at about 8.30pm without having booked ahead, and we were the first guests to be put into the &lsquo;overflow&rsquo; part of the restaurant. I started worrying that we were getting shoved into the &lsquo;chump&rsquo; (read: tourist) part, but the whole thing filled up within a few minutes. It was extremely popular. For starter, I got the bresaola with rocket and parmesan, my wife got the carciofi alla romana. Both were excellent, solid dishes, and very well done. When it came time to order our pasta, the waiter didn&rsquo;t even wait for us to say anything, he just said &ldquo;Cacio e pepe?&rdquo; with a little wink. I think my defences must have been up because I wasn&rsquo;t sure how to interpret the wink. Was he onto us? Was he saying &ldquo;You look like Americans who saw this place on Anthony Bourdain and of course you&rsquo;ve just come for the cacio e pepe.&rdquo; Or was he saying &ldquo;We know we knock this shit out of the park, so why would you ever want to order anything else?&rdquo;</p> <p>Turns out, it was the latter. It was a room full of Romans and everyone, I mean <em>everyone</em>, ordered the cacio e pepe. And for good reason.</p> <p>That was easily the best cacio e pepe I have ever tasted. It follows a slightly different recipe - rather than being the traditional pasta covered in grated cheese and an assload of pepper with a drizzle of oil and leaving it to the eater to mix up, <em>Roma Sparita</em> cook the cheese and pepper sauce with butter which, in a Roman kitchen, is almost unheard of, before tossing in all the pasta and coating it all in the pan. It&rsquo;s a great way of doing it, and one I think I&rsquo;ll be copying when I make the dish myself. And then there&rsquo;s the parmesan bowl, the &lsquo;gimmick&rsquo;. Personally, I left the entire bowl until the end and ate that as one giant crispy, cheesy flavour-bomb<sup id="fnref:1"><a href="#fn:1" class="footnote-ref" role="doc-noteref">1</a></sup>.</p> <p>It was a delicious blast of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umami">umami</a> and an amazing way to finish the meal. Leaving the place, my wife asked how we were going to manage the next few months. We have so many restaurants left to try in Rome before we leave, and all we want to do now is go back to <em>Roma Sparita</em> and gorge ourselves on the cacio e pepe. I told her I don&rsquo;t think there would be any shame in that.</p> <div class="footnotes" role="doc-endnotes"> <hr> <ol> <li id="fn:1"> <p>I also tend to eat my french fries before my burger, and then eat around the burger, leaving the pickle right in the middle until the final bite&#160;<a href="#fnref:1" class="footnote-backref" role="doc-backlink">&#x21a9;&#xfe0e;</a></p> </li> </ol> </div> The Yester-Daily https://lowbrowculture.com/post/the-yester-daily/ Tue, 08 Feb 2011 16:54:16 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/the-yester-daily/ <p>Last week, News Corp unveiled their latest attempt to figure out this whole &rsquo;new media&rsquo; thing with the launch of <em>The Daily</em>, an iPad-only newspaper-magazine hybrid that is published, uh&hellip; dailyLike <a href="http://www.nbc.com/community/">Abed from <em>Community</em></a>, News Corp aren&rsquo;t great at coming up with names. It wasn&rsquo;t the smoothest launch ever and it has already drawn a couple of complaints from the tech community. The first is that the app itself is slow and badly programmed. Gruber timed how long it took from launching the app to actually reading a single thing - <a href="http://daringfireball.net/2011/02/the_daily_wait">one minute and twenty seconds</a>.</p> <p>This is just a teething problem, and I&rsquo;m sure it&rsquo;ll be fixed in later versions of the app. I mean, Loren Brichter managed to fix problems with <em>The Daily</em>&rsquo;s carousel (the thing you use to navigate the different articles) <a href="http://twitter.com/lorenb/status/33409769964306432">in around two hours</a>. I don&rsquo;t think this is a show-stopper.</p> <p>The other issue is more complicated. People like <a href="http://brooksreview.net">Ben Brooks</a> complain that the biggest problem with <em>The Daily</em> is that <a href="http://brooksreview.net/2011/02/daily-stale/">its content is stale</a>. Rather than pushing out up-to-the-minute news, The Daily pushes out <em>yesterday&rsquo;s</em> news. Is it still news if it happened yesterday?</p> <p>With respect, I think that Ben is missing the point, and I&rsquo;ll explain why.</p> <p>First, as with everything I write, I have to take you on a little diversion that seems completely irrelevant, but eventually ties back into the first subject.</p> <p>There&rsquo;s a videogame magazine called <em>Edge</em> (or, if as it&rsquo;s called in the US, <em>Next Gen</em>). It&rsquo;s the one magazine I&rsquo;m completely devoted to, and I&rsquo;ve got every issue going back to issue 3. It&rsquo;s published monthly, which means that 95% of the news and reviews in the magazine have been scooped by online sites like Joystiq or Eurogamer. I&rsquo;ve gotten into more debates than I care to remember with nerds who said that there was no longer any place for magazines, arguing first, why would people want to read stale content that&rsquo;s potentially a month old, and second, why would people <em>pay</em> for stale content when they could get the fresh content, online, for free?</p> <p>Okay, so let&rsquo;s take a slightly more highbrow example: <em>The International Herald Tribune</em>. This is essentially nothing more than a reprint of yesterday&rsquo;s <em>New York Times</em>. Who would want to read that? Well, Speaking anecdotally, this is the one reliable English-language newspaper you can get in Italy. It&rsquo;s the one newspaper we get delivered to our newsroom (although it&rsquo;s used more as toilet-reading than a source of news). Less anecdotally, the IHT has a circulation of around <a href="http://www.ihtinfo.com/pdfs/IHT_circulation_distribution.pdf">219,188</a> - not bad for a reprint of &lsquo;stale&rsquo; content.</p> <p>See, I think the issue isn&rsquo;t about how &lsquo;fresh&rsquo; the news is, it&rsquo;s about <strong>the quality of the writing</strong>. It&rsquo;s depressing to see how much <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Churnalism">Churnalism</a> there is in the world. For example, <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/">BBC News</a> &ndash; which is where I tend to go to for my &lsquo;breaking news&rsquo; &ndash; is mostly reprints of AP stories. It&rsquo;s an understandable practice: when you&rsquo;ve got a 24/7 news cycle, you just have to get stuff out there as quickly as possible, without being able to put much effort into it. And so I&rsquo;ll go to BBC News for breaking news, but I tend to go elsewhere for analysis.</p> <p>It&rsquo;s the same with <em>Edge</em>. I&rsquo;ll happily take a wobble over to Eurogamer and have a quick breeze through their reviews, to see what score they awarded a particular game, but I won&rsquo;t read the actual review because their writing isn&rsquo;t great. I&rsquo;d rather wait for the <em>Edge</em> review, even if I have to wait the full month for it. With the IHT, yes, I&rsquo;m happy to read yesterday&rsquo;s <em>New York Times</em> because it&rsquo;s (for the most part) still vaguely relevant and still better-written than most other newspapers.</p> <p>With <em>The Daily</em>, technical kinks aside, I think that if the content is compelling enough, its &lsquo;freshness&rsquo; doesn&rsquo;t matter.</p> <p>(If you don&rsquo;t have an iPad and want to see what all the fuss is about, Andy Baio knocked together <a href="http://thedailyindexed.tumblr.com/">The Daily: Indexed</a>, where you can find browser-readable versions of all the stories from the iPad edition.)</p> Amazing Life https://lowbrowculture.com/quote/amazing-life/ Thu, 03 Feb 2011 08:41:07 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/quote/amazing-life/ <blockquote> <p>Here we have the man who invented the personal computer, then the laptop. He’s now destroying them. That is an amazing life.</p> </blockquote> <p><a href="http://paidcontent.org/article/419-murdoch-hopes-apple-will-lower-its-share-of-the-daily-take/">Rupert Murdoch on Steve Jobs</a></p> Books and e-books https://lowbrowculture.com/post/books-and-e-books/ Wed, 02 Feb 2011 16:08:58 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/books-and-e-books/ <p>Two interesting, possibly not entirely unrelated news stories in the past week.</p> <p>First is the really sad news that <a href="http://newswhip.ie/national-2/two-waterstones-in-dublin-to-close">Waterstones is closing its two Dublin stores</a>. I&rsquo;m genuinely quite upset about this. Not only because I know a few fantastic people who work there, but also (and slightly selfishly) because I loved going into these shops. The Dawson Street branch is like a Georgian oasis of peace and quiet. I&rsquo;m less excited about returning home to Dublin now that Waterstones is gone.</p> <p>Then there&rsquo;s the news that for the first time, <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-12305015">Amazon sold more kindle e-books than paperbacks</a>. Amazon claim that for every 100 paperbacks sold in the last quarter of 2010, it sold 115 kindle e-books. I&rsquo;d love to see the actual figures here. It could be, as Steve Jobs suggests, that <a href="http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2008/01/steve-jobs-peop/">people just don&rsquo;t read anymore</a>, in which case the entire story is a statistical blip and not worth getting too excited about. I&rsquo;m guessing it&rsquo;s not, and we&rsquo;re seeing a genuine shift in the <em>way</em> people read.</p> <p>When I was back home in Dublin, I took a stroll around Waterstones in the Jervis Centre. I spent almost an hour browsing because, like I said, it&rsquo;s a nice place to take your time in. Although I had three books in my hands (<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Bad-Science-ebook/dp/B002RI9ORI/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;m;=A2HD1FRBBEUS3N&amp;s;=digital-text&amp;qid;=1296663020&amp;sr;=1-1">Bad Science</a>, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Operation-Mincemeat-ebook/dp/B0035G8GPC/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;m;=A2HD1FRBBEUS3N&amp;s;=digital-text&amp;qid;=1296662967&amp;sr;=1-1">Operation Mincemeat</a> and <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Good-Fairies-New-York-ebook/dp/B004FN1QNS/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;m;=A2HD1FRBBEUS3N&amp;s;=digital-text&amp;qid;=1296662991&amp;sr;=1-1">The Good Fairies of New York</a>, if you&rsquo;re interested), I put them back. I realised buying them would take up precious space in my suitcase for the trip back &ndash; space that <em>could</em> be used for Tayto and Ballymaloe relish &ndash; and then I&rsquo;d have to find space for them on already-overflowing shelves. While I was sitting down for coffee later, I bought the Kindle versions of the three three books I had been looking at.</p> <p>Now I feel pretty bad.</p> <p>But at the same time, I think now is a good time for publishers and booksellers (the bricks-and-mortar kind) to tackle this problem. Because they have something powerful that Amazon, as much as it tries, can&rsquo;t compete with.</p> <p>I love my Kindle. I love the convenience of it. I love the fact that I&rsquo;ve got my library with me wherever I go. I love that every book I buy for it means one less book taking up space on my bookshelves, one less thing for my wife to yell at me about. I love the experience of reading on it.</p> <p>But I don&rsquo;t like the experience of <em>shopping</em> on it. Or rather, I don&rsquo;t like the experience of <em>window-shopping</em> on it. It might give me the choice of hundreds of thousands of books right at my fingertips, but unless I know exactly the book I&rsquo;m looking for, I&rsquo;m screwed. There&rsquo;s no serendipity.</p> <p>Retail stores, like Waterstones, have the opposite problem. They&rsquo;re <em>all</em> serendipity. Conversely, because they have limited physical space, chances are they might not have that one particular book you&rsquo;re looking for, especially if it&rsquo;s in any way off the beaten path. But that doesn&rsquo;t matter because while you&rsquo;re looking for that one book, your eye might be drawn to something else. An author you haven&rsquo;t heard of, writing in a genre you don&rsquo;t usually like. You decide to check it out and &ndash; boom &ndash; you have a new favourite book.</p> <p>Amazon doesn&rsquo;t have that.</p> <p>Another thing Waterstones has that I&rsquo;m really going to miss are the &lsquo;Our favourites&rsquo;. A curated section with books chosen by the people who work there, with a little note underneath, written by the member of staff who chose it explaining why they like that particular book. These were always great places to discover something new because their choices were always wonderfully idiosyncratic and always interesting.</p> <p>Amazon doesn&rsquo;t have that either.</p> <p>What Amazon <em>does</em> have are recommendations based on what I&rsquo;ve already bought. In other words &ldquo;If you liked this, here&rsquo;s more of the same&rdquo;. I&rsquo;m sure it&rsquo;s a very sophisticated algorithm and took hundreds of man-hours to perfect, but that&rsquo;s not what I want. It sounds stupid, but I don&rsquo;t want you to recommend stuff <em>I</em> like, I want you to recommend stuff <em>you</em> like.</p> <p>That&rsquo;s the role retail book shops play. That&rsquo;s the itch they scratch that online shops just can&rsquo;t reach. And I think it&rsquo;s time for them to start playing that up. It wouldn&rsquo;t take much for retailers to offer the option of selling digital copies of books on small, cheap USB keys, but I doubt Amazon will get the &lsquo;window-shopping&rsquo; experience right anytime soon.</p> Pixar has us right where they want us https://lowbrowculture.com/quote/pixar-has-us-right-where-they-want-us/ Wed, 02 Feb 2011 11:21:00 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/quote/pixar-has-us-right-where-they-want-us/ <blockquote> <p>Pixar is bulletproof, assholes. We can put out any old piece of shit that perfectly examines universal themes of love and friendship and just walk away with record box-office numbers. In fact, I think I&rsquo;ll have my award-winning design team get cracking on an anthropomorphic piece of shit right now. Yes. Shit. I&rsquo;m talking actual human feces here, folks. We&rsquo;ll give it eyes and limbs, and—I don&rsquo;t know—call it Danny Caca. Brad Bird can make a story about how it got lost on its way to the sewage treatment facility. Its best friends are a used sewage-logged tampon and a hypodermic needle. Then we&rsquo;ll just sit back and watch the receipts come in.</p> <p>Yeah, it&rsquo;ll have heart and depth, but still, it&rsquo;s going to be a talking piece of shit. Kids won&rsquo;t flush for years because of it.</p> </blockquote> <p><a href="http://www.theonion.com/articles/ive-got-you-dumb-motherfuckers-eating-right-out-of,19014/">John Lasseter - I&rsquo;ve Got You Dumb Motherfuckers Eating Right Out Of My Hand</a></p> Everything is a Remix → http://www.everythingisaremix.info Wed, 02 Feb 2011 07:55:02 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/everything-is-a-remix/ <p>The second part of Kirby Ferguson&rsquo;s incredible <a href="http://www.everythingisaremix.info">Everything is a Remix</a> series. Two things:</p> <ol> <li>&lsquo;Sorry about colonialism&rsquo; is a great name for <em>Avatar</em>&rsquo;s genre.</li> <li>I know <em>Kill Bill</em> is like the film version of a nerd&rsquo;s scrapbook, but I personally find <em>Death Proof</em> almost completely unwatchable.</li> </ol> Perfect Analogy https://lowbrowculture.com/quote/perfect-analogy/ Mon, 31 Jan 2011 09:24:41 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/quote/perfect-analogy/ <blockquote> <p>Here are some pictures of the property. I can’t comment on what this property should actually go for as I’m a 21-year-old recent graduate and owning property to me is a bit like owning a zeppelin. It’s something people did in the past that seems crazy today and it eventually blew up in their faces.</p> </blockquote> <p>&ndash; <a href="http://newswhip.ie/national-2/reality-dalkey-house-valued-at-e6-2m-in-2007-has-finally-sold-for-e1-4m">Dalkey house valued at €6.2m in 2007 has finally sold for €1.4m - Newswhip</a></p> Up Premake Trailer → https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ml9hAN5km14 Wed, 26 Jan 2011 08:11:36 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/up-premake-trailer/ <p>A trailer for <em>Up</em> created by splicing together bits of old movies. What an amazing piece of work.</p> Jersey Shore, in Italy → http://www.tmz.com/2011/01/25/jersey-shore-italy-pauly-d-snooki-jwoww-vinny-guadagnino-mtv-shoot-travel-show-visa-the-situation-ronnie-sammi-angelina/ Tue, 25 Jan 2011 18:00:13 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/jersey-shore-in-italy/ <blockquote> <p>Sources connected to the show tell us they will be scouting locations in Italy &ndash; similar to the way they did it in Miami &ndash; to find the right locale.</p> <p>One source connected with the show says they&rsquo;ve already lined up some of Vinny&rsquo;s Italian relatives to host the &ldquo;Jersey&rdquo; crew for an authentic Guadagnino dinner.</p> </blockquote> <p><a href="https://lowbrowculture.com/post/jersey-shore-2-the-situationing/">Called it.</a></p> Mysterious piece of wood on an iceberg → http://blogs.abc.net.au/news/2011/01/a-chip-off-the-old-block.html Mon, 24 Jan 2011 22:48:39 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/mysterious-piece-of-wood-on-an-iceberg/ <blockquote> <p>The real question “isn’t how did it get there?” but “what are the penguins building?”</p> </blockquote> This is how all games should be reviewed https://lowbrowculture.com/video/this-is-how-all-games-should-be-reviewed/ Mon, 24 Jan 2011 10:15:10 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/video/this-is-how-all-games-should-be-reviewed/ <div class="embed video-player"> <iframe class="youtube-player" type="text/html" width="640" height="385" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/4Z2Z23SAFVA" allowfullscreen frameborder="0"> </iframe> </div> <blockquote> <p>reley dont wan to say this, but i have to now. this game is so esey. i mean, all you do is hit the spacebar. thats it! how is this an RPG anyway? you cant contrail anything but what it says on &gt; the screen! what if i didnt want to buy the potion? what apout quests? all you can upgrade is stranth? there is no way you can lose to the boss at &gt; the end! this game is crap! its not even an RPG at all! i mean look at it! in what way is this supposed to be an RPG if you can do quests and stuff? all you do is press one butten the entier time! explain to me! the athore coments al totol lies! is it supposed to be stick dudes? i dont even know how this damn game got the daily 3rd prize, or a rating of 4.26!<br> pepole think this review is worthles.<br> go ahead! say it! i dont care! im just trying to make a point here!<br> blam this piece of crap!!!!</p> <p>P.S the only reson im giving this a 1 is beacuase the voices where pretty good. but thats it!</p> </blockquote> Penis https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/penis/ Sun, 23 Jan 2011 21:30:11 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/penis/ <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2011/01/penis.png" alt="penis"></p> <p><em>Community</em> is so good, even its throwaway jokes are gold.</p> Death in Videogames https://lowbrowculture.com/post/death-in-videogames/ Sun, 23 Jan 2011 21:15:28 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/death-in-videogames/ <p><a href="http://kotaku.com/5739362/there-is-real-death-in-this-video-game">Kotaku - There is real death in this video game</a></p> <blockquote> <p>Beloved niche PC publishers Paradox Interactive today revealed Salem, a free-to-play MMO that wants to make sure that players take their decision-making seriously. To this end, things you do in the game are promised to have a lasting effect, while more importantly, if you die, you are dead.</p> <p>Your character is gone, and all your equipment is set loose for other players to grab. There is no respawning, no retention of your name or your stats or your skills. You are simply dead, and if you want to play again, you need to start all over at the beginning with a new name and a new character.</p> <p>&hellip; It&rsquo;s a brave decision, and one that has a far more drastic impact than in a singleplayer game, where you&rsquo;re the only person who cares. In an MMO, when you die, you can be <em>mourned</em>.</p> </blockquote> <p>I love this idea, and I applaud the publishers for having the balls to put out a videogame that actually deals with death in a serious way, beyond the usual &ldquo;LOL I TOTALLY JUST SHOT THAT FUCKER IN THE FACE.&rdquo; My only concern is with how they are planning on implementing this. When you die, will you immediately be able to start a new character? Will they ban your account for a period of time? Death only has meaning because of its permanence. It&rsquo;s the ultimate full-stop. There&rsquo;s no coming back. And in an MMO, the character doesn&rsquo;t matter, the <em>player</em> matters. So the idea that a player can just roll a new character and maybe even be present for the &lsquo;funeral&rsquo; of his previous character bothers me slightly, like it&rsquo;s missing the point slightly. Why would anyone mourn a character when they know the player is still around - the same person in a different avatar?</p> <p>Still, it&rsquo;s a step in the right direction.</p> XBMC ported to Apple TV https://lowbrowculture.com/post/xbmc-ported-to-apple-tv/ Sat, 22 Jan 2011 10:14:45 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/xbmc-ported-to-apple-tv/ <p>Cult of Mac reports that <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/cultofmac/bFow/~3/_cB1BIRXdSI/77993">XBMC has been ported to the second-generation Apple TV</a>.</p> <blockquote> <p>The new port of XBMC not only makes the second-gen AppleTV one of the cheapest devices out there that can run XBMC short of a used Xbox, but it also adds some lovely functionality to Apple’s woefully slim-featured set-top box, including the ability to pump out 1080p video, play a myriad of codecs and web content natively, as well as install and expand your experience with new apps.</p> </blockquote> <p>My original Xbox running XBMC was, hands down, the best media centre I&rsquo;ve ever owned. It never once complained about codecs and it ran silky smooth. In fact, I still keep it hidden under my TV for emergencies. The only problem with it is the hardware itself. The Xbox is bulky, noisy, ethernet-only, and has no remote control, so when I use it, I&rsquo;m forced to use the monstrously huge Xbox controller, with its cable draped across my living room.</p> <p>I had been thinking about getting a Boxee box, but slightly went off the idea after reading <a href="http://hicksdesign.co.uk/journal/boxee-box-review">Jon Hicks&rsquo; lukewarm review</a>. The availability of XBMC on the ATV2 nails it for me. My next toy.</p> Videogames in the wild https://lowbrowculture.com/post/videogames-in-the-wild/ Fri, 21 Jan 2011 10:56:03 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/videogames-in-the-wild/ <p>Illustrator Aled Lewis has put together a series of images of videogame characters put into real-world settings, and some of them are terrific.</p> <p><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/35699504@N00/5368685952/"><img src="http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5167/5368685952_936d1d9c9a.jpg" alt="Off The Dirt Track"></a></p> <p><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/35699504@N00/5362205242/"><img src="http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5006/5362205242_90f33f77e6.jpg" alt="Hyrule Field"></a></p> <p><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/35699504@N00/5358995226/"><img src="http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5122/5358995226_1b2fefacd5.jpg" alt="We Need A Montage"></a></p> <p>Check out <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/35699504@N00/">his full Flickr stream</a> for more.</p> Begrudgery https://lowbrowculture.com/post/begrudgery/ Tue, 18 Jan 2011 10:54:49 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/begrudgery/ <p><a href="http://www.yourtechstuff.com/techwire/2011/01/meet-the-monaghan-lass-with-345000-twitter-followers.html">Adrian Wreckler - Meet the Monaghan lass with 345,000 Twitter followers</a></p> <blockquote> <p>Sinead Duffy is a lifecoach (with her own company, Great Minds) who has set up the mother of all Twitter accounts. Called Greatest Quotes, it&rsquo;s an auto-tweeting feed of&hellip; greatest quotes. Astonishingly, Greatest Quotes is growing by 10,000 followers per week. That&rsquo;s almost as much as Ashton Kutcher.</p> <p>Ah, you think &ndash; that&rsquo;s a bit of a swizz. Sure, just set up a few RSS feeds and let it take off; that&rsquo;s not a real account.</p> <p>Think again. Because of this account, Duffy is getting business online. And it&rsquo;s cash upfront. &ldquo;I coach select overseas clients via Skype and charge through Paypal,&rdquo; she tells me. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s mostly through Twitter that potential clients find me.&rdquo;</p> <p>Who&rsquo;s laughing now?</p> </blockquote> <p>Coaching. &ldquo;Select overseas clients&rdquo;. From a Twitter account that spews out &lsquo;greatest quotes&rsquo;.</p> <p>Sometimes I think this recession hasn&rsquo;t hit hard enough.</p> Blu-Ray Hassles https://lowbrowculture.com/post/blu-ray-hassles/ Mon, 17 Jan 2011 09:37:13 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/blu-ray-hassles/ <p><a href="http://www.marco.org/2688958726">Marco Arment:</a></p> <blockquote> <blockquote> <p>In fact, aside from the fact that Blu-Ray’s high definition picture is so ridiculously gorgeous, the whole format is demonstrably worse than what came before it.<br> —<br> <a href="http://www.subtraction.com/2011/01/10/blu-ray-blues">Khoi Vinh</a></p> </blockquote> <p>Agreed. I’ve only used Blu-Ray on a PS3, which is probably better than most standalone players, but all of the consumer-hostile “features” of DVDs — unskippable logos, previews, warnings, and disclaimers, long animation delays before menu activation, custom-themed interfaces that make everything more difficult — has advanced to new levels of hassles, delays, restrictions, and annoyances. Granted, I probably own more Blu-Rays than I should (I&rsquo;m slowly weaning myself off physical media), but each time I pop a new disc into my PS3 and wait the full three-to-five minutes for my movie to actually begin, I say &ldquo;This is why people pirate movies&rdquo;.</p> </blockquote> <p>Although recently, I&rsquo;m noticing a disturbing trend in the pre-movie junk. Where there used to be the &ldquo;<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ALZZx1xmAzg">You wouldn&rsquo;t steal a car</a>&rdquo; warning, some studios are now putting a message to say &ldquo;Thank you for buying a legitimate copy of this movie&rdquo;. Except the whole thing is done in a comedy voice, kind of like the E4 announcer, which makes the whole thing seem really insincere. Which is a step in the right direction, I suppose &ndash; at least they&rsquo;re no longer treating consumers as potential criminals &ndash; but it&rsquo;s a long way from what consumers actually want, which is quick access to the movie they just bought.</p> Mediocrity https://lowbrowculture.com/quote/mediocrity/ Fri, 07 Jan 2011 10:28:21 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/quote/mediocrity/ <blockquote>The slowness of genius is hard to bear, but the slowness of mediocrity is intolerable</blockquote> <p>&ndash; Henry Thomas Buckle, after his chess opponent took so long to finish a move that Buckle had time to write two chapters of a book on the history of civilisation. <a href="http://www.futilitycloset.com/2011/01/06/sitzfleisch/">Buckle won the game</a>.</p> The Beauty of Pixar → http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UwoPtQevOTE Tue, 04 Jan 2011 15:55:33 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/the-beauty-of-pixar/ <p>What does it say about a studio whose worst movie is merely great? It says that you can put together a fantastic 7-minute montage of great Pixar moments and <em>still</em> only have scratched the surface.</p> Life Calendar - How was your day? → Sun, 02 Jan 2011 10:48:42 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/life-calendar-how-was-your-day/ <p>What a great idea - a calendar that you draw a face on each day to represent your mood.</p> Youtube Considered a TV Station in Italy https://lowbrowculture.com/post/youtube-considered-a-tv-station-in-italy/ Sat, 01 Jan 2011 08:16:08 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/youtube-considered-a-tv-station-in-italy/ <p>We&rsquo;d just been talking about how much we&rsquo;re going to miss living in Rome. Now this happens.</p> <p>According to a story in La Repubblica, under Italian law, Youtube and other similar sites, such as DailyMotion, <a href="http://www.repubblica.it/tecnologia/2010/12/31/news/agcom_equipara_youtube_alle_tv-10738254/">are now considered TV stations</a> (<a href="http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&amp;ie;=UTF-8&amp;sl;=it&amp;tl;=en&amp;u;=http://www.repubblica.it/tecnologia/2010/12/31/news/agcom_equipara_youtube_alle_tv-10738254/&amp;prev;=_t&amp;rurl;=translate.google.com">bizarre English translation here</a>).</p> <p>What does this mean? Well, naturally it means a tax (this is Italy, after all - some money has <em>got</em> to change hands). It also means that these sites will be obliged to prohibit access to content inappropriate for children in certain time slots. More importantly though, it means that the sites are now legally responsible for all user-content uploaded to them, meaning that if some <a href="http://images.cheezburger.com/completestore/2010/6/29/28c85220-ca45-4cc2-a9e4-f8d94d040537.jpg">half-senile old fuck who controls half the media in the country</a> finds some of their content on there, he finally has someone to sue.</p> <p>I have to be honest, if the owners of these sites decide that the easiest way to solve all these problems is to just block access from Italy entirely, I wouldn&rsquo;t even be slightly surprised. That guy from <a href="http://youreporter.it/">YouReporter.it</a> nailed it: &ldquo;This is a legal absurdity and violence done to reality.&rdquo;</p> Never said about restaurant websites → http://neversaidaboutrestaurantwebsites.tumblr.com Fri, 31 Dec 2010 12:20:27 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/never-said-about-restaurant-websites/ <p>Yet another amazing Tumblr. “‘I love downloading PDFs. Even if the menu is totally out of date, it’s worth the thrill.’ — Absolutely no one.”</p> What a Face → http://whataface.tumblr.com Thu, 30 Dec 2010 18:15:20 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/what-a-face/ <p>Great tumblr: “A tribute to character actors with ‘distinctive’ looks”. Any site that starts with the mighty <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rondo_Hatton">Rondo Hatton</a> is alright in my book.</p> Christmas Traditions https://lowbrowculture.com/post/christmas-traditions/ Tue, 28 Dec 2010 19:02:03 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/christmas-traditions/ <p>One of the most difficult things about getting married is how to bring together two family&rsquo;s worth of Christmas traditions into one cohesive whole. For example, on Christmas morning, my wife&rsquo;s family wakes up and has breakfast of smoked salmon on brown bread. Very dignified. In my family, our Christmas breakfast is usually an entire selection box, <em>inhaled</em> more than eaten, with the wrappers picked out of your teeth when you finally wake up from your diabetic coma a couple of hours later.</p> <p>Okay, that&rsquo;s a no-brainer. We&rsquo;ll adopt my wife&rsquo;s way. And hey, to add our own <em>personal</em> touch to the proceedings, why not have Bellinis for breakfast too? There we go, that&rsquo;s breakfast sorted.</p> <p>In my family, our Christmas dinner is turkey <em>and</em> ham. In my wife&rsquo;s family it&rsquo;s just turkey. Since it&rsquo;s just the two of us, and we have enough trouble finishing an entire turkey by ourselves, we can safely ditch the ham (although there is nothing &ndash; NOTHING &ndash; quite like a Stephen&rsquo;s day sandwich of leftover ham on batch bread, so we retain the option to introduce the ham at a later date).</p> <p>Then there&rsquo;s the Christmas presents. In my family, I would wake up at about 4am, make my way down the stairs, shaking violently with barely-contained excitement, and finally proceed to tear open all my presents in just a few seconds flat. A wrapping-paper massacre of epic proportions. In my wife&rsquo;s family, the kids are not allowed open their Christmas presents until after the whole family had come back from mass. They were allowed open their Christmas stocking, but that&rsquo;s it.</p> <p>This is something that we&rsquo;d been going backwards and forwards about. My wife argues that it&rsquo;s better to do things her way, because it teaches delayed gratification. That&rsquo;s one argument, I suppose. Personally, I prefer instant gratification, and I believe that Christmas is the one day which should be entirely about instant gratification. You want to eat that entire box of Cadbury&rsquo;s Heroes in one sitting? Go right ahead, it&rsquo;s Christmas!</p> <p>I think this year has taught my wife the danger of her way of doing things.</p> <p>My wife&rsquo;s sister (who also comes from the school of &rsquo;no presents until after mass&rsquo;) brought her two young children to mass on Christmas day. They sat right up at the front of the church. The priest saw them, and them being two of the most adorable-looking children ever, started asking them about Christmas.</p> <p>&ldquo;And what did Santa bring you?&rdquo;<br> &ldquo;An orange!&rdquo;<br> &ldquo;Oh! And uh&hellip; anything else?&rdquo;<br> &ldquo;A cookie!&rdquo;</p> <p>Score one for instant gratification.</p> Precociousness https://lowbrowculture.com/post/precociousness/ Thu, 23 Dec 2010 09:25:05 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/precociousness/ <p>Watching <em>A Miracle on 34th Street</em> last night, my wife kept cracking up at Mara Wilson&rsquo;s ultra-precocious 7 year old. You can&rsquo;t really blame her. Only John Hughes could have written a child like this:</p> <blockquote> <p><strong>Kris Kringle:</strong> Oh, Susan. Just because every child doesn&rsquo;t get his or her wish doesn&rsquo;t mean there&rsquo;s not a Santa Claus.</p> <p><strong>Susan:</strong> I thought you might say that.</p> <p><strong>Kris Kringle:</strong> Did you? Yes. Well&hellip; A house is a very big order&ndash;</p> <p><strong>Susan:</strong> And very expensive.</p> <p><strong>Kris Kringle:</strong> And a baby, well a baby takes almost a year to, uh, to, uh&hellip;</p> <p><strong>Susan:</strong> nine months. More if the lady&rsquo;s late. Less if the baby&rsquo;s a preemie.</p> </blockquote> <p>The funny thing is, I would bet cash money that my wife was exactly like this when she as 7 years old too.</p> Olly Moss' reimagined posters for the original Star Wars trilogy https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/olly-moss-reimagined-posters-for-the-original-star-wars-trilogy/ Sat, 18 Dec 2010 10:03:53 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/olly-moss-reimagined-posters-for-the-original-star-wars-trilogy/ <p><a href="http://www.moss.fm/post/2350943620/star-wars-my-take-on-the-original-star-wars"><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2010/12/tumblr_ldkjrh5UlZ1qeqo31-1100x551.jpg" alt=""></a></p> <p>I&rsquo;m continually blown away by Olly Moss&rsquo; ability to make things look so easy. See also: <a href="http://www.moss.fm/post/1337585914/process-dirty-harry">his <em>Dirty Harry</em> poster</a></p> Dublin Mean Time → https://comeheretome.com/2015/07/09/dublin-mean-time/ Sat, 18 Dec 2010 08:38:39 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/dublin-mean-time/ <p>Come Here To me, easily the best Irish blog right now, talks about the history of Dublin Mean Time, when Dublin was 25 minutes ahead of Britain. &ldquo;Incredibly, prior to October 1916, there had been some hostility to the idea of synchronizing our watches with Britain. In August 1916, a letter appeared in the Irish Independent arguing against it on nationalist grounds! The writer noted that “the question is whether we should give up this mark of our national identity to suit the convenience of shipping companies and a few travellers”.&rdquo;</p> <p>Whoa.</p> Trailer for Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life https://lowbrowculture.com/video/trailer-for-terrence-malicks-the-tree-of-life/ Thu, 16 Dec 2010 10:54:56 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/video/trailer-for-terrence-malicks-the-tree-of-life/ <p>So psyched for this film. I&rsquo;m going to watch <em>Days of Heaven</em> to get myself even more psyched.</p> A Stranger in a Familiar Land https://lowbrowculture.com/post/a-stranger-in-a-familiar-land/ Thu, 09 Dec 2010 09:01:09 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/a-stranger-in-a-familiar-land/ <p>In the <em>Assassin&rsquo;s Creed</em> games, your character, Desmond, spends his time hooked up to a &ldquo;genetic memory reading&rdquo; machine, where he relives the memories of his ancestors. You remember <em>Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind</em>, the way Jim Carrey is forced to travel through his memories to find a safe place to hide Kate Winslet? Well, it&rsquo;s sort of like that. Except you&rsquo;re looking for something, not hiding it. And the &lsquo;memories&rsquo; all took place at least 500 years ago. At the beginning of the latest game, <em>Assassin&rsquo;s Creed: Brotherhood</em>, Desmond emerges from a memory of being at his ancestor&rsquo;s villa in the year 1500, to find himself at the same villa in 2012, trying to get in. It&rsquo;s his first time to actually visit the place in real life, and he makes a remark about &lsquo;remembering&rsquo; a secret passage. The joke being that he&rsquo;s &lsquo;remembering&rsquo; visiting a place he&rsquo;s never actually visited.</p> <p>I know exactly how he feels.</p> <p>Herself indoors was working in New York for the past couple of months. I decided it might be nice to head across for a week once she&rsquo;d finished up, so we could take a couple of days over thanksgiving to visit Washington while we were at it. I had never been to either place before (West Coast is the Best Coast). In fact, I&rsquo;ve always said that there are two places in the world I was terrified to visit. The first is Las Vegas, mainly because I&rsquo;m afraid what horrible qualities would emerge in me (am I a secret compulsive gambler? a huge fan of Cirque du Soleil? Who knows!). The other is New York. I was just afraid of being one of those dopey-faced tourists that look like walking &ldquo;Mug Me&rdquo; signs because they&rsquo;re walking around gawping at the scale of it all,. I mean, it&rsquo;s completely alien to someone who grew up in a country where <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Elysian">the tallest building</a> is only 233 feet tall.</p> <p>It&rsquo;s amazing what two months away from your wife will do to your irrational fears.</p> <p>Something that made it easy for me to get over my fear was the fact that, despite having never been there before, the whole place was so familiar to me. Between all my years playing the various <em>Grand Theft Auto</em> games (Liberty City being the game&rsquo;s equivalent of New York City), and the general immersion that comes from watching movies and TV shows set in NYC, I never really felt that disorientated. I never got that overwhelming sense of strangeness that usually comes from visiting a new city. I knew how this city worked. I spent most of my time pointing out the various bits and pieces. Hey, there&rsquo;s the Library from Ghostbusters! Hey, there&rsquo;s the <a href="http://gta.wikia.com/GetaLife_Building"><strike>Getalife</strike> Metlife Building</a>. New York City being the default setting for games and movies meant that I had learned the geography of that place by osmosis.</p> <p>Washington wasn&rsquo;t much different. Shortly after arriving, I demanded that our very generous hosts drive us 15 minutes in the wrong direction just so I could see <a href="http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&amp;source;=s_q&amp;hl;=en&amp;geocode;=&amp;q;=3607+M+Street+Nw&amp;sll;=38.905424,-77.07017&amp;sspn;=0.001799,0.003449&amp;ie;=UTF8&amp;hq;=&amp;hnear;=3607+M+St+NW,+Washington+D.C.,+District+of+Columbia,+20007%E2%89%AA=38.904793,-77.070149&amp;spn;=0.001799,0.003449&amp;z;=18&amp;layer;=c&amp;cbll;=38.904996,-77.070261&amp;panoid;=01K-teMrL-AoblC_7wiqlw&amp;cbp;=12,8.59,,0,-1.16">the Exorcist steps</a> in Georgetown. This grounded me, gave me a central location to base my understanding of the geography fromAlthough, did you know there&rsquo;s an Exxon at the bottom? This wigged me out no end. I would have expected a statue to the mighty Lee J. Cobb or something.</p> <p>The White House was the weirdest of all. We came at the building from the east side, hitting the press area first. Again, having never been there before, I was able to point out certain areas to my wife - there&rsquo;s the press area, there&rsquo;s the rose garden. How did I know this? <em>Splinter Cell: Conviction</em>, where your character sneaks through this area to get into the White House and, eventually, the West Wing.</p> <p>And speaking of the West Wing, I&rsquo;ve been watching a lot of that show recently, and that&rsquo;s given me a weirdly intimate understanding of the way the place worksEven if it&rsquo;s deliberately not a completely faithful reproduction of the layout of the office area. But it had another, stranger effect on my experience of the White House in general. Rather than seeing it as the centre of power for arguably the most powerful nation in the world, for me the White House actually felt more like a movie set, like the <a href="http://theoldhauntedhouse.com/home_09.html">Psycho house at Universal Studios</a> - a really elaborate facadeInsert your own political commentary here, you fucking wag.</p> The D&D alignment chart of Mad Men characters → https://www.reddit.com/r/madmen/comments/l2twz/old_but_still_funny_mad_men_alignment_chart/ Tue, 07 Dec 2010 13:23:36 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/the-dd-alignment-chart-of-mad-men-characters/ <p>I&rsquo;d probably join Harry Crane as &ldquo;Chaotic Neutral&rdquo;. I have no idea where my wife would be. Also, could there be a whole new alignment, just for Pete? &ldquo;Really Evil, like a Cold, Dead-Eyed Sociopath-in-Waiting&rdquo; has a certain ring to it.</p> I'm Comic Sans, Asshole https://lowbrowculture.com/quote/im-comic-sans-asshole/ Tue, 07 Dec 2010 12:28:41 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/quote/im-comic-sans-asshole/ <blockquote> Listen up. I know the shit you've been saying behind my back. You think I'm stupid. You think I'm immature. You think I'm a malformed, pathetic excuse for a font. Well think again, nerdhole, because I'm Comic Sans, and I'm the best thing to happen to typography since Johannes fucking Gutenberg.</blockquote> <p>&ndash; <a href="http://www.mcsweeneys.net/links/monologues/15comicsans.html">I&rsquo;m Comic Sans, asshole</a></p> Super Meat Boy https://lowbrowculture.com/post/super-meat-boy/ Tue, 07 Dec 2010 10:10:55 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/super-meat-boy/ <p><img src="http://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2010/12/Super-Meat-Boy-Punch-580x361.jpg" alt="Super-Meat-Boy-Punch-580x361.jpg"></p> <p>People have been calling <em>Super Meat Boy</em> <a href="http://www.metacritic.com/game/xbox-360/super-meat-boy/critic-reviews">&lsquo;one of the hardest games ever made&rsquo;</a>. <a href="http://gamestyle.com/">Over at Gamestyle</a>One of the most underrated videogame blogging sites around, Bradley Marsh described it as <a href="http://gamestyle.com/reviews/1974/super-meat-boy/">&ldquo;a game made by sadists, for masochists&rdquo;</a>.</p> <p>With all due respect to Bradley, and to everyone else who has been focusing on the difficulty of <em>Super Meat Boy</em>, you&rsquo;re wrong.</p> <p>There&rsquo;s no sadism involved. This isn&rsquo;t a game designed to punish you. It&rsquo;s not a game like <em>Trials HD</em>, where the pieces have been placed in an clever, but nearly-random order and you have to forcibly wrench a victory from the game, like taking a gun from Charlton Heston&rsquo;s cold, dead hands. <em>Super Meat Boy</em> has been designed by geniuses. I haven&rsquo;t finished it yet (I&rsquo;m still stuck in the post-Halloween glut of gaming), but every single level I have played so far has been designed within an inch of its life so that there is one completely perfect run-through that can be achieved in the minimum amount of time, usually just a few seconds. It&rsquo;s when you dawdle that the game gets difficult. In other words, if you aren&rsquo;t playing this game with the &lsquo;run&rsquo; button permanently held down, then you&rsquo;re not playing it properly.</p> <p>Finding this perfect path through the level is tricky, and for the most part, it&rsquo;s a matter of trial-and-error. But at least the game is smart enough to have almost no loading times so that when you die, you instantly restart the level. Frustration never gets a foothold. And when you finally <em>do</em> succeed and finish the level, you&rsquo;re treated to a replay, showing all of your attempts to beat the level simultaneously, a glorious jamboree of death and failure and eventual triumph.</p> <p>One thing though, no-one is wrong about how good this game is. Easily the best platform game I&rsquo;ve played in years. I can&rsquo;t recommend it enough.</p> Return of “Get Your War On” → http://nymag.com/news/features/69791/ Tue, 07 Dec 2010 03:54:08 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/return-of-get-your-war-on/ <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2010/12/7.jpg" alt="7.jpg"></p> <p>Still as <a href="http://www.mnftiu.cc/category/gywo/war81/">funny as ever</a></p> Careful Now: Droid 2 Explodes While Kid Is On Call → http://www.broadsheet.ie/2010/12/03/careful-now-droid-2-explodes-while-kid-is-on-call/ Sun, 05 Dec 2010 20:00:22 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/careful-now-droid-2-explodes/ <p>Oh shit. This is like the time when I read Cryptonomicon and developed an irrational fear of my CRT exploding in my face.</p> Dan Gillmor’s questions about the Wikileaks release → http://www.salon.com/technology/dan_gillmor/2010/11/29/wikileaks_a_few_questions Sat, 04 Dec 2010 13:11:41 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/dan-gillmors-questions-about-the-wikileaks-release/ <p>The most balanced take on the whole thing I’ve read – great questions for all the players in this game.</p> The Big Picture: Let it Snow! → http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2010/12/let_it_snow.html Sat, 04 Dec 2010 13:11:41 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/the-big-picture-let-it-snow/ <p>I try to avoid linking to The Big Picture because pretty much everything they post is link-worthy. But seriously, <a href="http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2010/12/let_it_snow.html#photo11">this photo</a> is just breathtaking.</p> Christmastime in Dublin Town https://lowbrowculture.com/video/christmastime-in-dublin-town/ Sat, 04 Dec 2010 08:59:56 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/video/christmastime-in-dublin-town/ <p>It&rsquo;s like Fairytale of New York for a new generation. What makes it even better is the collaborative effort that went into the making of it. <a href="http://thumped.com/bbs/showthread.php?82139-Christmas-FM-Christmas-Song-Contest">Here&rsquo;s the thread on Thumped</a> that started it all.</p> <p><strong>Update:</strong> After having the song stuck in my head since I posted this a few hours ago, I&rsquo;ve decided it&rsquo;s not the new Fairytale of New York. It&rsquo;s the new <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ihW56Xa3XGQ">Feliz Navidad</a>.</p> Phone Feature Request https://lowbrowculture.com/post/phone-feature-request/ Thu, 02 Dec 2010 10:43:28 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/phone-feature-request/ <p><a href="http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/11/st_thompson_wereallcoders/">Wired has a story</a> about an Android app called &lsquo;No Text While Driving&rsquo;, which is designed to <a href="http://appinventor.googlelabs.com/learn/tutorials/notext/notext.html">automatically reply to incoming texts when you&rsquo;re driving</a>. According to the inventor, the reason people text when they drive is because texting is such an immediate medium of communication, and people don&rsquo;t want to be seen as being rude by ignoring texts. An automatic text to say &ldquo;Driving. Can&rsquo;t text&rdquo; is better than no text at all. Great idea &ndash; <em>in theory</em>. The major downside that I can see is that you have to remember to launch the app before you start driving. To me, this seems like a step in the wrong direction. If you&rsquo;re the kind of person who has enough discipline to remember to launch an application before getting into the car, then you&rsquo;re also the kind of person who probably knows not to text while driving. In other words, you&rsquo;re not the audience for this application.</p> <p>Back in 2004 or so, when I was a happy little sysadmin filling my days with all sorts of nerdy things to keep myself amused, I hacked together something to make my life a little easier. Using Bluetooth, I was able to have work computer detect when my crappy Sony Ericsson phone came into range and automatically start a bunch of processes for me. Some of these were work-related, such as launching my <a href="http://www.nagios.org/">Nagios</a> dashboard and pulling up my to-do list for the day. Others were just for show. Like automatically playing &lsquo;Back in Black&rsquo; by AC/DC, essentially giving myself a soundtrack as I walked into the officeThis didn&rsquo;t last very long - awesome as it is to have your own soundtrack, it&rsquo;s also <em>incredibly annoying</em> for people working around you. This seemed like the kind of thing we&rsquo;d be seeing of a lot more, the idea of using your phone as a sort of electronic passport to the computers and gadgets around us.</p> <p>For example, my car has Bluetooth and is paired with my phone. So wouldn&rsquo;t it be great if I could hook it into &lsquo;No Text While Driving&rsquo; and automatically activate it for me? But wait a second, Bluetooth is, like, sooooooooo 20th century. Let&rsquo;s go all 2010 on this: GPS. What I&rsquo;d really love is complete location awareness using my phone&rsquo;s built-in GPS. By this, I mean being able to define certain GPS coordinates as &lsquo;home&rsquo;. When the phone realises it&rsquo;s within this area, it automatically switches on wifi, turns off 3G etc. Likewise, there could be a &lsquo;work&rsquo; location, where it automatically switches to &lsquo;silent&rsquo; and &lsquo;vibrate&rsquo;.</p> <p>I think this would be terrific. Imagine the possibilities! We could mark cinemas as sections where our phones are automatically switched to silent! Our phones could automatically pull up our shopping lists!OmniFocus sort of does this - you can define a location as significant and have it pull up a particular to-do context for that location. So a shop would pull up your &ldquo;errands&rdquo; context. It&rsquo;s genius Then again, when we can&rsquo;t even be bothered to make the effort to switch our phones manually, then we&rsquo;re just one step closer to the future predicted in <em>Wall-E</em>.</p> Beyond PB&J: 15 Sandwiches From Around the World → http://blogs.nationalgeographic.com/blogs/intelligenttravel/2010/11/beyond-pbjs-15-sandwiches-arou.html Wed, 01 Dec 2010 13:26:20 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/beyond-pb-j-15-sandwiches-from-around-the-world/ <p>All great, except for the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francesinha">francesinha</a> which, as sandwiches go, is total bullshit.</p> The Sound and Music of “The Social Network” Panel → http://vimeo.com/16648906 Wed, 01 Dec 2010 13:26:20 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/the-sound-and-music-of-the-social-network-panel/ <p>I am scarily obsessed with this soundtrack.</p> Beyond PB&J: 15 Sandwiches From Around the World → https://www.nationalgeographic.com/travel/article/beyond_pbjs_15_sandwiches_arou Wed, 01 Dec 2010 10:14:53 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/beyond-pbj-15-sandwiches-from-around-the-world/ <p>All great, except for the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francesinha">francesinha</a> which, as sandwiches go, is total bullshit.</p> Tomahawk - God Hates a Coward https://lowbrowculture.com/video/tomahawk-god-hates-a-coward/ Mon, 22 Nov 2010 13:05:44 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/video/tomahawk-god-hates-a-coward/ Medal of Honour https://lowbrowculture.com/post/medal-of-honour/ Sat, 20 Nov 2010 19:23:54 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/medal-of-honour/ <p>Medal of Honour reminds of the joke at the start of Annie Hall. You know, the one about the two women eating dinner at a resort, where one turns to the other and says &ldquo;Boy, the food here is really terrible&rdquo; and the other says &ldquo;Yeah, I know, and such small portions&rdquo;. <em>Medal of Honour</em> &ndash; EA&rsquo;s entry into the &lsquo;modern warfare&rsquo; arena &ndash; is like five hours of absolutely nothing. A &rsquo;nothing&rsquo; with a multi-million dollar budget, so it&rsquo;s a really flashy-looking nothing. Still, it&rsquo;s hard not to come out of it underwhelmed.</p> <p>Actually, that&rsquo;s not entirely fair. There is one stand-out, genuinely memorable moment in the short single-player campaign. At one point, you find yourself completely overwhelmed by enemy forces who swarm around you, gradually whittling down your supplies of ammunition. No help is coming and there doesn&rsquo;t seem to be any end to the number of enemies, so your entire squad resigns itself to the fact that this is the end. It&rsquo;s sort of like the incinerator scene in <em>Toy Story 3</em>. Game over, man. It&rsquo;s a pretty powerful sequence and one which is executed perfectlyCompared, say, to the epilogue of <em>Halo: Reach</em>, which is mechanically inconsistent with the rest of the game. You spend the first 99% of the game playing a super-powered super-soldier with recharging shields that enables him to be a sort of bullet shield. Suddenly, your super-powered super-soldier breaks down if he stubs his toe. I got that shit over and done iwth soon as I could by just throwing a grenade at my feet..</p> <p>Unfortunately, the rest of the game is just a string of disappointments and missed opportunities. You jump from character to character fighting the brain-dead enemies and the brain-dead game engine which they inhabit. This is 2010. We are 10% of the way through the twenty-first century and we still have enemies that do nothing but follow their scripted path, dutifully duck in and out of cover the same way regardless of what is going on around them. Bad enough, but&hellip; do you guys know what a &lsquo;monster closet&rsquo; is? They&rsquo;re fairly common in videogames, the places where enemies appear from until the player reaches a certain point or performs a certain actionThey get their name from the fact that you&rsquo;ll see thousands enemies come pouring out of a particular door, you get there and it&rsquo;s barely bigger than a cupboard. Hence &lsquo;monster closet&rsquo;. The more you know.. For example, in the scene I just described, there were probably a few of these &lsquo;monster closets&rsquo; hidden in the rocks, where the player couldn&rsquo;t see the enemies spawning from, and in this section, the monster closets worked fine. If only the rest of the game had been so smooth. On more than one occasion in <em>Medal of Honour</em>, I apparently went off on a path that the game hadn&rsquo;t anticipated, so I was greeted with the sight of watching enemies spawning out of thin air in front of me. Which would have been an amusing and completely forgivable glitch except because I hadn&rsquo;t gone the direction that would otherwise &rsquo;turn off&rsquo; the monster closet, the magically-appearing enemies never stopped coming. This didn&rsquo;t stop the game auto-saving <em>right on top of their spawn point</em>, so that when I died, I was instantly surrounded by eight enemies firing directly at me whenever I restarted.</p> <p>Frustrating bugs in a videogame are one thing, and it&rsquo;s easy to pick on them and write a blog post like this that says &ldquo;WAH. This bug that hardly half the players will run into has <em>completely ruined the game for me</em>&rdquo;. I mean, <em>Mass Effect</em> had some of the worst bugs of any game I&rsquo;ve played, but I loved that game in spite of themtowards the end, almost because of them - ah, the geometry stretching bug where something went screwy in the maths and my character&rsquo;s face slowly started to explode over the course of a five-minute cut-scene. This image will forever haunt my nightmares.. Why can&rsquo;t I give <em>Medal of Honour</em> the same freedom?</p> <p>Three words: <em>Call of Duty</em>.</p> <p><em>Medal of Honour</em> has virtually no identity of its own. Almost every moment in the game is a direct copy of something that happened in one of the two <em>Call of Duty: Modern Warfares</em>Which makes me wonder how you can copy so furiously from two 10+ hour games and still only end up with a 5-hour campaign. A vehicle level? Check. A sniper level? Check. A level where you&rsquo;re sneaking around a snowy mountain while guards search for you? Check. If the developers are trying to win players away from the <em>Call of Duty</em> camp, it&rsquo;s probably not a good idea to present them with third-rate knockoffs of the game you&rsquo;re so slavishly trying to imitate. It&rsquo;s like an artist trying to show his talent by giving us a paint-by-numbers version of the Mona Lisa. It just doesn&rsquo;t work. Unless you&rsquo;re deliberately trying to present some post-modern commentary on the nature of art. I&rsquo;m fairly sure that&rsquo;s not what the developers of <em>Medal of Honour</em> were trying to do. As a player, I just find it frustrating to play a game that was aiming so low and so clearly could have been much better, had the developers been given a little more time. But, thanks to <em>Call of Duty</em>, that&rsquo;s one thing they didn&rsquo;t have. In essence, <em>Medal of Honour</em>&rsquo;s release date was set not by how complete or how polished it was, but by the release of <em>Call of Duty: Black Ops</em>. EA <em>had</em> to release the game before then. And in a way, they were probably right. See how quickly <em>Medal of Honour</em> has been dropped from the conversation since <em>Call of Duty: Black Ops</em> came out.</p> <p>I&rsquo;ve no doubt that the game has done enough business to warrant a sequel, and maybe then we&rsquo;ll see some real innovation and it will be something actually worth talking about. Until then, we&rsquo;re left with a piss-poor jump-start of a franchise that has no idea who it&rsquo;s trying to appeal to.</p> Bunga Bunga, Presidente → http://www.theawl.com/2010/11/silvio-berlusconi-themed-porn-is-coming?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TheAwl+%28The+Awl%29 Sat, 20 Nov 2010 05:42:58 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/bunga-bunga-presidente/ <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2010/11/bunga-bunga-presidente-film-porno-berlusconi-escort-339x480.jpg" alt="Bunga Bunga Presidente"></p> <p>I love when porn gets topical (see also: <a href="%5Bhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who%27s_Nailin%27_Paylin%3F%5D(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who%27s_Nailin%27_Paylin%3F)">Who&rsquo;s Nailin&rsquo; Palin?</a>), but seriously, did the makers of this <a href="%5Bhttp://austriantimes.at/news/Around_the_World/2010-11-19/28549/Berlusconi_:_Porn_Bunga_Bunga_Movie_Shame%5D(http://austriantimes.at/news/Around_the_World/2010-11-19/28549/Berlusconi_:_Porn_Bunga_Bunga_Movie_Shame)">Berlusconi-themed porn</a> really think about what they were associating themselves with? Nothing is guaranteed to kill a boner quite like the image of a creepy, demented 74-year old midget throwing a fuck into a bored-looking prostitute.</p> <p>If nothing else, think of his <em>balls</em>. Ugh. That&rsquo;s my next 10 boners completely ruined.</p> Just the facts, ma'am https://lowbrowculture.com/post/just-the-facts-maam/ Fri, 19 Nov 2010 10:06:46 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/just-the-facts-maam/ <p>Use <a href="https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/2108/">Stylish</a>?</p> <p>Read <a href="http://www.independent.ie/">The Irish Independent</a>?</p> <p>Hate that site&rsquo;s article page design?</p> <p>Me too. So I wrote a simple (11 lines of actual CSS) user style for the article page which, to my eyes anyway, improves the experience of using that site. I changed the font family and size, changed the line height, italicised the first line of the article to make it more of a lede. Oh, and I also yanked the google adverts. I guess this is slightly rude, since, y&rsquo;know &ndash; global economic crisis and all, they probably need the advertising cash &ndash; but seriously, there&rsquo;s more advertising space than article space. That&rsquo;s just bullshit.</p> <p>I didn&rsquo;t touch any of the main landing pages because I hardly ever go to the site directly, I just go to the articles from my RSS reader.</p> <p>Before:</p> <p><img src="http://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2010/11/Night-lights-could-cause-depression-Latest-News-Health-Independent.ie_1290160091907.png" alt="Independent - Before"></p> <p>After:</p> <p><img src="http://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2010/11/Night-lights-could-cause-depression-Latest-News-Health-Independent.ie_1290160112944.png" alt="Independent - After"></p> <p>You can <a href="http://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2010/11/irish-independent.css">grab the userstyle here</a>.</p> Kentucky Fried Chicken's Corporate Rap → http://www.gloriousnoise.com/articles/2010/kentucky_fried_chillin.php Thu, 18 Nov 2010 17:41:26 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/kentucky-fried-chickens-corporate-rap/ <p>Gloriousnoise has come across a copy of Kentucky Fried Chicken&rsquo;s amazing Corporate Rap from 1987. It&rsquo;s great, but it&rsquo;s no <a href="http://regmedia.co.uk/2005/11/28/kpmg.mp3">KPMG Corporate Anthem</a>.</p> <p>Also, as an aside: I realise this is entirely a Pavlovian thing, but does the slab font Kentucky Fried Chicken used in the 1980s feel nice and comforting to anyone else? No? Just me? I guess that explains a lot.</p> <p>Man, I&rsquo;m hungry now.</p> Wherein I just don't get Girl Talk https://lowbrowculture.com/post/1607345375/ Thu, 18 Nov 2010 05:51:54 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/1607345375/ <p>I agree with <a href="%5Bhttp://www.theawl.com/2010/11/we-are-more-excited-about-girl-talk-on-everything-than-the-beatles-on-itunes%5D(http://www.theawl.com/2010/11/we-are-more-excited-about-girl-talk-on-everything-than-the-beatles-on-itunes)">almost everything Mat Honan says in this article</a> on the new Girl Talk album. The way the twitterverse went nuts for the album all at the same time is almost unprecedented now, in our time-shifted universe, where we all watch the <em>Lost</em> finale at different times.</p> <blockquote> <p>Even live media events are fractured, splintered through the lens of FoxNews or MSNBC or Autotune the News. It takes something huge to crash through the filters and clutter of modern life to get us to all experience the same thing simultaneously.</p> </blockquote> <blockquote> </blockquote> <blockquote> <p>The new Girl Talk, released on Monday, did that.</p> </blockquote> <p>Except one thing. I just don&rsquo;t &lsquo;get&rsquo; Girl TalkDoes this mean I have to hand in my oversized hipster glasses now?.</p> <p>Like everyone else on the internet, I downloaded the new album to give it a whirl. I put it on my iPod and listened to it when I went for a run the other day. Halfway through the third song, I&rsquo;d had enough. I deleted it from the iPod when I got home.</p> <p>My problem is that in any given Girl Talk track, there are flashes of brilliance that then gets lost under a deluge of novelty. &ldquo;Oh No&rdquo;, the opening track on <em>All Day</em> is the perfect example of this. It starts off well. I mean… shit, Black Sabbath, 2pac, Jay-Z and Ludacris all working in perfect harmony? Then, before we have a chance to really enjoy this mix and for no apparent reason, it segues abruptly into Jane&rsquo;s Addiction and Cali Swag District. And since we&rsquo;ve already gone down an evolutionary dead end in this musical menagerie, why not throw in a bit of &ldquo;Swagga Like Us&rdquo;. It&rsquo;s like putting makeup on this dead horse you&rsquo;re flogging.</p> <p>So yeah, I think Mat Honan is right about the &rsquo;event&rsquo; nature of the new Girl Talk album, and I can admire that. But I also think it says a lot that the twitter hash-tag people are using is <a href="%5Bhttp://twitter.com/#search?q=%23favoritegirltalkspots%5D(http://twitter.com/#search?q=%23favoritegirltalkspots)">#favoritegirltalk<strong>spots</strong></a> and not <a href="%5Bhttp://twitter.com/#search?q=%23favoritegirltalktracks%5D(http://twitter.com/#search?q=%23favoritegirltalktracks)">#favoritegirltalk<strong>tracks</strong></a>.</p> Wherein I just don't get Girl Talk https://lowbrowculture.com/post/wherein-i-just-dont-get-girl-talk/ Thu, 18 Nov 2010 05:51:54 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/wherein-i-just-dont-get-girl-talk/ <p>I agree with <a href="http://www.theawl.com/2010/11/we-are-more-excited-about-girl-talk-on-everything-than-the-beatles-on-itunes">almost everything Mat Honan says in this article</a> on the new Girl Talk album. The way the twitterverse went nuts for the album all at the same time is almost unprecedented now, in our time-shifted universe, where we all watch the <em>Lost</em> finale at different times.</p> <blockquote> <p>Even live media events are fractured, splintered through the lens of FoxNews or MSNBC or Autotune the News. It takes something huge to crash through the filters and clutter of modern life to get us to all experience the same thing simultaneously.</p> <p>The new Girl Talk, released on Monday, did that.</p> </blockquote> <p>Except one thing. I just don&rsquo;t &lsquo;get&rsquo; Girl TalkDoes this mean I have to hand in my oversized hipster glasses now?.</p> <p>Like everyone else on the internet, I downloaded the new album to give it a whirl. I put it on my iPod and listened to it when I went for a run the other day. Halfway through the third song, I&rsquo;d had enough. I deleted it from the iPod when I got home.</p> <p>My problem is that in any given Girl Talk track, there are flashes of brilliance that then gets lost under a deluge of novelty. &ldquo;Oh No&rdquo;, the opening track on <em>All Day</em> is the perfect example of this. It starts off well. I mean&hellip; shit, Black Sabbath, 2pac, Jay-Z and Ludacris all working in perfect harmony? Then, before we have a chance to really enjoy this mix and for no apparent reason, it segues abruptly into Jane&rsquo;s Addiction and Cali Swag District. And since we&rsquo;ve already gone down an evolutionary dead end in this musical menagerie, why not throw in a bit of &ldquo;Swagga Like Us&rdquo;. It&rsquo;s like putting makeup on this dead horse you&rsquo;re flogging.</p> <p>So yeah, I think Mat Honan is right about the &rsquo;event&rsquo; nature of the new Girl Talk album, and I can admire that. But I also think it says a lot that the twitter hash-tag people are using is <a href="http://twitter.com/#search?q=%23favoritegirltalkspots">#favoritegirltalk<strong>spots</strong></a> and not <a href="http://twitter.com/#search?q=%23favoritegirltalktracks">#favoritegirltalk<strong>tracks</strong></a>.</p> Airport Security https://lowbrowculture.com/post/1589828399/ Tue, 16 Nov 2010 09:00:45 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/1589828399/ <p>John Gruber points to an article about the &ldquo;<a href="%5Bhttp://www.thestar.com/news/world/article/744199---israelification-high-security-little-bother#%5D(http://www.thestar.com/news/world/article/744199---israelification-high-security-little-bother#)">&lsquo;Israelification&rsquo; of Airports</a>&rdquo;, talking about how Tel Aviv airport managed to increase its security without turning it into a major inconvenience for the 99.9999% of us who are flying and who aren&rsquo;t terrorists.</p> <p>Here&rsquo;s something that stood out for me:</p> <blockquote> <p>The first layer of actual security that greets travellers at Tel Aviv&rsquo;s Ben Gurion International Airport is a roadside check. All drivers are stopped and asked two questions: How are you? Where are you coming from?</p> </blockquote> <blockquote> </blockquote> <blockquote> <p>&ldquo;Two benign questions. The questions aren&rsquo;t important. The way people act when they answer them is,&rdquo; Sela said.</p> </blockquote> <blockquote> </blockquote> <blockquote> <p>…</p> </blockquote> <blockquote> </blockquote> <blockquote> <p>&ldquo;This is to see that you don&rsquo;t have heavy metals on you or something that looks suspicious,&rdquo; said Sela.</p> </blockquote> <blockquote> </blockquote> <blockquote> <p>You are now in the terminal. As you approach your airline check-in desk, a trained interviewer takes your passport and ticket. They ask a series of questions: Who packed your luggage? Has it left your side?</p> </blockquote> <blockquote> </blockquote> <blockquote> <p>&ldquo;The whole time, they are looking into your eyes — which is very embarrassing. But this is one of the ways they figure out if you are suspicious or not. It takes 20, 25 seconds,&rdquo;</p> </blockquote> <blockquote> </blockquote> <blockquote> <p>First, it&rsquo;s fast — there&rsquo;s almost no line. That&rsquo;s because they&rsquo;re not looking for liquids, they&rsquo;re not looking at your shoes. They&rsquo;re not looking for everything they look for in North America. They just look at you,&quot; said Sela. &ldquo;Even today with the heightened security in North America, they will check your items to death. But they will never look at you, at how you behave. They will never look into your eyes … and that&rsquo;s how you figure out the bad guys from the good guys.&rdquo;</p> </blockquote> <p>What I find most interesting is that while the security checkpoint to get into the gates at Dublin airport has gotten more convoluted &ndash; hey, buy a little bag to put your liquids in; take your shoes off; take your belt off; take your laptop out of your bag; bend over and cough please &ndash; the actual physical interaction with people before then has been reduced. Traveling with Aer Lingus or Ryanair, the question &ldquo;Who packed your luggage&rdquo; has been reduced down to a check-box on a computer screen. It&rsquo;s a ridiculous carry-over from when we used to be checked in by people instead of computers. Isn&rsquo;t the point of the question to have a real person gauge your response?</p> Fade Street → https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1gOHCrmWlwU Fri, 12 Nov 2010 09:37:23 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/fade-street/ <p>Jesus, the country is fucked.</p> <p>It&rsquo;s a far cry from <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h3cwdKPWDrQ">Glenroe</a>, I&rsquo;ll tell you that much.</p> A Better Use for Free Cheese https://lowbrowculture.com/post/a-better-use-for-free-cheese/ Sat, 06 Nov 2010 09:22:27 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/a-better-use-for-free-cheese/ <p>If you&rsquo;re wondering why your twitter/facebook feed has been exploding with cheese jokes, it&rsquo;s because the Irish economy is so completely boned and the Irish government so completely bone-headed that they&rsquo;ve decided that the best way to ease the burden is to <a href="%5Bhttp://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/nov/05/ireland-recession-let-them-eat-cheese%5D(http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/nov/05/ireland-recession-let-them-eat-cheese)">distribute free cheese to the poor</a>I&rsquo;ve been saying for a while now about how much the economic and political background of Ireland in 2010 resembles the economic and political background of France in 1789, and I&rsquo;ve been wondering if we aren&rsquo;t going to see a similar bloody, violent revolution. But let&rsquo;s just get this straight, once and for all: <strong><a href="%5Bhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Let_them_eat_cake%5D(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Let_them_eat_cake)">Marie Antoinette never said &ldquo;let them eat cake&rdquo;</a></strong>. Clear?.</p> <p>53 tonnes of cheddar, to be exact.</p> <p>This is a dreadful, badly thought-out plan. Worse, it&rsquo;s just so unimaginative. The poor people in Ireland don&rsquo;t want cheddar, they want jobs.</p> <p>Know who wants cheddar? Expats.</p> <p>Every time I go back to Dublin, someone in Rome asks me to bring back some cheddar. And tea. Because it&rsquo;s impossible to get any kind of cheddar in this city. It&rsquo;s like unicorn tears. And on those strange occasions when it can be found, it&rsquo;s not strange to be charged more than €25 per kilo. And people pay it, because <em>it&rsquo;s cheddar</em>. Even if you don&rsquo;t eat it yourself, you can use it to barter favours from other people, like prison currency.</p> <p>So, Irish government, here&rsquo;s what I&rsquo;m suggesting. Take the 53 tonnes of cheddar, divide it up and ship it out to your embassies around the world. Charge, say, €20 for a kilo. This will probably rake in about a million or so - a small chunk out of the €6 billion that needs to be saved in the next budget, but is now really a time to be turning your nose up to an easy million bucks?</p> <p>Also, I&rsquo;ll get some cheddar. It&rsquo;s a win-win situation.</p> Making of the Field Notes notebooks → http://coudal.com/wings/ Thu, 04 Nov 2010 00:42:08 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/making-of-the-field-notes-notebooks/ <p>Cute video, but it always weirds me out the way that internet nerds romanticise/fetishise manual labour. My first job was in a printing company, and the monotony of it almost drove me insane. For example, that girl sending the bundles of notebooks through the plastic wrapper is a nice shot, but for weeks on end, she probably goes into work and does nothing <strong>but</strong> that one action. Keep that in mind when you&rsquo;re watching the video.</p> Ghostwatch → http://video.google.co.uk/videoplay?docid=6073447872198040913 Mon, 01 Nov 2010 01:18:47 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/ghostwatch/ <p>Whatever you’re doing, stop it and watch this now. Ghostwatch was the scariest TV special I’ve ever seen and it still scares the fuck out of me today.</p> Nowhere Boy https://lowbrowculture.com/post/1441250349/ Sat, 30 Oct 2010 21:30:38 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/1441250349/ <p><em>Nowhere Boy</em> is like a case-study in how <em>not</em> to make a biopic.</p> <p>Granted, it&rsquo;s a tough genre to pull off well. Rather than just presenting a straight documentary, with a litany of facts, you&rsquo;ve decided to dramatise events, to make things more entertaining. Biopics are documentaries with jazz-hands. Except there&rsquo;s a huge temptation to allow your film to become little more than a series of narrative checkboxes and what Mark KermodeVia <a href="%5Bhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wK4JQT1Vwv4%5D(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wK4JQT1Vwv4)">Jon Ronson</a> calls &ldquo;chubby? Hmm…&rdquo; moments. These are the sequences where the filmmakers use the viewers&rsquo; knowledge of the subject to sprinkle delightful moments of irony over a scene. It gets its name from a mis-remembered scene in <em>The Karen Carpenter Story</em> where Karen reads a review of one of their singles which says &ldquo;and the chubby drummer kept time&rdquo;, to which she says &ldquo;chubby? Hmm…&rdquo;</p> <p>If you were to take the John Lennon element from <em>Nowhere Boy</em>, what would you be left with? A trite and badly-told <em>Dennis the Menace</em> story with some terrific actors doing their best with some dreadful material. Essentially, it&rsquo;s &ldquo;rebellious child with troubled family background escapes through music&rdquo;, a story you&rsquo;ve seen a thousand times already. Try pitching that story without John Lennon&rsquo;s name attached and see how far you get.</p> <p>The only thing <em>Nowhere Boy</em> has going for it is the John Lennon aspect. The first meeting of John and Paul! The first gig by the Quarrymen! And so on. All of which feel like 50-year old, heavily embellished anecdotes filtered through a Beatles fan&rsquo;s fever-dream. At times, it feels like director Sam Taylor-Wood is so keen to tick these narrative checkboxes that he completely ignores their effect on the larger story. Worse still, the best things about the movie &ndash; Ann-Marie Duff and Kirstin Scott-Thomas&rsquo;s heavyweight performances &ndash; completely put the rest of the cast to shame. Aaron Johnson really does his best in the lead role, but next to these two, he just comes across as a third-rate Lennon impersonator.</p> <p>Skip this movie and just check out the <em>Beatles Anthology</em> instead.</p> Halloween! https://lowbrowculture.com/post/1440533824/ Sat, 30 Oct 2010 18:46:08 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/1440533824/ <p>Halloween is my favourite time of year. What&rsquo;s not to love?</p> <p>I mean, you get to bust out the tog 90 duvets and lounge around on the couch watching scary movies all night. Plus, I love the dressing up.</p> <p>Okay, I&rsquo;m probably getting a bit old for it now, but I think it&rsquo;s great that there&rsquo;s one day a year where grown ups can act like idiots and play dress-up. A couple of years ago, I came up with one of my better Halloween costumes: a mad scientist. If you know me, you&rsquo;ll know that half-assedness is my forté and I tend to leave most things unfinished. Not with this costume; I put a lot of effort into it and <em>nailed</em> it. I dyed my hair snow white, got a giant white lab-coat, some huge black rubber gloves, a massive pair of welding goggles. Then to top it all off, I spent the whole night drinking blue WKD from an Erlenmeyer flask. I mean, have you any idea just how god-awful blue WKD tastes? I&rsquo;m not sure what Smurf piss tastes like, but I&rsquo;d bet it tastes a thousand times better than blue WKD.</p> <p>This is how far I&rsquo;ll go. I looooooove halloween.</p> <p>On the other hand, I hate the sexification of Halloween. I hate this bullshit of girls dressing up in a red bikini, putting on a pair of plastic horns and then - bam - that&rsquo;s their costume. A &lsquo;sexy&rsquo; devil. Or a &lsquo;sexy&rsquo; angel. Or a &lsquo;sexy&rsquo; nurse.</p> <p>Don&rsquo;t get me wrong, I don&rsquo;t hate it because I&rsquo;m against half-naked women. NOT NEARLY AS MUCH AS I&rsquo;D LIKE - AMIRITE?! HIGH FIVE! I just object to the sheer laziness of it. I can&rsquo;t believe I have to say this, but having tits doesn&rsquo;t give you a get out of jail free card when it comes to putting a bit of effort into a costume. Tits aren&rsquo;t like a note from home saying you&rsquo;re excused from P.E.</p> <p>What I&rsquo;m saying is: <strong>Put a bit of fucking effort in, ladies</strong></p> <p>Now, think of all the things that a girl could take from <em>Star Wars</em> and make &lsquo;sexy&rsquo;. It&rsquo;s a real short list, right? Slave Leia, obviously - I don&rsquo;t know a single guy who that doesn&rsquo;t work for, on some level. There&rsquo;s also Oola, Jabba&rsquo;s dancer from <em>Return of the Jedi</em>. Oh, and I guess Padma from the prequels could work too, at a push. But after that, it&rsquo;s a real sharp drop-off. After this, we&rsquo;re talking Aunt Beru and <a href="%5Bhttp://starsmedia.ign.com/stars/image/article/822/822883/yaddle_1190756678.jpg%5D(http://starsmedia.ign.com/stars/image/article/822/822883/yaddle_1190756678.jpg)">Yaddle</a>and if the idea of <a href="%5Bhttp://farm4.static.flickr.com/3099/2755505218_43516c8990.jpg?__SQUARESPACE_CACHEVERSION=1261446208673%5D(http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3099/2755505218_43516c8990.jpg?__SQUARESPACE_CACHEVERSION=1261446208673)">Yaddle Milk</a> doesn&rsquo;t make you sick to your stomach, you&rsquo;ve got issues.</p> <p>Know what I didn&rsquo;t put on this list? That mangled-looking dude from the cantina who&rsquo;s all &ldquo;MY FRIEND DOESN&rsquo;T LIKE YOU… I DON&rsquo;T LIKE YOU EITHER&rdquo;. Know why I didn&rsquo;t put him on here? Because he&rsquo;s a mangled-looking dude. Know who else isn&rsquo;t on this list? Chewbacca. Know why? <strong>Because he&rsquo;s Chewbacca, for fuck&rsquo;s sake</strong>.</p> <p>Still, that hasn&rsquo;t stopped the makers of the &ldquo;<a href="%5Bhttp://www.geekologie.com/2010/10/of_course_there_is_sexy_chewba.php%5D(http://www.geekologie.com/2010/10/of_course_there_is_sexy_chewba.php)">sexy Chewbacca costume</a>&rdquo;, which is my new limit for trying to make something sexy that clearly isn&rsquo;t. I mean, who are you trying to score with a costume like this? Furries? Inuits?</p> <p>Try harder, girls.</p> Thrush https://lowbrowculture.com/video/thrush/ Sun, 24 Oct 2010 17:18:39 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/video/thrush/ <p><a href="http://vimeo.com/4131811">Thrush</a> from <a href="http://vimeo.com/user1580241">Gabriel Bisset-Smith</a> on <a href="http://vimeo.com">Vimeo</a>.</p> myFry for iPhone → https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/the-myfry Wed, 20 Oct 2010 22:18:43 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/myfry-for-iphone/ <p>Trust Stephen Fry to be behind the wheel of one of the first mainstream hypertext books where the form is just as interesting as the content.</p> Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together. Mass hysteria! → http://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2010/10/murrayscream.jpg Tue, 19 Oct 2010 09:51:21 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/human-sacrifice-dogs-and-cats-living-together-mass-hysteria/ <p>Bill Murray at the Spike TV Scream awards. &ldquo;<a href="%5Bhttp://www.accesshollywood.com/great-scott-huge-stars-show-up-for-spike-tvs-fanboy-fright-fest-scream-2010_article_38435%5D(http://www.accesshollywood.com/great-scott-huge-stars-show-up-for-spike-tvs-fanboy-fright-fest-scream-2010_article_38435)">It doesn&rsquo;t mean anything. It&rsquo;s the only thing I had that was clean</a>&rdquo;.</p> Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together. Mass hysteria! https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/venkman/ Tue, 19 Oct 2010 09:51:21 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/venkman/ <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2010/10/murrayscream.jpg" alt="Bill Murray"></p> <p>Bill Murray at the Spike TV Scream awards. &ldquo;<a href="http://www.accesshollywood.com/great-scott-huge-stars-show-up-for-spike-tvs-fanboy-fright-fest-scream-2010_article_38435">It doesn&rsquo;t mean anything. It&rsquo;s the only thing I had that was clean</a>&rdquo;.</p> Don Draper is Dead https://lowbrowculture.com/post/1350348229/ Tue, 19 Oct 2010 08:52:44 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/1350348229/ <p><img src="http://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2010/10/dead_draper.gif" alt=""></p> <p>You know what, <a href="%5Bhttp://twitter.com/#!/DamonLindelof/status/27761035894%5D(http://twitter.com/#!/DamonLindelof/status/27761035894)">Damon Lindelof</a>, co-creator of <em>Lost</em>? I think you&rsquo;re right.</p> <p>Or, at least, half-right. Here&rsquo;s my theory of what the final episode of <em>Mad Men</em> will be:</p> <p>A fifty-something year old guy will wake up in a hospital, having fallen into a coma in 2007. A doctor will come in and say &ldquo;Oh, Mr. Draper, you&rsquo;re awake!&rdquo; Except it&rsquo;s not Don Draper.</p> <p>It&rsquo;s Bobby.</p> <p>Everything we&rsquo;ve just seen has been a coma-induced memory/fantasy.</p> <p>Seriously, next time you sit down to watch some <em>Mad Men</em> and Bobby comes on screen, pay close attention to him. He&rsquo;s either a dreadful actor or the the best actor on the show, because once you&rsquo;re thinking the entire show is taking place in his middle-aged comatose brain, that kid is even creepier than Glen. And that kid is pretty fucking creepy.</p> <p>Of coure, maybe all this is just me trying to convince myself it&rsquo;s okay to be watching (and <em>enjoying</em>) a soap opera.</p> Jonathan Franzen glasses thief speaks → https://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/article/gq-books-jonathan-franzen-glasses-thief-interview Mon, 11 Oct 2010 05:54:25 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/jonathan-franzen-glasses-thief-speaks/ <p>In short, a drunken impulsive prank. Favourite line: &ldquo;To bide me some time, I remember shouting as I snatched the glasses off the bewildered man&rsquo;s face that I was with Channel 4 doing a comedy stunt. Looking back, I&rsquo;m not exactly sure what that meant or why I said it.&rdquo;</p> Jon Ronson meets the Insane Clown Posse → https://www.theguardian.com/music/2010/oct/09/insane-clown-posse-christians-god Sat, 09 Oct 2010 11:30:12 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/jon-ronson-meets-the-insane-clown-posse/ <blockquote> <p>&lsquo;&ldquo;Well,&rdquo; Violent J says, &ldquo;science is… we don&rsquo;t really… that&rsquo;s like…&rdquo; He pauses. Then he waves his hands as if to say, &ldquo;OK, an analogy&rdquo;: &ldquo;If you&rsquo;re trying to fuck a girl, but her mom&rsquo;s home, fuck her mom! You understand? You want to fuck the girl, but her mom&rsquo;s home? <em>Fuck the mom</em>. See?&rdquo;&rsquo;</p> </blockquote> Alan W. Pollack's "Notes on..." series → https://www.icce.rug.nl/~soundscapes/DATABASES/AWP/awp-notes_on.shtml Fri, 08 Oct 2010 00:12:57 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/alan-w-pollacks-notes-on-series/ <p>Alan W. Pollack&rsquo;s exhaustive analysis of the music of The Beatles. He wrote these over the course of 11 years, starting in 1989, in weekly posts to the rec.music.beatles usenet group. For example, in his &lsquo;<a href="http://www.icce.rug.nl/~soundscapes/DATABASES/AWP/hj.shtml">Notes on &ldquo;Hey Jude&rdquo;</a>&rsquo;, he says &ldquo;The bridge features a Bach-like walking bassline which, by the way, is a key source of the perceived contrast between the bridge section and its surrounding verses; the bassline of the verse, after all, simply follows the roots of the chord changes.&rdquo; Fascinating and edifying. Bonus.</p> Horrorthon 2010 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/horrorthon-2010/ Tue, 05 Oct 2010 20:11:31 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/horrorthon-2010/ <p>We&rsquo;re five days into October and I haven&rsquo;t watched a single fucking horror movie. Which makes me wish I was back in Ireland because I could set all that right over the course of a weekend, because it&rsquo;s time for <a href="http://www.irishfilm.ie/horrorthon2010/">Horrorthon 2010</a>Of course, I could set that right over the course of a weekend myself, but watching 29 horror films in five days <em>on your own</em> is pretty tough going.. Here&rsquo;s this year&rsquo;s programme and some useful links:</p> <h3 id="thursday-october-21st">Thursday October 21st</h3> <p>20.45 <em>Paranormal Activity 2</em> <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1536044/">imdb</a> <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=07XbSk7Rjt4">trailer</a></p> <p>22.45 <em>The Pack (La Meute)</em> <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1336601/">imdb</a> <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ub9-4Q438Ks">trailer</a></p> <h3 id="friday-october-22nd">Friday October 22nd</h3> <p>14.00 <em>Carrie</em> <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0074285/">imdb</a> <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJe0iVo8y3A">trailer</a></p> <p>15.50 <em>The Night of the Hunter</em> <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0048424/">imdb</a> <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e5AKK_om1VU">trailer</a></p> <p>17.30 <em>Shadow</em> <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1425253/">imdb</a> <a href="http://www.shadowfilm.net/">trailer</a></p> <p>19.00 <em>Island of Death</em> <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0188527/">imdb</a> <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VFlQfmfVSxs">video review</a></p> <p>21.25 <em>Primal</em> <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1438534/">imdb</a> <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oGWNQb1Wyv8">trailer</a></p> <p>23.00 <em>The Apple</em> <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0080380/">imdb</a> <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0BY9cvgrP1c">trailer</a></p> <p>00.30 <em>Finale</em> <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1326218/">imdb</a> <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mi27yvNjd5k">trailer</a></p> <h3 id="saturday-october-23rd">Saturday October 23rd</h3> <p>13.00 <em>The Amityville Horror</em> <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0078767/">imdb</a> <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9fSqS0MrOZ0">trailer</a></p> <p>15.10 <em>Altitude</em> <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1407049/">imdb</a> <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vA9wtWH8Yvg">trailer</a></p> <p>16.50 <em>Phenomena</em> <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0087909/">imdb</a> <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Mk6EjlATp4">trailer</a></p> <p>19.20 <em>Spiderhole</em> <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1496884/">imdb</a> <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eEiO6L1TxaE">trailer</a></p> <p>21.00 <em>I Spit on Your Grave</em> <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1242432/">imdb</a> <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zU3U-9B3fE">trailer</a></p> <p>23.00 <em>Birdemic: Shock and Terror</em> <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1316037/">imdb</a> <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cgAbVfh6WYg">trailer</a></p> <p>00.30 <em>Siege of the Dead (Rammbock)</em> <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1583356/">imdb</a> <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8StJgFa-Hq4">trailer</a></p> <h3 id="sunday-october-24th">Sunday October 24th</h3> <p>13.00 <em>Hershell Gordon Lewis: the Godfather of Gore</em> <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1683431/">imdb</a> <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dctVt2pDXJg">trailer</a></p> <p>15.00 <em>Ed Wood</em> <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0109707/">imdb</a> <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zTSFnlv2ffM&amp;feature=related">trailer</a></p> <p>17.30 <em>The Reef</em> <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1320291/">imdb</a> <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7PhR_3A7RiQ&amp;feature=related">trailer</a></p> <p>19.15 <strong>Surprise Film</strong></p> <p>21.10 <em>Amer</em> <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1426352/">imdb</a> <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kaEKIgHr1_0">trailer</a></p> <p>23.00 <em>Plan 9 from Outer Space</em> <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0052077/">imdb</a> <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u2ukRYsYPmo">trailer</a></p> <p>00.15 <em>Loose Screws: Screwballs 2</em> <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0089501/">imdb</a> <a href="http://www.videodetective.com/movie_trailer/LOOSE_SCREWS/movie_clip/P00763706.htm">trailer</a></p> <p>01.30 <em>Blood</em> <a href="http://www.facebook.com/pages/BLOOD-The-Movie/171854689778?v=info">info</a></p> <h3 id="monday-october-25th">Monday October 25th</h3> <p>12.30 <em>Horrorthon Short Film Showcase</em></p> <p>14.15 <em>Video Nasties: Moral Panic, Censorship &amp; Videotape</em> <a href="http://www.brutalashell.com/2010/08/frightfest-2010-review-video-nasties-moral-panic-censorship-and-videotape/">info</a> <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QCgq-fkH09w">trailer</a></p> <p>15.45 <em>Killer Klowns from Outer Space</em> <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0095444/">imdb</a> <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=suXtD1Kk-xE&amp;feature=related">trailer</a></p> <p>17.25 <em>Red Hill</em> <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1530983/">imdb</a> <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9vafKLgdg94">trailer</a></p> <p>19.10 <em>Gremlins 2: The New Batch</em> <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0099700/">imdb</a> <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wgkDHwOYEps">trailer</a></p> <p>21.10 <em>Monsters</em> <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1470827/">imdb</a> <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=njeofv4dr9Q">trailer</a></p> <p>There&rsquo;s a lot of good stuff on there (and a lot of cheese too). Best of all, it looks like the organisers have done a better job this year of balancing each day so there is at least some semblance of logic behind the programme. So, well done to them on thatBut seriously, <em>Screwballs 2</em>?! Are you just openly mocking your audience now?.</p> <p>Obviously, being a few thousand miles away and having not timed my trip back to Ireland properly, I&rsquo;m not going to be able to go to any of these movies (and believe me, I&rsquo;d <em>love</em> to be going &ndash; this is the first time in years I&rsquo;ve felt sad about missing the Horrorthon). But if I <em>were</em> going, the three films I&rsquo;d be most psyched to check out <em>Shadow</em>, <em>Amer</em> and <em>Monsters</em>. Having said that, there&rsquo;s at least three films each day that I&rsquo;d be very happy to check out.</p> <p>As for the surprise film&hellip; well, now&rsquo;s the time to start guessing. Given their history of going for Irish premieres and the sub-115 minute runtime, my guess is it will either be <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1228987/"><em>Let Me In</em></a>, <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1320239"><em>Burke and Hare</em></a> or <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1477076/"><em>Saw 3D</em></a>.</p> <p>Please, God, don&rsquo;t let it be <em>Saw 3D</em>.</p> Firefighters watch as home burns to the ground → https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PwJrPa8Ps7A Mon, 04 Oct 2010 17:19:54 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/firefighters-watch-as-home-burns-to-the-ground/ <p>This kind of ridiculousness gives me the wiggins.</p> Thunder Busters https://lowbrowculture.com/video/thunder-busters/ Sat, 02 Oct 2010 09:36:02 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/video/thunder-busters/ <p>I have a very, very low tolerance for mashups, so believe me when I say this one is actually well done.</p> Moleskine Covers for iPhone and iPad → https://design-milk.com/moleskine-iphone-and-ipad-covers/ Sat, 02 Oct 2010 07:32:55 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/moleskine-covers-for-iphone-and-ipad/ <p>Best of both worlds. Love it.</p> Stephen J. Cannell https://lowbrowculture.com/post/stephen-j-cannell/ Fri, 01 Oct 2010 20:21:23 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/stephen-j-cannell/ <p>I realise this blog is increasingly in danger of just becoming a list of celebrities whose deaths I&rsquo;m sad about, but <a href="http://news-briefs.ew.com/2010/10/01/stephen-j-cannell-friends-and-fans-remember-the-tv-producer/">Stephen J. Cannell</a> is one that really hit me hard.</p> <p>When I was 10, my poor little brain couldn&rsquo;t handle any celebrity or character with more than one name. For example, like most kids then, I loved <em>The A-Team</em>. And as fanatical as I was about that show, I still couldn&rsquo;t manage their surnames. They were Murdock, Hannibal, Face and BA. No more, no less. I <em>tried</em> to remember BA&rsquo;s surname, but I think I kept calling him &ldquo;Balackus&rdquo; or something. Maybe I was a little racist as a kid. I also used to think &ldquo;Darth Vader&rdquo; was called &ldquo;Dark Vader&rdquo;. You see, because he wore all blackSince I&rsquo;m already in this hole of self-shame, I may as well dig a little deeper and say that I also used to think the &ldquo;Standing strong forever&rdquo; line in &ldquo;Nothing&rsquo;s Gonna Stop Us Now&rdquo; was &ldquo;Santa&rsquo;s gone forever&rdquo; because, y&rsquo;know, Santa being gone means you&rsquo;re all grown up. I had awesome logic..</p> <p>Point is, you give me a celebrity or a character with two names, I was boned. In <em>Knight Rider</em>, I just knew the guy as &ldquo;Michael&rdquo;. I never once twigged that his surname was in the title. Durr.</p> <p>But as much trouble as I had with names, I knew who the fuck Stephen J. Cannell was. With this one guy, I not only remembered his first name and his last name, but I fucking remembered his middle initial and everything. Know why? Because his logo came at the end of some of my favourite shows. And when I hear the jingle from his logo, I get a sort of pavlovian response. I feel happy. I feel like I&rsquo;m 10 years old again. And I don&rsquo;t just mean that in some hyperbolic way. I mean I literally feel 10 years old again. If I close my eyes and listen to that jingle, I feel like I&rsquo;m sitting in front of our dodgy TV on a Saturday afternoon and now I&rsquo;m going outside to recreate <em>everything</em> I just saw on TV.</p> <p>Bagsy being BA.</p> <p>Thanks, Stephen.</p> <p>Bonus: Stephen J. Cannell also did a show called <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0080289/"><em>Tenspeed and Brownshoe</em></a> starring Jeff Goldblum. This was less good. I bought the pilot on VHS for 50p a few years ago.</p> Hey You Guys: Remake For Datasoft's Goonies Released → https://www.indieretronews.com/2014/04/the-goonies-remake-look-back-at-remade.html Thu, 30 Sep 2010 19:20:53 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/hey-you-guys-remake-for-datasofts-goonies-released/ <p>Gorgeous remake of a game I played to death on the Commodore 64.</p> Human landscapes in SW Florida → Thu, 30 Sep 2010 19:13:25 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/human-landscapes-in-sw-florida/ <p>Fascinating. Like really shitty games of Sim City.</p> Death Proof - Hello Sally → https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dheJVdMEpxs Wed, 29 Sep 2010 09:26:30 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/death-proof-hello-sally/ <p>Tarantino explains his relationship with Sally Menke</p> Inglourious Basterds - Hi Sallys → https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ts9_5331qOk Wed, 29 Sep 2010 08:29:20 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/inglourious-basterds-hi-sallys/ <p><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/29/movies/29menke.html">Goodbye Sally</a></p> Cyberpunk Style Guide → http://www.phreedom.org/cyberpunk-style-guide/ Wed, 29 Sep 2010 07:16:04 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/cyberpunk-style-guide/ <p>I know we might sneer, but Hackers is one of the best nerd movies of all time.</p> Digital Convenience https://lowbrowculture.com/post/digital-convenience/ Mon, 27 Sep 2010 14:11:28 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/digital-convenience/ <p>The <a href="http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/the-new-yorker-magazine/id370614765?mt=8">New Yorker iPad app is out now</a>. The app itself costs nothing, but the actual issues you buy through the app are $4.99 each. This is reasonable enough. I have a feeling we&rsquo;ll see more magazines move to a similar model in the next year or so. From a publisher point of view, there are no more worries about printing and distribution costs. From an end-user point of view, there are no more worries about availability. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edge_%28magazine%29">Edge magazine</a>, for example, is a right royal pain in the dick to get a hold of if you&rsquo;re not living in the UK. With an iPad app, you&rsquo;re getting all the content, in much the same format, with (potential) access to the entire back-catalogue at the touch of a button, with virtually no footprint for either the publisher or readermy collection of Edge magazine &ndash; going back 16 years or so &ndash; takes up an enormous amount of space. Win-win.</p> <p>Except for people who are already subscribers, that is. As <a href="http://kottke.org/10/09/new-yorker-ipad-app">Kottke points out</a>:</p> <blockquote> <p>Current magazine subscribers appear to have no option but to buy a completely separate issue if they wish to read the magazine on the iPad. As a subscriber, what exactly am I paying for if I already have the content in magazine form? Is the $4.99 simply a convenience fee?</p> </blockquote> <p>One of the things I really liked about David Wellington&rsquo;s <a href="http://www.davidwellington.net/serials/monster-island/monster-island-part-1/chapter-one/"><em>Monster Island</em></a> was that it was also available online. When I was in work and didn&rsquo;t have the book with me, I could just go to Wellington&rsquo;s website and take up where I left off. I suppose the same could be said of any of <a href="http://www.craphound.com">Cory Doctorow</a>&rsquo;s books as well. Although I haven&rsquo;t gotten around to reading it yet, I have a physical copy of <a href="http://craphound.com/makers/">Makers</a> on my bookshelf and a digital copy of on my e-reader.</p> <p>As things like smart phones and e-readers become more and more a part of our everyday life, I would love to see us get to stage where buying a physical copy of a thing &ndash; movies, magazines, films &ndash; entitles you to a digital copy of the thing as well. We&rsquo;re sort of seeing this with blu-ray, where a lot of discs come bundled with a digital copy of the film as wellThen again, in most cases, that&rsquo;s being implemented in such a half-assed, braindead way (where the &lsquo;digital edition&rsquo; it comes bundled with is just an access key to <em>download</em> a copy <strong>once</strong>) it makes you wonder if the movie studios aren&rsquo;t deliberately sabotaging this effort so they can say &ldquo;look! There&rsquo;s no demand for the digital edition!&rdquo;.</p> Free Time is a Myth https://lowbrowculture.com/post/free-time-is-a-myth/ Fri, 24 Sep 2010 14:53:44 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/free-time-is-a-myth/ <p>When I was younger, I remember looking at my grown-up relatives and dreaming about when I&rsquo;d finally be finished with school and start working a 9 to 5 job. I figured that, coming home from work and not having any homework to do, I&rsquo;d have buckets of free time to play videogames and watch kick-ass movies.</p> <p>Well, life? I&rsquo;m waiting.</p> 32 Days of Mass Effect https://lowbrowculture.com/post/32-days-of-mass-effect/ Wed, 08 Sep 2010 20:39:26 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/32-days-of-mass-effect/ <p><a href="http://uk.pc.ign.com/articles/111/1118657p1.html"><img src="http://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2010/09/masseffect2stats-e1283945851486.jpg" alt=""></a></p> <p>In <a href="http://uk.pc.ign.com/articles/111/1118657p1.html">an interview with IGN</a>, BioWare revealed some of the stats they&rsquo;ve collected about people&rsquo;s <em>Mass Effect 2</em> habits. Interestingly, half of the players imported their game from the first <em>Mass Effect</em> and only half of the players actually finished <em>Mass Effect 2</em>. Much more interestingly is the revelation that four Xbox players completed the game 23 times.</p> <p>Considering they also say that the average time to complete a game of <em>Mass Effect 2</em> is 33 hours, that means these four people spent roughly 32 solid days of their life playing this game. That&rsquo;s almost five weeks. Solid.</p> <p>Whoa.</p> <p>(For context, <a href="http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2002800160_kiss12.html">the average American spends two weeks of their <em>entire life</em> kissing</a>)</p> iWatch https://lowbrowculture.com/post/iwatch/ Mon, 06 Sep 2010 08:32:07 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/iwatch/ <p>When Apple demoed the new iPod nano last week, I <a href="http://twitter.com/johnke/status/22726405879">mentioned on twitter</a> about how much I liked the look of its clock. It&rsquo;s more thoughtfully designed and better crafted than most watches.</p> <p>Well, some wags have taken the obvious step by throwing a strap on the Nano and making it into a proper watch.</p> <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2010/09/iwatch-e1283780725973.jpg" alt="iPod nano as a watch"></p> <p>One thing Apple left off the new Nano with the redesign is the previous iteration&rsquo;s video camera. Is it so strange to imagine that a future redesign of the new Nano will re-add this feature? A front-facing camera with <a href="http://www.apple.com/iphone/features/facetime.html">FaceTime</a>? Suddenly we&rsquo;re wearing video phones on our wrists.</p> <p>Oh shit! We&rsquo;re in the future.</p> Cee-Lo's Shawshank Redemption → http://vimeo.com/14364821 Tue, 24 Aug 2010 18:25:15 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/fuck-you-warden-norton/ <p>Fuck You, Warden Norton.</p> Marie Antoinette https://lowbrowculture.com/post/marie-antoinette/ Tue, 24 Aug 2010 11:01:50 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/marie-antoinette/ <p><img src="http://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2010/08/marie_antoinette_cakes1.jpeg" alt="Marie Antoinette - Cakes"></p> <p>I have no idea why I was so reluctant to check out <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0422720/"><em>Marie Antoinette</em></a>. I guess it was something to do with Sophia Coppola&rsquo;s track record. I loved <em>Lost in Translation</em> but hated <em>The Virgin Suicides</em>. Kirsten Dunst completely put me off that movie. I always thought she was really over-rated as an actress and never really saw why people thought she was attractive. I guess it was the impending release of <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1421051/"><em>Somewhere</em></a> that made me want grab the DVD of <em>Marie Antoinette</em> off the shelf and finally sit down and watch it (although, I have to be honest, if <em>Zodiac</em> had been 40 minutes shorter, I probably would have ended up watching that instead).</p> <p>I loved it.</p> <p>Now, I realise that Sophia Coppola isn&rsquo;t the world&rsquo;s greatest writer. I can overlook this. (I mean, I said I loved <em>Lost in Translation</em>, right?) And I realise this film isn&rsquo;t meant to be an accurate historical document, but she manages to paint Marie as a genuinely sympathetic figure. And how did she do this? Do we get <a href="http://lowbrowculture.com/2010/07/28/before-sunset-rome-edition/">two hours of philosophising masquerading as character development</a>? Hell no. In fact, I&rsquo;d be shocked if Kirsten Dunst had more than 100 lines in this movie. It takes a rare skill to do so much with so little.</p> <p>And yes, I finally see what all the fuss is about Kirsten Dunst. She is terrific in this film. A perfect fit - I can&rsquo;t think of another actress that could have pulled it off quite so well. Completely changed my opinion of her.</p> <p>But I also think an awful lot of the success had to do with the way Coppola uses music in her films. The new-wave soundtrack cute, and a great way of hammering home the idea that these kids really were the punks of their time. But it goes beyond cute juxtaposition. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MBFXJw7n-fU">Aphex Twin&rsquo;s &lsquo;Avril 14th&rsquo;</a> is an incredibly powerful and evocative piece of music and was perfect for the tone of this film. (Only one other film I&rsquo;ve seen has used this song at all, and that was Chris Morris&rsquo; equally amazing <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1341167/"><em>Four Lions</em></a>.) That Coppola manaaged to create such amazing visuals and find the music to match the mood of the scene so perfectly speaks volumes about her success and skill as a director.</p> <p>Speaking of cute juxtapositon, I loved, <em>loved</em> the pair of chucks in the background of the spending-spree scene. Something about this is absolutely perfect. It tells us everything we need to know about the character through one tiny, incidental anachronism.</p> <p><img src="http://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2010/08/marie_antoinette_chucks.jpeg" alt="Marie Antoinette - Chucks"></p> Tank Park Salute https://lowbrowculture.com/post/tank-park-salute/ Mon, 23 Aug 2010 00:10:58 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/tank-park-salute/ <div class="embed video-player"> <iframe class="youtube-player" type="text/html" width="640" height="385" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/O51StLHCTrU" allowfullscreen frameborder="0"> </iframe> </div> <p>All things considered, it probably wasn&rsquo;t a great idea to listen to this song right now. Billy Bragg writes some beautiful songs, but this is really something special. One of maybe 5 songs that I can&rsquo;t get through without crying like a child.</p> When all you have is a hammer... → Sun, 22 Aug 2010 22:20:06 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/when-all-you-have-is-a-hammer/ <p><a href="http://twitter.com/TimOfLegend/status/21814116970">&lsquo;Games help me understand serial killers better: I want to interact with people I meet, but I don&rsquo;t have the tools, so I shoot them.&rsquo; &ndash; Tim Schafer</a></p> Heir - a flash-based Shadow of the Colossus clone → Sun, 22 Aug 2010 14:08:39 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/heir-a-flash-based-shadow-of-the-colossus-clone/ <p>Very impressive.</p> Heir - a flash-based Shadow of the Colossus clone → Sun, 22 Aug 2010 14:08:39 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/heir/ <p>Very impressive.</p> Star Wars + Calvin and Hobbes → http://www.redbubble.com/people/krisvahl/t-shirts/5757736-5-chewie-and-han Sun, 22 Aug 2010 10:43:20 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/star-wars-calvin-and-hobbes/ <p>What do you get when you cross Calvin and Hobbes with Star Wars?</p> <p>Only the greatest t-shirt ever.</p> <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2010/08/chewie_and_han.jpg" alt="Chewie and han"></p> Trailer for The Black Swan → https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5jaI1XOB-bs Wed, 18 Aug 2010 08:29:05 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/trailer-for-the-black-swan/ <p>Darren Aronofsky&rsquo;s new film. Think <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1125849/"><em>The Wrestler</em></a> meets <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0076786/"><em>Suspiria</em></a> meets <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0040725/"><em>The Red Shoes</em></a>. And throw in some <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0101524/"><em>By the Sword</em></a> for good measure.</p> <p><a href="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2010/08/Black-Swan-Portman-Kunis.jpg"><em><strong>ahem</strong></em></a></p> How to Use Textmate → http://www.zeldman.com/2010/08/13/how-to-use-textmate/ Sun, 15 Aug 2010 08:19:22 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/how-to-use-textmate/ <p>Amazingly useful list of links on how to use Textmate properly, courtesy of Jeffrey Zeldman.</p> <p>For example, did you know you can write a blog post in Textmate, drag-and-drop an image into the textmate window and it will automatically upload and insert the image into your blog post? I didn&rsquo;t. Mind = blown.</p> You Say To-May-Toe https://lowbrowculture.com/post/you-say-to-may-toe/ Sat, 14 Aug 2010 16:30:23 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/you-say-to-may-toe/ <p>I recently listening to an old edition of the <a href="http://www.slashfilm.com/category/features/slashfilmcast/">Slashfilm podcast</a> where they interviewed Armond White. I sort of recognised that name, but couldn&rsquo;t place it. No matter. Anyway, in the interview, White said a few things that I found interesting. He hasn&rsquo;t got many kind words for Roger Ebert, complaining that he&rsquo;s more like a professional fan than a genuine film critic and that he is single-handedly responsible for the death of film criticism.</p> <blockquote> <blockquote> <p>I do think it is fair to say that Roger Ebert destroyed film criticism. Because of the wide and far reach of television, he became an example of what a film critic does for too many people. And what he did simply was not criticism. It was simply blather. And it was a kind of purposefully dishonest enthusiasm for product, not real criticism at all</p> </blockquote> </blockquote> <p>White also complains that, since everyone has a blog now, they all think that makes them a legitimate criticI keep using qualifiers like &lsquo;genuine&rsquo; and &rsquo;legitimate&rsquo; because White is convinced that he is the only &ldquo;pedigreed film critic&rdquo; around, that the internet promotes &ldquo;free-for-all of enthusiasm rather than criticism&rdquo;. As someone with a blog who <em>tries</em> to write critically, I think he&rsquo;s a little harsh here. Maybe feeling threatened by the democratisation of opinion?</p> <p>But then you stumble across something like &ldquo;Lights, Camera, Jackson&rdquo;, this faux-charming little bollocks of a stage-school drop-outI&rsquo;m calling it now, &lsquo;Lights, Camera, Jackson&rsquo; is the next <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VldcVZexmXw&amp;feature=related">James Harries</a>, complete with future gender-reassignment surgery. Mark my words. and you think - hey, maybe Armond White has a point</p> <p>This got me thinking a bit more about him, trying to remember where I&rsquo;d heard his name before. Armond White… Armond White… Oh shit… <a href="http://www.rottentomatoes.com/author/author-2725">Armond White!</a>. He&rsquo;s the <strike>fearlessly outspoken</strike> <a href="http://img8.imageshack.us/img8/1897/armondwhiteisntinsane.jpg">hilariously contrarian</a> film critic who seems to be on a one-man mission to fuck with the metrics that make sites like Rottentomatoes useful. Out of 235 reviews, his is the first of <strong>three</strong> negative reviews that prevented <em>Toy Story 3</em> from getting a perfect score, complaining that it <a href="http://www.nypress.com/article-21357-bored-game.html">wasn&rsquo;t as good as <em>Transformers 2</em></a>.</p> <p>In other words, he is to film criticism what Glen Beck or Joe Duffy are to political opinion.</p> <p>Other amazing quotes from Armond White:</p> <ul> <li> <p>Talking about <em>There Will be Blood</em>, he said &ldquo;Plainview is the most remarkable movie performance since Eddie Murphy’s <em>Norbit</em> trifecta&rdquo;</p> </li> <li> <p><em>In the Loop</em> is &ldquo;for smart arses, not smart enough to appreciate the cultural satire of <em>Hot Fuzz</em>&rdquo;</p> </li> <li> <p>&ldquo;Forget the Oscar bait, <em>Transporter 3</em> is the only movie you need to see this season&rdquo;</p> </li> </ul> <p>It&rsquo;s a shame. Having read a few of his reviews, he does genuinely seem to be a smart, well-educated fellow. It&rsquo;s just a shame that the rise of online film criticism has led him to chase page-views through controversial statements.</p> Mechanics https://lowbrowculture.com/post/mechanics/ Wed, 11 Aug 2010 14:18:58 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/mechanics/ <p>Christ, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metro_2033"><em>Metro 2033</em></a> is annoying.</p> <p>It&rsquo;s annoying because it comes so close to being a genuinely good game. I mean, on paper, it&rsquo;s exactly the kind of game I would love. All the things I like are there: monsters, guns, post-apocalyptic RussiaNo idea why, but a post-apocalyptic Russia always grabbed my interest more than a post-apocalyptic USA.. It&rsquo;s based on <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metro_2033_(book)">an award-winning Russian science fiction story</a>, so its story should be at least halfway decent, if <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roadside_Picnic">previous experience with Russian science fiction stories</a> are anything to go by. The game just lets itself down somehow. There&rsquo;s <em>something</em> missing.</p> <p>Okay, the game is missing a lot of things. Like actual, honest-to-goodness character development. And a facial modelling system that actually conveys emotion instead of looking like some first-year animation student tinkering with 3D Studio Max. Most importantly though, it&rsquo;s missing a decent control mechanic. It&rsquo;s no great surprise to say that games work best when there&rsquo;s a 1:1 relationship between what you input on the controller and what happens in the game. In <em>Metro 2033</em>, there&rsquo;s a noticeable lag between the two, so the whole game feels &lsquo;off&rsquo;. You get the vague sense of controlling a floaty gun wandering through a 3D space, but not much more than that.</p> <p>A wonky control scheme by itself isn&rsquo;t won&rsquo;t kill a game. Plenty of games have managed to make their games work just fine regardless of how good their controls are. For example, <em>Singularity</em> - another game set in a (sorta) post-apocalyptic Russia - also has &lsquo;floaty&rsquo; controls (another in a long list of things it copied wholesale from <em>Bioshock</em>). But, to its credit, it acknowledges this and works around this apparent limitation. It says &ldquo;we understand our control scheme isn&rsquo;t the greatest, so we won&rsquo;t really ask too much of you except to shoot monsters.&rdquo; It works well because of that.</p> <p>The developers of <em>Metro 2033</em>, God bless them, tried hard to make their game more than just a straight shooter. Some levels include &lsquo;stealth&rsquo; sections, where you have to sneak around guards/monsters and avoid traps that draw attention to your character. Except their controls don&rsquo;t really allow you to accomplish this. Your character moves sluggishly, like the entire world is made of toffee. It&rsquo;s hard to judge lateral distance, so you&rsquo;ll inadvertently set off traps that you were trying to avoid. This is irritating at the best of times, but during the stealth sequences, it&rsquo;s especially annoying. I got about halfway through the game before I hit one particular stealth sequence. I kept triggering traps despite doing everything I could to avoid them. It frustrated me so much, I turned off the game out of spite. I doubt I&rsquo;ll go back to it again.</p> <p>It&rsquo;s a shame because, like I said, I enjoyed the <em>idea</em> of <em>Metro 2033</em>, the monsters, guns and post-apocalyptic Russia. It&rsquo;s a shame when the <em>game</em> gets in the way of the game. It&rsquo;s the superficial things that stop you from fully enjoying it. Imagine a horror writer decided his stories should be printed in a novelty &lsquo;horror&rsquo; typeface.</p> <p><a href="http://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2010/08/lovecraft.png"><img src="http://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2010/08/lovecraft.png" alt=""></a></p> <p>Although it may be a cute novelty, it doesn&rsquo;t enhance the story at all. It just frustrates the reader. It doesn&rsquo;t matter how good the story is if the reader gives up halfway through because of some mechanical problem. It&rsquo;s the same for games. How many games have you just given up on because you figured no story is worth battling with crappy mechanics?</p> Radiolab Presents: Words → https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0HfwkArpvU Wed, 11 Aug 2010 06:08:24 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/words/ <p>From the always-amazing <a href="http://www.wnyc.org/shows/radiolab/">Radiolab</a></p> Inception, Spoilers https://lowbrowculture.com/post/inception-and-spoilers/ Tue, 10 Aug 2010 18:01:16 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/inception-and-spoilers/ <p>On the whole, I don&rsquo;t really care about spoilers. If your enjoyment of a movie is based entirely around not knowing a particular plot point, then the movie hasn&rsquo;t really done its job. <em>Inception</em>, like most of Christopher Nolan&rsquo;s films, is so dense and complex as to be pretty much spoiler-proof. I know there&rsquo;s this stuff about a dream, and then a dream-within-a-dream, and then, later on, a dream-within-a-dream-within-a-dream (I think). Apart from that, it&rsquo;s all a little fuzzy.</p> <p>Even still, there&rsquo;s been an almost universal, unwritten agreement among critics that it&rsquo;s best to not reveal <em>too much</em> about the film. I guess it&rsquo;s so people can go in completely fresh. Even Mark Kermode, who had previously spoiled <em>Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince</em> (which he now refers to as &ldquo;<a href="http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/snape-kills-dumbledore">the unfortunate incident</a> after being hit with nerd-rage&rdquo;) has said very little about the plot of the film.</p> <p>What people <em>are</em> talking about, because they figure it&rsquo;s not spoiling anything, is the last shot of the film. &ldquo;What did you think of the last shot?&rdquo; they ask. &ldquo;What noise did you make? I made a sort of a &lsquo;whoah&rsquo; combined with a &lsquo;huh?&rsquo;&rdquo; And they&rsquo;re right to talk. <em>Inception</em> has one of those bravura endings that, if you were feeling particularly cynical, could easily be interpreted as the director showing off. It&rsquo;s right up there with Brad Pitt channelling Quentin Tarantino at the end of <em>Inglourious Basterds</em>: &ldquo;You know somethin&rsquo;, Utivich? I think this just might be my masterpiece.&rdquo;</p> <p>And, to be honest, just <em>knowing</em> there was this great final shot kind of spoiled the ending for me. I was sitting in the cinema trying to predict what the final shot would be, what I thought would be worth talking about. Like being told there&rsquo;s a twist in the movie, but not told <em>what</em> the twist is - you spend the entire movie thinking &ldquo;She&rsquo;s a he! It&rsquo;s all a dream! The butler did it!&rdquo; Technically the movie isn&rsquo;t spoiled, but at the same time, it is.</p> <h3 id="random-thoughts">Random Thoughts</h3> <ul> <li> <p>Christopher Nolan may be getting better with each film, but he <em>still</em> can&rsquo;t manage even simple walk-and-talk exposition. There was a <em>lot</em> of explaining in this movie, and he handled it by showing a lot of people sitting around saying &ldquo;What?&rdquo;</p> </li> <li> <p>Coming out of the screening I went to (<a href="http://www.uci.ie/fanatic/cinema_information/s23/">UCI Coolock in Dublin</a>), I overheard someone saying &ldquo;Nah, I didn&rsquo;t like that at all. You had to concentrate too hard&rdquo;. Except with a thick, Coolock accent.</p> </li> <li> <p>Did no-one else think the film&rsquo;s depiction of the dream-world was a little boring? A little unimaginative? For all its cleverness - &ldquo;You always wind up right in the middle of what&rsquo;s going on&rdquo; - it completely ignored the fundamentally weird nature of dreams: running at full speed, but not getting anywhere; the feeling of the ground suddenly disappearing beneath you. <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0851578/"><em>Paprika</em></a> did a much better job of conveying the feeling of being inside a dream, with all its twisted logic.</p> </li> <li> <p>Jesus Christ, it&rsquo;s time that Hans Zimmer and Christopher Nolan parted ways. I know <em>Inception</em> is getting a lot of praise for its score, but holy shit, it sounded the exact same as every other score they&rsquo;ve done together, except this time it was mixed by a demented monkey with a demented-monkey-boner for pulsing violins. Make it stop!</p> </li> </ul> One of these things is not like the other https://lowbrowculture.com/post/one-of-these-things-is-not-like-the-other/ Mon, 09 Aug 2010 20:44:40 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/one-of-these-things-is-not-like-the-other/ <p>Things I found out this weekend:</p> <ol> <li>My uncle - the conspiracy nut - is so convinced that the end-times are coming that he&rsquo;s spent €200 on non-perishable, tinned foods. He&rsquo;s storing them at different, strategic points around the house.</li> <li>My 18-year old niece - who ran away to Egypt to get married - has left her husband and is now on the run from him. She won&rsquo;t tell anyone where she is. She let the husband know she&rsquo;d left him by changing her Facebook status to &ldquo;single&rdquo;.</li> <li>My mother has cancer.</li> </ol> Behind the Scenes of the Red Dead Redemption Score → https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fVfczLhb7yY&t=12s Fri, 30 Jul 2010 17:38:55 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/behind-the-scenes-of-the-red-dead-redemption-score/ <p>I know I&rsquo;m repeating myself here, but I thought that <em>Red Dead Redemption</em> had a pretty good score, but its use of <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iZ9iflvCwok">Jamie Lidell&rsquo;s &ldquo;Compass&rdquo;</a>, was the second-best musical cue of any game this year (the first being DJ Shadow&rsquo;s &ldquo;Building Steam from a Grain of Salt&rdquo; in <em>Splinter Cell: Conviction</em>).</p> The Fountain Commentary → Fri, 30 Jul 2010 12:54:41 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/the-fountain-commentary/ <p>Did you know that Darren Aronofsky recorded a commentary for <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0414993/"><em>The Fountain</em></a> (one of my <a href="http://lowbrowculture.com/2007/02/27/review-the-fountain/">favourite</a> <a href="http://lowbrowculture.com/2009/08/25/5-movies-guaranteed-to-make-you-a-better-person/">films</a> of all time), which wasn&rsquo;t included on the DVD because Warner Brothers didn&rsquo;t think it would help sales? Did you know that Aronofsky then went on to <a href="http://www.darrenaronofsky.com/news/Entries/2007/9/20_Support_the_Seed.____.html">offer the commentary for free via his website</a> and later <a href="http://www.torrentz.com/b925cb411c9a9a53b267bacf978f1f4121707146">via torrents</a>?</p> <p>Well, now you do.</p> <p>And seriously, if you haven&rsquo;t seen <em>The Fountain</em> already, please check it out.</p> Spoilers → Fri, 30 Jul 2010 07:42:21 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/spoilers/ <blockquote> <p>it&rsquo;s time to stop DVR-ing the series and start watching it live. You&rsquo;ll be happy you did, and you&rsquo;ll be happy to return to the cultural conversation. Let&rsquo;s bring a return of watercooler culture to the offices, chat rooms, and entertainment blogs of America. We&rsquo;re not arguing for spoilers; we&rsquo;re arguing against letting yourself get spoiled. Suck it up, America. Watch the damn shows.</p> </blockquote> <p><a href="%5Bhttp://nymag.com/daily/entertainment/2008/03/spoilers.html%5D(http://nymag.com/daily/entertainment/2008/03/spoilers.html)">New York Magazine - Spoilers: In Defense of the American Watercooler</a></p> No Comment https://lowbrowculture.com/post/no-comment/ Thu, 29 Jul 2010 12:50:40 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/no-comment/ <p>As you probably noticed, I&rsquo;m playing about with the comments on my blog: disabling them for most new articles, unless I really, really want to hear what other people have to say. This sounds like a total dick move. &ldquo;You&rsquo;re suppressing debate!&rdquo; Probably! But I don&rsquo;t really see it that way. The thing that kind of swung the no-comments move for me was <a href="http://ratafia.info/post/90530195/transcript-of-howto-149-surprising-ways-to">something Merlin Mann said</a> during his presentation with John Gruber at SXSW, when he recalled what John Gruber&rsquo;s response when he asked him why he doesn&rsquo;t enable comments on <a href="http://www.daringfireball.net">daringfireball.net</a>:</p> <blockquote> <p>&hellip; you were like ‘I wanna own every single pixel on my site, from the top left to the lower right. And if I have somebody come in — even if it’s somebody incredibly smart; even if it’s whoever; even if it’s <a href="http://seoulbrother.com/">SeoulBrother</a> comes in and has something to say, like somebody really smart and really funny, like, it’s not my site any more.’.</p> </blockquote> <p>Then Derek Powazek <a href="http://powazek.com/posts/2463">gave his own particular reasons</a> for not enabling comments on his blog</p> <blockquote> <p>I turned off comments in the last redesign of powazek.com because I needed a place online that was just for me. With comments on, when I sat down to write, I’d preemptively hear the comments I’d inevitably get. It made writing a chore, and eventually I stopped writing altogether. Turning comments off was like taking a weight off my shoulders. It freed me to write again.</p> </blockquote> <p>This is what sold me. I don&rsquo;t know if you&rsquo;ve noticed, but my blog output has gone up since disabling comments, exactly because I don&rsquo;t feel like I have to think about every word I write. I can write bullshit like that thing about <em>Before Sunset</em> - stuff that I would have previously held back because I&rsquo;d have visions of a random drive-by commenter calling me out on it, making me feel bad.</p> <p><strong>Update:</strong> I was having second thoughts about the no-comments thing. Over the past few days, people have been very pointedly asking me why I&rsquo;ve disabled comments - who the fuck did I think I was, comparing myself to John Gruber? - so I was thinking maybe I should just turn them back on. That is, until I enabled the <a href="http://extensions.apple.com/#other">Daring Fireball with Comments extension for Safari</a> yesterday. This is from a random article (click for the larger version):</p> <p><a href="http://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2010/07/daringfireball-withcomments.gif"><img src="http://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2010/07/daringfireball-withcomments-80x300.gif" alt=""></a></p> <p>See? It completely changes the mood of the site. This is exactly what I <em>don&rsquo;t</em> want, so I think my comments will be staying off for the time being.</p> Great FAQ Answer → http://www.xbox.com/en-IE/support/xbox360/connecttolive/accountfaqs.htm#Points Wed, 28 Jul 2010 17:02:28 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/great-faq-answer/ <p>Real helpful. Thanks, Microsoft.</p> <blockquote> <p><strong>Q:Is there a maximum number of Points that I can have in my balance?</strong></p> <p>A: Yes, there is a limit. When you reach that limit, you will be notified that you&rsquo;ve reached the maximum number.</p> </blockquote> Before Sunset, Rome Edition https://lowbrowculture.com/post/before-sunset-rome-edition/ Wed, 28 Jul 2010 12:03:07 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/before-sunset-rome-edition/ <p>Herself indoors was away for work last night, so I had the house to myself. What kind of wild and crazy shenanigans did I get up to? Did I <a href="http://keggersofyore.com/">throw an awesome party that will be remembered through the ages</a>? Did I fuck. I watered the plants, put on <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0112471/"><em>Before Sunrise</em></a> and sat down to do some ironing.</p> <p>Woo! Being 31 is <strong>great</strong>!</p> <p>If you don&rsquo;t know this film, it&rsquo;s about two people, Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy, who meet on a train, realise they&rsquo;ve got an immediate connection and decide to spend the night walking the streets of Vienna before Ethan Hawke has to fly home to America the next morning. Throughout the night, they keep coming across all sorts of interesting things, such as: late night fairs, palm readers, late night cafes, dive bars with pinball machines, churches that apparently stay open all night, bums that will write you a poem for some money. I&rsquo;ll save my opinion of the actual film for another time (quick spoiler: thought it was a great film when I saw it in my early twenties; in my early thirties, however, I thought they were a pair of hateful douches). What I was thinking though is how I&rsquo;d love to see that movie set in Rome. Because you know what&rsquo;s open in Rome after midnight? You know what&rsquo;s happening around this city once it gets dark?</p> <p>FUCK ALL.</p> <p>Seriously. I really cannot believe it sometimes. Most bars close around 1am - except for the &lsquo;social clubs&rsquo; - speakeasy-type joints that are well-hidden and very wary of strangers. You could go to the coked-out clubs in Testaccio, I suppose. They&rsquo;re too busy snorting and preening to notice the time. But in general, after 2am, this city is a ghost town. A really sketchy ghost town. We used to have a McDonalds near us that would close at 10.30pm. 11.00pm on Saturday nights - as an Irish man who is used to his battered sausage and curry chips after a night in the pub, this was the most painful for me: there&rsquo;s nowhere to get any kind food after the bars close.</p> <p>Things are only worse during August. Already, a load of bars, restaurants and cinemas are already closed in anticipation of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferragosto">ferragosto</a> - a month-long celebration of whateverthefuck. I honestly have no idea what&rsquo;s being celebrated. I just know that the end result is that most Romans disappear off to the beach or somewhere less oppressively hot. Which has its benefits too. Sure, more things are closed and you have to think about what shops are still open when you want a pint of milk, but the lack of crowds means that the city is a much more pleasant place to be. Still, doesn&rsquo;t help my initial point: there&rsquo;s almost nothing to do in Rome after dark.</p> <p>I&rsquo;d really love to see <em>Before Sunrise: Rome Edition</em>. I bet it would be a real short film.</p> Inception / Je Ne Regrette Rien https://lowbrowculture.com/video/inception-je-ne-regrette-rien/ Tue, 27 Jul 2010 20:06:07 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/video/inception-je-ne-regrette-rien/ <p>That Christopher Nolan is one flash cunt, isn&rsquo;t he?</p> Mass Effect 2: Addendum https://lowbrowculture.com/post/mass-effect-2-addendum/ Tue, 27 Jul 2010 16:23:41 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/mass-effect-2-addendum/ <p><strong>There&rsquo;ll be some discussion of the ending of <em>Mass Effect 2</em>, so if you haven&rsquo;t played that game all the way through and you like your life spoiler-free, stop reading now</strong></p> <p>After about 30 hours of playing, I finally, <em>finally</em> finished <em>Mass Effect 2</em>. And having finished it now, I&rsquo;m still happy that <a href="http://lowbrowculture.com/2010/07/20/side-quests-and-narrative/">pretty much everything I said about the game</a> still stands. There were a couple of side-missions that were time-based: you have X number of minutes to escape from X or to stop X from happening, but these were still small, local instances, usually coming at the ends of missions. There was no sense of urgency to any the larger narrative. Take all the time you need; that person dying of space-flu or space-gonorrhoea or whatever in isn&rsquo;t going anywhere. He&rsquo;s in another mission. Sure, the galaxy needs saving, but - holy shit! - that Krogan hasn&rsquo;t tasted sushi before. Better take care of that first!</p> <p>Which is why the ending feels like such a cheap shot.</p> <p>After being stung by some of my choices at the end of the first <em>Mass Effect</em> - where the game pulled a switcheroo and the person I actually <em>wanted</em> to save ended up being the person that died - I made sure that, for <em>Mass Effect 2</em>, I read up about the ending and what choices I should make if I wanted my characters to survive. Some might call this cheating. To this, I say: FUCK YOU. Including the first game, I&rsquo;ll have spent around 60 hours playing as this character and I&rsquo;m not going to leave this shit to chance again.</p> <p>Anyway, the <a href="http://www.gamefaqs.com/xbox360/944907-mass-effect-2/faqs/59012">Gamefaqs entry for <em>Mass Effect 2</em></a> includes this little warning:</p> <blockquote> <blockquote> <p>CONSEQUENCE OF DELAY</p> </blockquote> <blockquote> <p>When you return to the Normandy, you will have the ability to go through the Omega 4 relay in pursuit of the Collector ship. If you go on any other missions first, half the Normandy&rsquo;s crew will be killed, including Yeoman Chambers.</p> </blockquote> </blockquote> <p>Now, I wasn&rsquo;t affected by this because, like I said, there were almost no side-missions left by the time I came to travelling through the Omega 4 relay. But still, I feel like this is unnecessarily punitive, especially since that the developers have established one rule throughout the game: that you <em>can</em> delay and it doesn&rsquo;t matter. Why the abrupt change? Why punish players like this? Why Yeoman Chambers?!</p> <p>For the record (and as I mentioned on Twitter), immediately after saving the galaxy, I jumped straight in and did the dirt on Miranda. Commander Shepard: space mutt</p> Conventions https://lowbrowculture.com/post/conventions/ Mon, 26 Jul 2010 07:14:44 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/conventions/ <p><a href="http://blog.thoughtwax.com/2010/07/chasing-a-sound-in-your-head">Another thing Emmett said</a> that got me thinking was this:</p> <blockquote> <blockquote> <p>Probably these developers know something I don’t. Probably they know that their market already understands the conventions of this world, and that eventually, and through repetition, anything that deviates from these conventions seems somehow false. (I suspect that this might be what Tom means when he mentions <a href="http://infovore.org/archives/2010/07/17/its-better-because-its-better/">games literacy</a>.) But for me, this time at least, it never stopped feeling like a videogame.</p> </blockquote> </blockquote> <p>This is a criticism I hear a lot - that playing videogames presupposes a certain amount of knowledge. The reason I hear it a lot is because my wife is so unfamiliar with videogame conventions. So much that she&rsquo;s a terrific litmus test for the accessibility of a particular game. Give me a joypad and my hands instinctively fall into a familiar grip. After a short while, I&rsquo;ll be accustomed to the controls of a game that there will be almost no barrier between what I want to do and what I can make the game do. The controls will disappear for me, allowing me to fully immerse myself in the game. For my wife, the controls are <em>always</em> present. She isn&rsquo;t familiar with the joypad, so when the game tells her to &ldquo;Press X to open&rdquo;, she has to actively think about where button X is. It will never not be a game for her. Years of experience has taught me that, almost universally, &ldquo;X&rdquo; (or &ldquo;bottom button&rdquo;) means &ldquo;Okay&rdquo; and &ldquo;O&rdquo; (or &ldquo;right button&rdquo;) means &ldquo;Cancel&rdquo;. I&rsquo;ve been doing this for so long that I don&rsquo;t even think about it now. For my wife, this is still a strange concept even though she uses these buttons every day to watch movies and TV through our Xbox.</p> <p>Within the game worlds themselves, there are also conventions that might only be immediately obvious to someone who is familiar with games and has been playing them for a substantial amount of time. For example, the near-ubiquitous red barrel has an obvious meaning to gamers: kick-ass explosions. Wooden crates can be smashed open to potentially give you some amazing loot. In most games, the double-jump has no grounding in either the narrative or the physics of the world - I mean, what the fuck is that? Someone can &lsquo;jump&rsquo; again in mid-air to go even higher? Seriously? - but this is something I almost <em>expect</em> when I&rsquo;m playing a platform game. When it isn&rsquo;t present, I feel like something is missing. Giant Bomb has helpfully put together <a href="http://www.giantbomb.com/concepts/">a fairly comprehensive list of the most common videogame conventions</a> so that we don&rsquo;t have to go through them all here.</p> <p>And so it&rsquo;s not so much the fact that these conventions exist that bother me, but more the fact that this is used as a stick to beat videogames as a medium. A typical conversation when we try to play games together:</p> <p>&ldquo;How did you know you could open that door but not the door beside it?&rdquo;</p> <p>&ldquo;It&rsquo;s obvious!&rdquo;</p> <p>&ldquo;Not to me!&rdquo;</p> <p>&ldquo;Well, because 25 years of playing videogames has taught me which doors can be opened and which can&rsquo;t.&rdquo;</p> <p>&ldquo;You see?! This is why I can&rsquo;t play videogames!&rdquo;</p> <p>Here&rsquo;s where I&rsquo;m in danger of sounding like a snob, but my answer to this is: so learn, get used to it.Or, to put it in more Xbox Live-friendly terms: have you considered sucking less?</p> <p>You&rsquo;re reading my blog, so I&rsquo;m guessing that you&rsquo;re probably a middle-to-upper class white male with at least a secondary school educationand your name is probably Steve, Bob or Gar. You probably spend a fair portion of your spare time reading - I mean, no-one&rsquo;s paying you to read <em>this</em> so, if nothing else, I&rsquo;m probably right with this assumption. Now, just think about the conventions of reading. We take it for granted, but this, too, presupposes a whole bunch of stuff. Obviously, you have to be familiar with the language, you have to be familiar with the form of the letters, the spellings of words. You have to understand the process of reading (in English, at least) from left-to-right, then top-to-bottom. These are the literary analogues to videogame control conventions, &ldquo;X means &lsquo;okay&rsquo;&rdquo;.</p> <p>Once you actually master the mechanics of it, there are also conventions used in literature and reading. Right now I&rsquo;m reading David Foster Wallace&rsquo;s <em>The Broom of the System</em>. To read this properly, to understand it and convert it from just words on a page to <em>ideas</em> and concepts, it helps to be familiar with, among other things, the logic of metafiction and the various philosophical theories of language including, but not limited to, the theories of Ludwig Wittgenstein. The first time I read Thomas Pynchon&rsquo;s <em>V</em>, I was completely unfamiliar with metafiction, and I had a hard time reading that book. Just as the game never stopped being a videogame for Emmett, <em>V</em> never stopped being a book for me. I was reading at such a cripplingly slow pace that it took me forever, which meant I never really developed a &lsquo;flow&rsquo;. I was always completely conscious of the process of writing that made up this book. I didn&rsquo;t enjoy it. Because I wasn&rsquo;t immersed in the subject of the work, I was very aware of the form of the work, I was aware of the author&rsquo;s &rsquo;tricks&rsquo;. It&rsquo;s like my wife playing a game, the controller/book never disappeared for meMy second read-trough, after more exposure to the genre of metafiction, more exposure to Pynchon&rsquo;s work, was much more successful. I don&rsquo;t think anyone would accuse the book of being at fault here. I was unfamiliar with the genre, and I was punching above my weight. I knew that. I accepted that.</p> <p>I guess this is made worse with games because they are <em>all</em> rules, they&rsquo;re <em>all</em> convention. I recently played a game of <em>Carcassonne</em> with my wife, and the rules never once disappeared into the background because we constantly had to think about what we were doing. Our first game of <em>Dungeons &amp; Dragons</em> was quickly disbanded after we said &ldquo;fuck this&rdquo; because we couldn&rsquo;t figure out what the various numbers meant or how we were meant to calculate things. In none of these cases did we blame the game&rsquo;s rules, we blamed ourselves for not knowing themThis is a lie, we <em>totally</em> blamed the D&amp;D rules. Christ, even their &ldquo;beginner&rsquo;s guide&rdquo; is written with the assumption you were playing D&amp;D in the womb. In videogame terms, I have little experience of Japanese RPGs. As a result, I don&rsquo;t enjoy playing them. Their rules are so transparent that I feel like I&rsquo;m watching an Excel spreadsheet with fancy graphics. At the same time, I&rsquo;m unfamiliar with their conventions. Do you know how long it took me to wrap my head around the concept of &lsquo;grinding&rsquo;My enjoyment of <em>Dragon Quest VIII</em> increased immeasurably once I copped to this? These games never stop being &lsquo;games&rsquo; for me. I&rsquo;m never immersed.</p> <p>But still, what should be done? What should I do when I&rsquo;m having trouble reading a book like <em>V</em>? Well, I should read other books. Books that are more at my reading-level. Slowly build myself up my familiarity with literary conventions so that I could enjoy the book properly. You wouldn&rsquo;t expect a teenager coming straight off <em>Twilight</em> (for example) to be able to pick up and enjoy <em>Ulysses</em> (again, for example), so I don&rsquo;t see why you&rsquo;d expect someone completely unfamiliar with modern videogames to be able to enjoy them properly either.</p> <p>So the question is, why blame the game?</p> Red Dead Redemption: The Other Side of the Coin https://lowbrowculture.com/post/red-dead-redemption-the-other-side-of-the-coin/ Sun, 25 Jul 2010 20:48:09 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/red-dead-redemption-the-other-side-of-the-coin/ <p>A couple of days ago, I wrote about how <em>Red Dead Redemption</em> could be seen as a useful metric to <a href="https://lowbrowculture.com/post/we-deal-in-lead/">demonstrate how far videogaming has come</a>. Now I want to discuss the other side of that argument, how <em>Red Dead Redemption</em> represents how far videogames still have to go as a medium.</p> <p>Let&rsquo;s tackle the issues in reverse order</p> <h2 id="the-ugly">The Ugly</h2> <p><a href="http://blog.thoughtwax.com/2010/07/chasing-a-sound-in-your-head/comment-page-1#comment-182018">As Emmett points out</a>, despite being labelled an &lsquo;open world&rsquo; game, <em>Red Dead Redemption</em> does not offer the player a particularly satisfying level of immersion and freedom. There&rsquo;s very little actual &lsquo;openness&rsquo;. It&rsquo;s hard to play this game and not feel an amount of disappointment with the enormous gap between what is possible in the game and what you <em>wish</em> was possible. As with almost every game I play (especially these open world, sandbox games), the first thing I did with <em>Red Dead Redemption</em> was to test just how far I could push the game until it breaks. This gives me a feel for the &lsquo;rules&rsquo; of the world I&rsquo;m in. I started running around, knocking things over, knocking <em>people</em> over. I wanted to see if there was any way to get the non-player characters to react to me in the world. Nothing happened. I spent five minutes pushing one NPC into a fire, and again, nothing happened. One of the face-buttons on the controller allows you to &lsquo;interact&rsquo; with NPCs; however, this could be more accurately described as a button that allows you to &ldquo;tip your hat and say ma&rsquo;m&rdquo;. It does nothing else. This is the extent of your ability to interact with the majority of characters beyond shooting them deadEven this isn&rsquo;t final. I can&rsquo;t think of the amount of times I shot the poker players in Armadillo only to have them re-appear the next day.</p> <p>And while I praised <em>Read Dead Redemption</em> for the range of possibilities it presented, the game offers little outside the realm of prescribed activities. Apart from the <a href="http://www.youtube.com/user/WhereDaBootz#p/u/16/rFoMvLmfFEY">hilarious</a> <a href="http://www.youtube.com/user/WhereDaBootz#p/u/18/7q7v4F8r9Og">bugs</a>, very little emergent behaviour is possible within the strict videogame framework. Despite being traditionally one of the most popular activities in westerns, your character cannot rob a bank. One could argue that this is intended to keep your character in line with the game&rsquo;s narrative (similar to why you cannot hire a prostitute in this game, despite it being one of the most famous features of its <em>Grand Theft Auto</em> cousins). Why, then, can none of these things be done during the game&rsquo;s epilogue, when none of these rules apply?</p> <p>On the other hand, perhaps this criticism is unfair. True &lsquo;openness&rsquo; is virtually impossible to achieve without the assistance of a real games master behind the curtain &ndash; as in Jason Rohrer&rsquo;s <a href="http://sleepisdeath.net/">Sleep is Death</a> &ndash; or a virtual one &ndash; such as the kind of thing we&rsquo;re approaching with <a href="http://left4dead.wikia.com/wiki/The_Director">Left 4 Dead&rsquo;s AI Director</a>. On the plus side, at least the game&rsquo;s setting helps give the lack of activity a sense of reality. For me, one of the most frustrating parts of <em>Grand Theft Auto IV</em> was the way in which the city appeared to be a bustling metropolis, a living world, yet the vast majority of the buildings were just flat textures draped over geometric shapes which you couldn&rsquo;t interact with. Plus, with the crowds of people in <em>GTAIV</em>, there was enough character model repetition to break any sense of believability. It&rsquo;s hard to take a game seriously when it randomly sends a herd of identical characters coming your way. <em>Red Dead Redemption</em> at least does away with these unbelievable flat-textured districts populated by clones in favour of a more believable barely-populated expanse of prairie. This at least makes sense within the context of its setting.</p> <h2 id="the-bad">The Bad</h2> <p>In my previous post, I mentioned how <em>Kane</em> was criticised for not having enough for the player to do. However, no-one complained about the weak-sauce narrative that supposedly tied the entire thing together. Maybe this was just a product of its time - &lsquo;story&rsquo; didn&rsquo;t seem to be a major concern in 1986 (the year that gave us <em>Crocodile Dundee</em>, <em>Cobra</em> and <em>Police Academy 3: Back in Training</em>). Or maybe it&rsquo;s just that no-one thought a videogame could or <em>should</em> have a good story, so it was just taken as given that any story tacked onto a videogame would be a pile of ass. Who cares about story when shit blows up good?</p> <p>First of all, let&rsquo;s call a spade a spade. It&rsquo;s 2010 and the story of <em>Red Dead Redemption</em> is no great shakes either. An outlaw, trying to mend his ways but brought back out for one last job. If that sounds familiar to you, it&rsquo;s probably because it&rsquo;s also the plot of Clint Eastwood&rsquo;s <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0105695">Unforgiven</a>, a film that the developers return to again and again. Along the way, <em>Read Dead Redemption</em> touches on themes of manifest destiny, the taming of the frontier west and the whole Conradian question of whether civilisation is actually just savagery with a nattier dress sense. Again, these are themes that we see time and again across the entire Western genre. When <em>Red Dead Redemption</em> actively attempts to tackle these themes, it demonstrates just how immature videogames are as a storytelling form. For example, as a mouthpiece for the supposed dangers of scientific hubris and the inherent savagery hidden beneath civility, Harold MacDougal is handled dreadfully. There is no subtlety to any of his conversations. It&rsquo;s as if Rockstar were so afraid that people might miss their point with this character that they decided to hit the player over the head.</p> <p>Few characters in the game are handled much better than MacDougal. For the briefest of moments, I thought Rockstar were demonstrating an understanding of subtlety with their handling of the relationship between Vincente de Santa and Quique Montemayor. The first time you meet them, there is a brief look between the two of them that makes you think &ldquo;hey - are they together?&rdquo; It was so brief, so easy to miss that I thought maybe I was either imagining it or reading too much into a few keyframes thrown in by a bored animator. A few more interactions and it is hinted that, yes, these characters are in a homosexual relationship. But just like with MacDougal, the game eventually gives over, afraid that you might have missed those hints, again hits you over the head with the point: these characters are gay. This isn&rsquo;t even the worst of <em>Read Dead Redemption</em>&rsquo;s crimes against characterisation. Marshall Johnson is little better than a slightly less hateful (but similarly, slightly less nuanced) version of <em>Unforgiven</em>&rsquo;s Little Bill Daggett. Landon Ricketts is clearly the bastard son of Lee Van Cleef and Sam Elliott. The snake oil salesman, Nigel West Dickens, well&hellip; well, he&rsquo;s just a sophomoric creation lacking any sort of nuance or wit.</p> <p>As well as the characters, many of the game&rsquo;s missions are also lifted from films. For example, the stampede scene from <em>Red River</em> becomes an entire mission in <em>Read Dead Redemption</em>. Another involves rescuing Bonnie MacFarlane from hanging, just like in <em>Hang &lsquo;Em High</em>. Robbing a train full of ammunition? <em>The Wild Bunch</em>. The side-mission where the player must save a person from being hung by shooting the rope is obviously taken directly from <em>The Good, The Bad and the Ugly</em>. Except without any of the tension or narrative support. Throughout the game, you are asked to save prostitutes from being sliced by some knife-wielding cowboy who, just like in <em>Unforgiven</em>, took offence at the prostitute laughing at the size of his penis. <em>Unforgiven</em> turned hat event into the inciting incident of that film. <em>Red Dead Redemption</em> treats it like a throwaway joke.</p> <p>Against direct comparisons to film (which it seems to openly invite), <em>Red Dead Redemption</em> falls completely flat. The lack of originality in its storytelling is only exacerbated by the ham-fisted way in which it is executed.</p> <h2 id="the-good">The Good</h2> <p>With that said, what these films fail to achieve and what Rockstar seem to pull off so easily is to provoke an emotional reaction to its themes. <em>The Wild Bunch</em> can make you think about the end of the era of the outlaw cowboy, but <em>Red Dead Redemption</em> can actually elicit an emotional response to this same theme. The reason Rockstar succeed where the movies fail is because of immersion. Your own experience is central to <em>Red Dead Redemption</em>, and placing you inside a well-realised world helps colour your experience.</p> <p><em>Mise-en-scene</em> is an enormous part of storytelling. I&rsquo;m a huge theme park nerd, and my favourite part of any good theme park ride is the pre-show area, where you queue to actually get on the ride. To stop punters getting bored, the creators of theme park rides often litter the queuing area with props which create atmosphere and allow the punter to construct their own story before they even get on the ride. When it&rsquo;s done well, the scene-setting transforms <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Drop_tower_Santa_cruz_boardwalk.JPG">a good ride</a> into <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Twilight_Zone_Tower_of_Terror">a great ride</a>.</p> <p>Videogames have the ability to create a level of <em>mise-en-scene</em> that film, as a medium, has no hope of replicating. <em>Red Dead Redemption</em> is filled with incidental details that serve no explicit storytelling purpose but just enrich the atmosphere of the game. Props that tell stories, if you want them to. For example, although it isn&rsquo;t beaten to death in the game, Marshall Johnson is a widower. If you want to, you can find his wife&rsquo;s gravestone in the local graveyard. This allows the player to fill in the gaps and construct a back-story for Johnson, more than actually comes up in the course of gameplay. Likewise, the environment is dotted with things for people to find. For example, the <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l3i4DaqKPuE">&lsquo;Mystery Site&rsquo; at Repentance Rock</a> <a href="http://reddead.wikia.com/wiki/Mystery_Site">has become famous</a> precisely because there&rsquo;s no explanation for it. It&rsquo;s just there for players to stumble across and flesh out their experience. A film, on the other hand, is limited in how much it can put on screen. It must be judicious in its <em>mise-en-scene</em>. Too much and it can be confusing. As huge a fan as I am, Terry Gilliam sometimes tries to cram so much on screen at once that his films become visually distracting<em>The Adventures of Baron Munchausen</em> is one of my favourite films of all time, but I think I&rsquo;ve only twice managed to watch it in one sitting. Every other time, my brain just <em>shuts down</em> from overstimulation.</p> <p>Similarly, while film places the audience very much apart from the action, but videogames literally puts you <em>inside</em> of the action. This isn&rsquo;t someone else&rsquo;s story, this is <em>your</em> story. Although everyone plays the same game, the way in which you approach this game allows you to write your own story. How many people came across <a href="http://lowbrowculture.com/2010/07/12/we-deal-in-lead/">grieving suicide man</a>? How many did it while hunting beaver in Aurora Basin? How many did it having just survived an attack by a grizzly bear <em>and</em> a coyote? How many players actually came across the Mystery Site at Repentance Rock? Although I share experiences with other people who played <em>Red Dead Redemption</em>, my play-through is <em>my</em> story. While some people argue that this kind of immersion can have a negative effect, it&rsquo;s also one of the medium&rsquo;s biggest strengths.</p> <p>From a storytelling point of view, immersion is a valuable tool that <em>Red Dead Redemption</em> often uses to its full advantage. Even without the overarching narrative of the cutscenes and interactions with characters &ndash; the traditional storytelling tools used in videogames &ndash; the game tells an entire story just using atmosphere and its immersion.</p> <p>(Here&rsquo;s where I&rsquo;m going to have to get a bit spoiler-heavy. If you haven&rsquo;t played the game to see &ldquo;REDEMPTION&rdquo; flash across the screen, you might want to stop reading now).</p> <p>The opening acts of Red Dead Redemption take place in the classic image of the frontier west: one-horse towns with ramshackle, wooden buildings. Lawless places where <a href="http://www.brainygamer.com/the_brainy_gamer/2010/05/im-your-huckleberry.html">storekeepers aren&rsquo;t afraid to tell you about their hatred of the jews</a>. These towns paint a picture. Just as the town of Deadwood was as important a character to that show as Al Swearingen and Seth Bullock, the frontier towns you visit in the game are as important to the story of <em>Red Dead Redemption</em> as Nigel West Dickens and Landon Ricketts. You spend a good twenty hours in this version of west and, at the end of those twenty hours, you come to appreciate it, you come to romanticise it. Although some might accuse me of overstating my case, I&rsquo;ll say you actually develop an <em>emotional attachment</em> to this placeOn a similar note, I&rsquo;d argue that the 12 or so lonely hours you spend in the world of <em>Shadow of the Colossus</em> helps you develop an enormous bond with your only companion throughout that game &ndash; your horse, Agro &ndash; to similar emotional results.</p> <p>So, when you finally reach the town of Blackwater, the last section of the game &ndash; with its brick buildings, tea rooms and vision of modernity &ndash; you actually feel out of place. You feel as if you are, as Landon Ricketts says, a relic, an anachronism. I personally felt a genuine sense of disappointment that I&rsquo;d left the west that I&rsquo;d come to love, because as a player, you understand <em>that</em> version of the west. As a character, MacDougal might be clumsily written, but he&rsquo;s a perfect cipher for the entire town of Blackwater - underneath his facade of physiognomy, MacDougal is a racist prick - perhaps worse than the shopkeeper in Armadillo because he believes his racism is scientifically justified (the shopkeeper just hates Jews, take it or leave it). Blackwater is probably more savage than any of the frontier towns you&rsquo;ve visited &ndash; suddenly you don&rsquo;t feel as if the things you&rsquo;re forced to do are serving any sort of &lsquo;greater good&rsquo;, they&rsquo;re just plain mean &ndash; but Blackwater hides this savagery under a facade of modern brickwork and electricity.</p> <p>The experience of reuniting with your family at the end is difficult to describe to someone who hasn&rsquo;t played through to this part of the game. Having been exposed to the viciousness and brutality of Blackwater and having finally put a (somewhat unsatisfactory) end to your outlaw days, a return to a more straightforward, rural life is incredibly affecting. You might not be taking on gangs of armed bandits, but the idea of spending a few hours tending to your herd, teaching your son to shoot &ndash; the quiet life &ndash; feels like a <em>reward</em>. As I pointed out, <em>Read Dead Redemption</em> essentially apes the entire plot of <em>Unforgiven</em>, yet for everything that film did right, at no point did it make me feel any sort of emotional connection to Clint Eastwood&rsquo;s character. At no point did I have the tiniest inkling of what it meant to put down guns, leave the outlaw way of life behind and to settle down. For everything <em>Read Dead Redemption</em> did wrong, I <em>understood</em> this. I <em>felt</em> this.</p> <p>In many ways, the twenty-four years that separate <em>Kane</em> and <em>Read Dead Redemption</em> are like the hundred-something years that separate the Lumiere brothers’ <em>Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat</em> and James Cameron’s blockbuster <em>Avatar</em>. There&rsquo;s no question that Cameron trumps the Lumieres in terms of sheer spectacle, but it&rsquo;s debatable whether his film actually represents a century of storytelling progress. The level of technological sophistication in <em>Read Dead Redemption</em> is leaps and bounds above that of <em>Kane</em>, but at the same time, there can be little doubt that the level of storytelling has also improved. Granted, we&rsquo;re talking about the progression from virtually nothing to <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K9y6MYDSAww">mere cave paintings</a>, but it&rsquo;s still a demonstrable improvement. But, more hopefully, there&rsquo;s improvement in the right direction. Rather than simply aping films and filmic conventions, videogames are finding their own feet when it comes to storytelling. They are using the uniqueness of their own medium to their advantage.</p> <p>It&rsquo;s a start, right?</p> Side-Quests and Narrative https://lowbrowculture.com/post/side-quests-and-narrative/ Tue, 20 Jul 2010 22:26:41 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/side-quests-and-narrative/ <p>Almost three years on, Clint Hocking&rsquo;s <a href="http://clicknothing.typepad.com/click_nothing/2007/10/ludonarrative-d.html">Ludonarrative Dissonance in BioShock</a> is still dangerous.</p> <p>If you&rsquo;ve got five minutes, you should go read his essay now, but if you had a quick look and you&rsquo;re still all &ldquo;tl;dr&rdquo;, here&rsquo;s the short-short version of Hocking&rsquo;s argument: while the story in <em>BioShock</em> is all about freedom, choice and power, the story of player&rsquo;s actions (what Hocking calls the &rsquo;ludonarrative&rsquo; of the game) is restricted to one pre-defined path. So, despite all the talk of free will and choice, the player actually has no choice in the game since it does not provide an option for the player to do anything <em>but</em> help Atlas.</p> <p>The danger in Hocking&rsquo;s argument comes from the way that it makes you realise how prevalent this ludonarrative disconnect is within games. It&rsquo;s like the little arrow in the FedEx logo: suddenly, you can&rsquo;t see anything <em>but</em> this dissonance.</p> <p>Right now, I&rsquo;m slowly playing through <em>Mass Effect 2</em>. I say &ldquo;slowly&rdquo; because, not only am I experiencing a difficulty with the underlying story and mechanics of the game (I find that the cookie-cutter structure of the missions gets a little stale after 12 hours or so), but also because the ludonarrative dissonance in <em>Mass Effect 2</em> means I am not as fully absorbed in the game as I really wish I could be, so I can&rsquo;t do anything but slowly chip away at it.</p> <h2 id="the-problem-with-mass-effect-2">The problem with <em>Mass Effect 2</em></h2> <p><img src="http://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2010/07/mass-effect-2-logo.jpg" alt=""></p> <p>Like the majority of videogames, <em>Mass Effect 2</em> is about saving the galaxy. Huge, terrifying aliens are coming to destroy all life and - surprise! - only your character can stop it. This is the &lsquo;main quest&rsquo; of the game, and given the weight of it - the protection of all life in the galaxy - it <em>should</em> be your number one priority. Except there is nothing forcing you down this path. In fact, the game does the opposite; rather than forcing anything, it presents the player with an smorgasbord of &lsquo;side quests&rsquo; and gives the player the option of how he or she wants to play the game.</p> <p>Heavily influencing my playing of <em>Mass Effect 2</em> is my experience playing <em>The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion</em>. I powered my way through the main quest of that game in the course of a couple of evenings. I completely avoided all of the side-quests or, indeed, anything that would take me from the path that would lead to me destroying all the oblivion gates and saving the world - I mean, who has time to join guilds and fight in gladiatorial arenas for sportI did actually complete the arena missions in <em>Oblivion</em> - one of the advantages of playing through the game the way I did was that I never got to a high enough level that the monsters were particularly difficult. The arena missions, then, were an easy way to make a lot of money in the game when there&rsquo;s an evil demonic force sweeping the land? In the end, the game was fun, but after I completed it, I didn&rsquo;t see much point in playing the rest of the game. The rest of the game being where everyone says the <em>real</em> enjoyment is to be had. In effect, I sabotaged my own experience of this game.</p> <p>With this in mind, I&rsquo;m doing things differently with <em>Mass Effect 2</em>. I&rsquo;m trying to play each and every side-quest I can find. I&rsquo;m scanning planets, talking to every random stranger, endorsing each and every shop on the citadel and trying to fuck just about every character I think the game will allow me to. Don&rsquo;t get me wrong, I&rsquo;m enjoying <em>Mass Effect 2</em>. These parts of the game are actually lots of fun and amazingly relaxing ways to kill a few hours. Except they&rsquo;re completely at odds with the story. In most of the cut-scenes, my character shouts about how the reapers are coming and there&rsquo;s no time for X - the galaxy is in danger and time is running out!</p> <p>And yet, I waste hours - literally hours - scanning planets for minerals.</p> <p>To make it worse, the game actually encourages this ridiculous disconnect. For example, your crew members will occasionally come to you with a problem that present new missions. If you choose to help them, completing these missions will increase their loyalty to you. When you first speak to them about these problems, there are two conversation options: &ldquo;Sure, I&rsquo;ll help&rdquo; or &ldquo;Sorry, there&rsquo;s no time&rdquo;. Within the context of the game, I&rsquo;m left asking: why does that second choice even exist? If my hours of fucking around scanning planets has taught me anything, it&rsquo;s that there <strong>is</strong> time. Lots and lots of time. Even still, if you agree to help your crew member, this mission just becomes another side-quest which you can tackle whenever you want. There&rsquo;s nothing compelling you to go and deal with it right there (which is good, because in my game, Jacob&rsquo;s dad has been in trouble for a couple of weeks now). Theoretically, you could say &ldquo;sure, I&rsquo;ll help&rdquo;, completely ignore them and finish the main quest without any sort of punishment.</p> <p>Within individual missions, too, there&rsquo;s a lack of urgency or engagement. The game will tell you that someone is in trouble, that their life is hanging by a thread, but at the same time, the game actively encourages and rewards slow and methodical exploration. So, rather than rushing to the next area where the hostages are being held, you should first examine every nook and cranny, hack &lsquo;datapads&rsquo;, break into wall-safes, collect the ammo that has conveniently been left lying around the place. Take your time because the game, and the character who is supposedly in danger, will wait.</p> <p>In my 22+ hours of playing <em>Mass Effect 2</em>, I have come across one - ONE - mission that was time-based and had a sense of urgency. A side-mission in which the player must stop a missile from launching within a set time limit. One mission out of maybe sixty.</p> <p>I don&rsquo;t mean to single out <em>Mass Effect 2</em> with this complaint. Lots of other games suffer from the same problem. I finished the penultimate mission in the main quest of <em>Fallout 3</em> before deciding that instead of facing the climax of that game and saving everyone, I would rather wander the wasteland with my dog and giant supermutant friend, hunting out all the side-questsUnlike <em>Oblivion</em>, it used to be that when you finished <em>Fallout 3</em>, you couldn&rsquo;t go back and continue to play the game and explore the world - this was corrected in a subsequent patch. <em>The Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time</em> is another example. You <em>could</em> rescue Zelda, or you could kick some chickens for hours and hours. In fact, it&rsquo;s almost a genre staple: the RPG whose over-arching &lsquo;main&rsquo; story is less important than the abundance of side-quests.</p> <p>Other games have been more daring in their approach to the time mechanic and what it means for the narrative. <em>The Legend of Zelda: Majora&rsquo;s Mask</em>, for example, has actual, time-based consequences, constantly increasing the tension in that game. <em>Dead Rising</em> is also built around time: the entire game takes place over the course of three days, and actions occur at certain times within that world (and, unlike <em>BioShock</em>, this game <em>does</em> give the player the option of non-participation. The player can simply sit around doing nothing, waiting for the game&rsquo;s three-day timer to run out and for rescue to arrive. It&rsquo;s not a great ending, but at least it&rsquo;s catered for).</p> <p>Having been disappointed by powering my way through <em>Oblivion</em> and disappointed by taking my time with <em>Mass Effect 2</em>, how should I tackle <em>Dragon Age: Origins</em>?</p> Housekeeping https://lowbrowculture.com/post/housekeeping-2/ Tue, 20 Jul 2010 16:02:50 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/housekeeping-2/ <p>I had a bit of free time this afternoon, so I imported all my blog entries since <a href="http://lowbrowculture.com/2004/">2004</a>.</p> <p>Holy shit - has it been that long?</p> <p>Anyway, they&rsquo;re <a href="http://lowbrowculture.com/archives/">all in the archives now</a>, in case you feel like nosing around.</p> <p>Oh, and the Mel Gibson stuff? <a href="http://lowbrowculture.com/2005/12/22/mel-gibson-has-officially-lost-it/">Totally called it back in 2005</a>.</p> Recipe: Spicy Potato Wedges https://lowbrowculture.com/post/recipe-spicy-potato-wedges/ Thu, 15 Jul 2010 07:09:17 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/recipe-spicy-potato-wedges/ <p>We hosted our first movie night last night. A bunch of friends came around and, in honour of this god-awful heatwave, we turned on the air conditioning and watched <em>A Guide to Recognising Your Saints</em>.</p> <p>I made a few snacks for us to nibble on during the movie. Some were more of a success than others. The bean and cheese pate? Yeah, I probably won&rsquo;t be making that one again. By far, the biggest hit of the night were the spicy potato wedges. I know this sounds embarrassing for someone who loves junk food AND loves to cook, but this is the first time I felt like I actually <em>nailed</em> spicy potato wedges. They were spot-on. What&rsquo;s more embarrassing was how easy they were to make.</p> <p>A couple of people asked me for the recipe, so here it is.</p> <h2 id="spicy-potato-wedges">Spicy Potato Wedges</h2> <ul> <li>1kg Medium/Large Potatoes</li> <li>1tbsp Olive Oil</li> <li>2 large cloves of garlic, crushed</li> <li>1 tsp paprika</li> <li>1/2 tsp cumin</li> <li>salt and pepper</li> </ul> <ol> <li>Get the oven on hot. I put ours onto fan-assist, 200°.</li> <li>Pour some oil into a roasting tray and put it into the oven to get hot.</li> <li>Cut the potatoes into halves, then cut those halves in half again.</li> <li>Put all the ingredients into a large bowl and combine.</li> <li>Once the oven is hot enough and the oil is moving around that roasting tray, pour in the potatoes.</li> <li>Tossing occasionally, cook for about 25 minutes, or until they&rsquo;re done to your liking.</li> </ol> <p>I&rsquo;d show you a photo of what the end result looked like, but honestly, we ate the <em>fuck</em> out of those things. I didn&rsquo;t have a chance.</p> One lifetime isn’t enough for Silvio Berlusconi → http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1294084/Silvio-Berlusconi-announces-giving-Casanova-ways.html?ito=feeds-newsxml Tue, 13 Jul 2010 15:45:30 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/one-lifetime-isnt-enough-for-silvio-berlusconi/ <blockquote>Science can help us live to 120 but Silvio has asked me to help him live to 150 because he thinks that way he can solve Italy’s problems.</blockquote> Berlusconi Wants Another 75 Years https://lowbrowculture.com/quote/berlusconi-wants-another-75-years/ Tue, 13 Jul 2010 13:04:17 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/quote/berlusconi-wants-another-75-years/ <blockquote> <p>Science can help us live to 120 but Silvio has asked me to help him live to 150 because he thinks that way he can solve Italy&rsquo;s problems.</p> </blockquote> <p><a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1294084/Silvio-Berlusconi-announces-giving-Casanova-ways.html?ito=feeds-newsxml">One lifetime isn&rsquo;t enough for Silvio Berlusconi</a></p> Review: Tom Bissell - Extra Lives https://lowbrowculture.com/post/review-tom-bissell-extra-lives/ Tue, 13 Jul 2010 08:27:09 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/review-tom-bissell-extra-lives/ <p>If you&rsquo;re someone who plays videogames, have you ever tried to explain why you like videogames to a non-gamer? Horrible, right? Conversely, if you don&rsquo;t play videogames, have you ever had a videogame nerd try to explain why he or she likes videogames? Horrible, right? The problem is that videogames are a tough &lsquo;sell&rsquo;. Let&rsquo;s face it, for the most part, videogames are antisocial things that seem to bring out the worst habits in peopleI guess I should point out that it&rsquo;s not just videogames that bring out the worst qualities in people, some board games do too. I remember playing Trivial Pursuit with my wife who wouldn&rsquo;t give me a wedge because I had said &ldquo;Rock and Roll Music&rdquo; when the answer was &ldquo;Rock Music&rdquo; - this will never be forgotten in my house. I scream and shout and swear at the TV all the time when I&rsquo;m playing games. Even a seemingly &lsquo;quiet&rsquo; and slow-paced game like <em>Risk: Factions</em> has me trying to break my controller with my bare hands (something I haven&rsquo;t actually done since the days of the SNES). My wife often complains about how I remain &rsquo;twitchy&rsquo; for hours after playing certain games. In fact, she uses this as a sort of litmus test to see if I&rsquo;m lying and, instead of working or studying, I&rsquo;ve actually been shooting fools in <em>Modern Warfare 2</em>.</p> <p>For someone who has never played videogames before, watching someone behave like a petulant child is hardly going to make them want to see what all the fuss is about.</p> <p>I think that the best way to &lsquo;sell&rsquo; videogames to a non-gamer is by talking about them from an experiential point of view, talking frankly and openly about the experiences a game has provided, rather than trying to describe the whole game in 500 words. This is something that has caught on in the last few years, the idea of <a href="http://gillen.cream.org/wordpress_html/?page_id=3">New Games Journalism</a>, where dispassionate cookie-cutter descriptions of videogames with a meaningless score tacked on the end (7/10) were replaced with first-person accounts of play, focusing on the emotions evoked by certain experiences within the game. In effect, rather than trying to provide a description of the elephant as a whole, we are shifting our focus to each of the blind men&rsquo;s experiences because they have experienced this elephant in a closer, more intimate way than any simple overview could provide. In fact, I&rsquo;m going to say that videogames are one of the few mediums where we <em>can</em> consistently focus on individual experiences. For example, how many people have come across <a href="http://lowbrowculture.com/2010/07/12/we-deal-in-lead/">the suicide man in Red Dead Redemption</a>? How many people experienced the exact same story in <em>Mass Effect</em> or <em>Dragon Age</em>?</p> <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2010/07/extra-lives-225x300.jpg" alt=""></p> <p>Tom Bissell&rsquo;s <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Extra-Lives-Video-Games-Matter/dp/0307378705">Extra Lives: Why Videogames Matter</a> is one of the first books that attempt to present a first-person, emotional account of someone&rsquo;s experiences playing videogames. As I <a href="https://lowbrowculture.com/link/paste-magazines-review-of-extra-lives-why-video-games-matter/">mentioned before</a>, Paste Magazine described it as &ldquo;the first truly indispensable work of literary nonfiction about society’s most lucrative entertainment medium&rdquo;. Now, having read it, does it live up to this hype?</p> <p>I&rsquo;m sad to say: not really. I found it to be a wildly uneven book. It swings erratically between a genuinely entertaining account of the author&rsquo;s video gaming experiences, and a boring, dime-a-dozen primer on video games. For example, the chapter providing a blow-by-blow account of the opening minutes of Resident Evil might be interesting to someone who has never played the game before, but as someone who has played that game (and especially that <em>section</em> of that game) more times than he cares to admit, I found that there were very few actual insights in this chapter. I understand the desire to want your book to be as accessible to as many people as possible, but really, it just gets out of hand sometimes. Imagine writing a cookbook and explaining what a &lsquo;pot&rsquo; was, or the etymology of &lsquo;recipe&rsquo;. That&rsquo;s the kind of thing I&rsquo;m talking about. Except with videogames.</p> <p>To make things worse, the author&rsquo;s literary background (because he&rsquo;s a real, legitimate, literary author, dontchaknow?) causes the whole thing to occasionally tumble over into the ridiculous. Like <a href="http://www.mcsweeneys.net/2010/6/24krumholz.html">Roland Barthes reviewing Pac-Man</a>.</p> <p>Which is not to say it&rsquo;s all bad. There <em>are</em> moments of real genius in the book, but he rarely gives us more than just moments. Frequently, Bissell will touch on a topic or offer a profound observation only to drop it in favour of a more casual-friendly read that will appeal to a broader audience. And this is the real shame of the book. There&rsquo;s a terrific interview with Bissell on <a href="http://www.brainygamer.com/the_brainy_gamer/podcast/">the Brainy Gamer podcast</a>. I suppose the pre-defined audience of this podcast allowed him to go into a lot of detail regarding his experience with cocaine and GTA IV and the relationship between the two, why cocaine is the perfect drug to play GTA IV to. It was genuinely interesting and so I was left wondering why he couldn&rsquo;t have included these thoughts in the actual book he was promoting? It would have made the book a lot more enjoyable for both gamers and non-gamers alike.</p> <p>(Also, since this is the internet - the perfect place to pick nits - I was a little dismayed by the inconsistency in the book. At the beginning, Bissell talks about the confusion caused by the variety of names people use to talk about videogames: &ldquo;videogames&rdquo;, &ldquo;video games&rdquo; and &ldquo;video-games&rdquo;, and announces that he has settled on &ldquo;video games&rdquo;, yet he uses all three throughout the book. Would a little search-and-replace have killed him? I probably wouldn&rsquo;t have noticed if he hadn&rsquo;t explicitly addressed the issue of nomenclature himself.)</p> <p>Although the book is definitely a great start, I feel as if Bissell failed to show us &lsquo;why video games matter&rsquo;, but instead tried to explain why video games matter to <em>him</em>. Even then, I don&rsquo;t think he did a great job. For a more engaging and coherent argument on why video games matter, check out the chapter in Steven Johnson&rsquo;s <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Everything-Bad-Good-You-Actually/dp/1573223077">Everything Bad is Good for You</a>.</p> <p>Some things to check out if you want some really great examples of the kind of &ldquo;New Games Journalism&rdquo; that I felt Bissell was going for:</p> <ul> <li><a href="http://www.alwaysblack.com/blackbox/bownigger.html">Bow Nigger</a>. Arguably the first example of &ldquo;New Games Journalism&rdquo;</li> <li><a href="http://www.idlethumbs.net">The Idle Thumbs Podcast</a>, who spend much of their time talking about the ridiculous and fun things they get up to in games. They make it sound so appealing, it&rsquo;s hard not to want to join in and see what the fuss is about.</li> <li>Ben Abraham&rsquo;s <a href="http://drgamelove.blogspot.com/2009/12/permanent-death-complete-saga.html">Permanent Death in Far Cry 2</a> is everything I think Bissell&rsquo;s FC2 chapter wishes it was.</li> <li><a href="http://aliceandkev.wordpress.com/">Alice and Kev</a> - a hilarious and touching exploration of homelessness in The Sims 3</li> <li><a href="http://www.gamersquarter.com/">The Gamer&rsquo;s Quarter</a> - a terrific series of &lsquo;zines. I&rsquo;m genuinely sad that they&rsquo;ve stopped publishing.</li> </ul> We Deal in Lead https://lowbrowculture.com/post/we-deal-in-lead/ Mon, 12 Jul 2010 15:10:17 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/we-deal-in-lead/ <p><img src="http://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2010/07/Kane2.gif" alt=""></p> <p>I&rsquo;ve been thinking a lot about <em><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kane_(video_game)">Kane</a></em>, an early wild west game that came out on the Commodore 64 in the mid-80s. Actually, I doubt if it even counts as a &lsquo;game&rsquo; by today&rsquo;s standards. Really it was just four mini-games - shooting birds (or rather, &lsquo;birdies&rsquo;), riding a horse to the right, a shoot out, and then riding a horse to the left. The game wasn&rsquo;t particularly flashy, nor was the narrative wrapper that supposedly connected these mini-games (essentially, the plot of <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0044706/">High Noon</a> - &ldquo;Kane&rdquo; being the name of Gary Cooper&rsquo;s character in that movie).</p> <p>Despite the flaws, I fucking loved that game.</p> <p>I loved it because I was 10, and this was a game where I could pretend to be a cowboy. And when you’re a ten year old boy, all you want to do is to be a cowboy. For me, the small numbers of actions in the game actually added to the effect. I mean, what the hell else did cowboys do but shoot things and ride horses? That was just me, though. The Spectrum magazine, <em>Crash</em>, criticised the game for the limited amount of things you can do in the game, saying &ldquo;<a href="http://www.worldofspectrum.org/showmag.cgi?mag=Crash/Issue33/Pages/Crash3300114.jpg">it would be fun if there were about 10 more sections to battle through</a>&rdquo;.</p> <p><img src="http://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2010/07/Red-Dead-Redemption-new-14.jpg" alt=""></p> <p>Playing through Rock Star’s <em>Red Dead Redemption</em>, I couldn’t help being reminded of <em>Kane</em> - one of the first games I ever played and definitely the first cowboy game I ever played - which then got me thinking about how far videogames have come. If you were to jump in a time machine and show this game to my ten-year old self (on a 60&quot; HD LCD TV, natch), I can guarantee you I would have quite literally shit my pants.</p> <p>While Kane was mostly played in static screens, with just four types of activity in the entire gameWell, two, if you want to be persnickety about the qualitative distinctions between riding left instead of right and shooting birds instead of dudes, there’s no shortage of activity in <em>Red Dead Redemption</em>. In my almost 35 hours of playing RDR, I never once felt bored or like I had nothing to do. There were always animals to hunt, outlaws to kill (and loot), horses to lasso and women to hogtie and place in front of a fast-approaching train. I love the amount and variety of possibilities that the game throws at the player. I&rsquo;ve finished the story and I still have things to do, such as killing grizzly bears with my hunting knife.</p> <p>What I love most about the Red Dead Redemption is the way it feels like a real, living world. I was always stumbling across little things, micro-stories that felt like they were happening completely independently of me and my actions. For example, while riding around Aurora Basin, hunting for bears, I spotted a man kneeling on the ground. I rode closer and saw that he was kneeling next to the body of a dead woman and bawling his eyes out. As I stood there, watching him cry, he took out a gun and shot himself in the head. I was completely stunned by this. I didn’t know what to do.</p> <p>(I got off my horse and looted his body.)</p> <p>I&rsquo;m not particularly proud of my actions. All I&rsquo;ll say is that we all have our own ways of dealing with grief and kleptomania is mine. But let&rsquo;s just think about this: the amount of effort and number of man-hours put into crafting this one tiny, incidental scene in <em>Red Dead Redemption</em> probably outweighs the total amount of effort and number of man-hours put into the entirety of the making of <em>Kane</em>. And this was just a background action, something that would (apparently) happen whether I’d seen it or not. I could have missed it. I could have just as easily chosen to ride past the man without checking it out. It didn’t need to be there, but Rockstar put it in there because it fleshed out this world.</p> <p>It&rsquo;s easy to be jaded about these things (and I definitely felt a bit disappointed the second time I came across the suicide-man) but my goodness - we&rsquo;ve really come a long way. No wonder my ten-year old self would have shit his pants.</p> Conan the Barbarian: The Musical https://lowbrowculture.com/video/conan-the-barbarian-the-musical/ Fri, 02 Jul 2010 21:40:47 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/video/conan-the-barbarian-the-musical/ <p>I still think Conan the Barbarian is one of the greatest movies of the 80s.</p> The Wizarding World of Harry Potter → http://www.universalorlando.com/harrypotter/ Mon, 21 Jun 2010 20:41:03 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/the-wizarding-world-of-harry-potter/ <p>I&rsquo;ve spent a good portion of today checking out videos from <a href="http://www.universalorlando.com/harrypotter/">The Wizarding World of Harry Potter</a>, which just opened in Orlando. Sure, there&rsquo;s rollercoasters and all that junk, but what I love is the mise-en-scene of the whole thing. The attention to detail. Mobility scooters aside, Hogsmeade looks perfect.</p> <p>The Ollivander&rsquo;s spiel made me wish I was 13 years old again (the 31-year old me couldn&rsquo;t help but see the genius of the scam behind it - what parent is <strong>not</strong> going to buy a wand for their child after it has &lsquo;chosen them&rsquo;).</p> <p>The <a href="http://www.youtube.com/user/AttractionsMagazine">AttractionsMagazine</a> youtube channel has tons more, if you&rsquo;re also a giant man-child and fancy wasting a couple of hours too.</p> Rome Recommendations https://lowbrowculture.com/post/rome-recommendations/ Mon, 21 Jun 2010 15:05:07 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/rome-recommendations/ <p>View <a href="http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&amp;hl=en&amp;msa=0&amp;msid=111693500858716144433.0004899d23e39334da2a5&amp;ll=41.895888,12.478838&amp;spn=0.022361,0.060081&amp;z=14&amp;source=embed">Rome Recommendations</a> in a larger map</p> <h2 id="things-to-see">Things to See</h2> <p><strong>St. Peter&rsquo;s Basilica</strong><br> Okay, it&rsquo;s a bit lame and cliched, but this is still a huge part of Roman history that it&rsquo;s hard to ignore. For me, it still towers above the colosseum as an attraction. <a href="http://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/rick-steves-italy-audio-tours/id272230438">Search iTunes for Rick Steves Rome Podcasts</a> - he&rsquo;s got some audio guides for some of the bigger sights, like St. Peter&rsquo;s, the Pantheon, the Forum etc. Cheaper (and less lame) than joining a tour.</p> <p><strong>Pantheon</strong><br> It was 32 degrees out today. On days like this, it&rsquo;s fantastic to be able to duck into the Pantheon. I&rsquo;ve no idea of the science behind it, but somehow this place stays very cool without air conditioning. Plus, you&rsquo;ll be near <strong>Tazza d&rsquo;Oro</strong>, which is one of the better coffee shops in Rome. Try their granita, which is like a coffee slush puppy. Get it with whipped cream and then spend the next few minutes mixing it all together to make a coffee milkshake. You&rsquo;ll be buzzing for hours.</p> <p><strong>Musem of the Holy Souls in Purgatory</strong><br> I only read about this recently on <a href="http://atlasobscura.com/globe/europe/italy/roma">atlasobscura.com</a>, so I haven&rsquo;t had a chance to check it out yet. It&rsquo;s a museum of relics that were &lsquo;burned&rsquo; by souls in purgatory. It all sounds a bit cheesy, but still pretty interesting. It&rsquo;s also in/near one of the few (neo-)gothic churches in Rome.</p> <p><strong>Capuchin Church of the Immaculate Conception</strong> - Via Vittorio Veneto, 27<br> I&rsquo;ve been to the catacombs in Paris, and I&rsquo;ve thought &ldquo;what kind of sick fuck decides to arrange skulls in the shape of a heart?&rdquo; Then I visited this place and it beats the pants off anything Paris has to offer in terms of dementedness. Bones of more than 4,000 monks have been arranged into a series of scenes and dioramas, where EVERYTHING is made of bones. They even have chandeliers made of bones. Chairs made of bones. Light switches made of bones. Very macabre. If there was ever a goth Disneyland, this is it.</p> <p><strong>Church of San Clemente</strong>, Via Labicana<br> If you ever want proof that Rome is a &rsquo;living&rsquo; history, you should go to visit San Clemente. It&rsquo;s a twelfth-century church, built on a fourth-century basilica, built on a pagan temple. They&rsquo;ve all been really well preserved and it&rsquo;s another fantastic place to duck in to avoid the mid-afternoon heat, especially if you&rsquo;re already up that area checking out the Colosseum.</p> <h2 id="to-eatdrink">To eat/drink</h2> <p><strong>Le Mani in Pasta</strong> - Via Dei Genovesi, 37<br> This is more of an upmarket pasta joint. It&rsquo;s a little more expensive than the normal places (still ridiculously cheap though), but believe me, if you&rsquo;ve got something to celebrate, this is worth it. It&rsquo;s like a once-in-a-while treat for us. Very seafood heavy. When I go there, I usually get the carpaccio of swordfish with truffles, then the fettucine with ricotta and pancetta (if you get this, immediately mix everything up on your plate, trust me) and then if I&rsquo;m feeling particularly hungry or decadent, I&rsquo;d get maybe a fillet with green pepper sauce. Also, their desserts are great - the chocolate cake is my favourite, closely followed by their amaro semifreddo.</p> <p><strong>Da Augusto</strong> - Piazza de&rsquo; Renzi, 15<br> Classic Roman <em>trattoria</em>, filled with grumpy waiters. Get there early (8pm) to avoid the lines, because seriously, this is one of my favourite places in Rome. Their stuff is cheap, and tastes great. They don&rsquo;t always give you a menu, so here&rsquo;s my advice - get the <em>pasta con cacio e pepe</em> (cheese and pepper) to start (mix it up a bit to get the flavours going), then follow it with either the <em>strachetti e rugola</em> (thin slices of beef with rocket) or, my favourite, the <em>involtini</em> (rolled veal in a tomato sauce). Actually, get two <em>involtini</em>. You&rsquo;ll thank me later.</p> <p><strong>Roma Sparita</strong> - Piazza di Santa Cecilia<br> So good, I had to give it <a href="http://lowbrowculture.com/2011/02/10/roma-sparita/">a blog post of its own</a>. Currently my favourite restaurant in all of Rome.</p> <p><strong>Da Enzo</strong> - Via dei Vascellari, 29<br> Another trattoria. Extremely popular with the Romans (again, turn up early to avoid the lines), but to be honest, I&rsquo;ve never really seen the appeal. They do a fair carbonara, but I could really take or leave this place.</p> <p><strong>Da I 2 Ciccioni</strong> - Vicolo del Cedra, 3<br> &ldquo;The Two Fat Lads&rdquo; - it&rsquo;s less a restaurant and more just a bunch of tables on the street outside someone&rsquo;s kitchen, along with their grumpy old dog, Aldo. They do a set menu for a set price (which varies depending on how many courses you can manage). I suppose it could be seen as a little &lsquo;gimmicky&rsquo;, but their fagoli are too good to be very cynical about. Recently got <a href="http://travel.nytimes.com/2009/03/22/travel/22choice.html">written up in the New York Times</a>, which means it&rsquo;s probably going to be unbearable now.</p> <p><strong>Dar Poeta</strong> - Vicolo del Bologna 45<br> A pizzeria. Apparently these guys have a &lsquo;secret&rsquo; blend of ingredients that they use to make their pizzas. I say it&rsquo;s a crock of shit because their pizzas are completely unremarkable. BUT, leave plenty of room for their speciality dessert - a Ricotta &amp; Nutella calzone. Terrific stuff.</p> <p><strong>Fame Nera</strong> - Via di San Francesco a Ripa, 29<br> More of a lunch/snack kind of place. Great sandwiches, but slooooo-o-o-w service. More useful for expats because it&rsquo;s one of the few places you can get a bacon cheeseburger with actual bacon and ACTUAL cheddar (a rare commodity in this town).</p> <p><strong>Fior Di Luna</strong> - Via della Lungaretta 96<br> Some ice cream shops talk about how all their stuff is home made and there&rsquo;s no preservatives. This place takes this to the next level - you can&rsquo;t even get a cone here, because it&rsquo;s impossible to make those without preservatives, so it&rsquo;s just paper cups. This is probably the best place in Trastevere for ice cream. You can still see the bits of vanilla in their vanilla ice cream. We also refer to this as the &ldquo;creative commons ice cream place&rdquo; because they&rsquo;ve got a boner for open source.</p> <p><strong>Freni e Frizioni</strong> - Via del Politeama, 4-6<br> Probably the closest thing Rome will get to a hipster-type dive bar - a converted garage. But what really sells this place is the sheer buzz of people and the amazing apertivi. Just come along, buy a drink (Beers: 5, RIDICULOUSLY STRONG, ON-YOUR ASS DRUNK cocktails: 7) and help yourself from their buffet of amazing veggie treats. The piazza outside is also a great place to do some street drinking and some people watching. Rumour has it that Vincent Cassel and Monica Bellucci own an apartment above this place, which seems like a pretty good seal of approval.</p> <p><strong>I Suppli</strong> - Via di San Francesco a Ripa (opposite Fame Nera)<br> Again, a snack kind of place. Their pizza is good (especially the <em>marinara</em> and <em>fungi e quattro formaggi</em>), but the real draw of this place is their <em>suppli</em>. Oh boy. Deep-fried rice balls in a tomato sauce with some mozarella in the middle. My favourite guilty pleasure, and this place does the best I&rsquo;ve had in Rome.</p> <p><strong>Ma che siete venuti a fa</strong> - Via Benedetta 25<br> Around the corner from Dar Poeta is this tiny, tiny pub that serves a ton of nice beers. Very popular with students. There&rsquo;s a downstairs, but no-one ever goes there. They just hang out on the street looking cool. The name translates to &ldquo;But what have you come to do?&rdquo; which is slightly ominous.</p> <p><strong>Pizzeria Ai Marmi</strong> - Viale Trastevere 53<br> This is our local pizzeria. They&rsquo;re about middle of the road in terms of price, and service, but their pizzas are pretty good. They also do pretty good suppli and baccala (battered salt cod). I&rsquo;m not exactly raving about this place because they do nothing exceptional, but they&rsquo;re extremely consistent. And they feel like home now.</p> <p><strong>Gonfio/Soppieno</strong> - Via Borgo Pio, 149<br> This is a great little sandwich/salad shop halfway up Borgo Pio (the main borgo up bear St. Peter&rsquo;s). Their prices are reasonable and the food is always fantastic. Their &lsquo;house&rsquo; sauce is a bizarre spicy sauce that, strangely for Rome, is actually quite spicy. Great if you want to picnic after a run through St. Peter&rsquo;s.</p> <p><strong>Latteria</strong> - Via Borgo Pio, 48<br> Almost across the road from Gonfio is the Latteria. It&rsquo;s one of the few bars in this area that aren&rsquo;t actively trying to rip you off at every turn. Great cornetti too. If you&rsquo;re feeling particularly indulgent, go for the white chocolate.</p> <p><strong>Venerina</strong> - Via Vitelleschi Giovanni, 44<br> Again, another good bar that isn&rsquo;t trying to rip you off. This one is slightly better than the Latteria because it&rsquo;s slightly bigger, has a wider range of food, does the best cornetti in the area, and best of all, isn&rsquo;t on Borgo Pio, so it&rsquo;s less likely to be crowded. Also, this was the only bar open in the area through the month of August.</p> <p><strong>The Perfect Bun</strong> - Largo del Teatro Valle, 4<br> When you need a break from Italian food, this is a great American-style restaurant. Really good burgers, great nachos (with a fantastic homemade salsa), and decently-priced, cold pints (pints! Not 40cl mockeries!) of Carlsberg. Best of all, they do an amazing buffet-style Sunday brunch. It costs about €25, but it&rsquo;s a lifesaver when you&rsquo;re hung over and need some serious soakage.</p> <p><strong>Sweety Rome</strong> - Via Milano, 48<br> With the demise of Josephine&rsquo;s Bakery (RIP!), there are precious few places to go and get a decent cupcake or carrot cake in Rome. Hooray for Sweety Rome! Great desserts, and another place for a decent buffet-style Sunday brunch. Might want to phone ahead if you fancy the brunch.</p> Dangers of Self-googling → http://adrianmole.wikia.com Sun, 20 Jun 2010 23:14:50 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/dangers-of-self-googling/ <blockquote> <blockquote> <blockquote> </blockquote> <blockquote> <blockquote> <p><a href="http://adrianmole.wikia.com/wiki/Sharon_Bott">Sharon Bott</a></p> </blockquote> </blockquote> <blockquote> <blockquote> <p>Adrian Mole’s first ‘lover’ and mother of Glen Bott (Adrian’s illegitamate son). Adrian and Sharon have nothing in common and were merely intrested in each other for sex. Sharon represents the underclass of Britain.</p> </blockquote> </blockquote> </blockquote> > > <blockquote> <p>My name is Sharon Bott. I was born in Oadby Leicester. I have never met anyone named Adrian Mole. My eldest child is the son of his french father. Sue Townsend did not ask me if she could use my name and if she had done so I would not have allowed her. She has defamed my name i am upset and emmbarrassed. and would sue if i could find a solicitor to help me, «email»@live.com.91.XXX.XXX.XXX 13:15, May 7, 2010 (UTC)</p> </blockquote> </blockquote> One day at a time https://lowbrowculture.com/post/one-day-at-a-time/ Sun, 20 Jun 2010 20:33:09 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/one-day-at-a-time/ <p>Let&rsquo;s try a little thought experiment, shall we?</p> <p>Imagine you worked in a shop and that sold both hard liquor and weapons. Let&rsquo;s not ask why. Now, imagine a man comes in looking depressed and wants to buy a bottle of vodka and a handgun. Would you sell them to him?</p> <p>Now, let&rsquo;s imagine you worked in a fast food restaurant. A McDonalds. Or better still, a KFC. Imagine a morbidly obese man comes wheezing in in and orders three <a href="http://www.kfc.com/doubledown/">Double Downs</a>. Would you sell them to him?</p> <p>David A. Kessler&rsquo;s <em><a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/End-Overeating-control-insatiable-appetite/dp/014104781X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;s=books&amp;qid=1277065170&amp;sr=8-1">The End of Overeating</a></em> is a fascinating book. Especially if - like me - you&rsquo;re overweight. He talks about the science behind food, and what drives us to eat the shit we do. He makes a terrific analogy, a connection I&rsquo;d never made before. He says that for some people who are wired a certain way, struggling with a food problems can be like an alcoholic trying to come to terms with their own addiction. If you&rsquo;re trying to kick it, you need to take it one day at a time.</p> <p>As someone who has struggled with their weight for a long time, this a terrific way of looking at it, and even this one little sentence has had a profound effect on me, in terms of the shite I put into my body. At the same time, it underlines the way in which obesity and food problems in general are seen as &lsquo;socially acceptable&rsquo; in a way in which other addictions - drink, drugs - are not. Or rather, they&rsquo;re not seen as addictions or significant problems at all. Consider the semantic gulf between a &lsquo;glutton&rsquo; and an &lsquo;addict&rsquo;. One implies &lsquo;Conscious&rsquo; while the other implies &lsquo;subconscious&rsquo;. &lsquo;Active&rsquo; versus &lsquo;passive&rsquo;. &lsquo;Choice&rsquo; versus &lsquo;compulsion&rsquo;.</p> <p>To highlight this, there&rsquo;s my wife who is incredibly supportive of me, despite the sometimes incredibly stupid things I do. Her relationship to food is very different compared to mine. She cannot wait until all food comes in pill form and it no longer has any significant role in her life. When she saw I was reading a book called &lsquo;The End of Overeating&rsquo;, she snorted in derision. For her, reading to lose weight is like <a href="http://everything2.com/title/Writing+about+music+is+like+dancing+about+architecture">dancing about architecture</a>. If you want to lose weight, just eat less, dummy.</p> <p>That&rsquo;s what I&rsquo;m trying to do. But I have to take it one day at a time.</p> Gabe and Max's Guide to Man Style https://lowbrowculture.com/video/gabe-and-maxs-guide-to-man-style/ Fri, 18 Jun 2010 09:34:30 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/video/gabe-and-maxs-guide-to-man-style/ <p>Bonus video: <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PPsUmhqncAg">Gabe and Max&rsquo;s Internet Thing</a></p> Paradox of Choice https://lowbrowculture.com/post/1369802326/ Fri, 18 Jun 2010 00:15:45 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/1369802326/ <p>In his most recent article, John Gruber once again discusses <a href="http://daringfireball.net/2010/06/first">the difference in philosophy between the iPhone and Android</a>. He talks about how Apple doesn&rsquo;t include features without a compelling reason for them to exist. By way of example, he talks about the front-facing camera on the iPhone 4. Although Android devices have had this feature for a while, Android doesn&rsquo;t provide a standard, non-trivial way to use it.</p> <p>He quotes <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/17/technology/personaltech/17pogue.html">David Pogue&rsquo;s experiences trying to get video-calling to work</a>. Pogue says</p> <blockquote> <p>To make video calling work, you have to install an app yourself: either Fring or Qik. But we never did get Fring to work, and Qik requires people you call to press a Talk button when they want to speak. The whole thing is confusing and, to use the technical term, iffy.</p> </blockquote> <p>Ignoring the &lsquo;iffy&rsquo; implementation, something that made me sigh was the &ldquo;multiple apps&rdquo; aspect. Essentially, Android users must choose between Fring and Qik for their video chats. Fring and Qik are also incompatible with each other, so if you&rsquo;re using an Android phone and you want to video-call another Android user, you must first agree on which of these two appsAssuming there <em>are</em>, in fact, only two to choose from you are going to use. It&rsquo;s not simply a matter of picking up your phone and video-calling the other person. You must first phone or text with them and say &ldquo;Hey, let&rsquo;s Fring!&ldquo;if you&rsquo;re okay with enverbening a proper noun before actually firing up the app (and hoping it actually works). Can you imagine if voice-calls worked the same way, that you both needed to be running the same app to make normal phone calls to one another?</p> <p>This reminded me of a recent article by Cory Doctorow in which he summarised his experiences with the latest version of Ubuntu. He talks about how he needed to edit some sound.</p> <blockquote> <p>When I need to do something new &ndash; edit audio, say &ndash; I go to the software center and look at what apps exist for that purpose, select some highly rated ones, download them, try them, keep the one I like (all the software is free, so this is easy).</p> </blockquote> <p>While Cory lists this as a positive, this is precisely why I stopped using Linux on the desktop. Rather than focusing on making one particular app for a particular function and making it <em>great</em>, it seems as if every developer in the Linux/Open Source community has their own idea about how best to reinvent the wheel. And so, rather than having a standard piece of software for audio editing that comes as standard on each installation &ndash; as OSX gives us Garageband &ndash; it&rsquo;s left up to the user to find out which one suits them best. Ubuntu currently gives 66 results for &lsquo;apt-cache search audio edit&rsquo;, each one a software package that scratches a different itch. And while there&rsquo;s a certain pleasure in taking the time to install and evaluate each one of these 66 pieces of softwareWhich makes me think of JWZ&rsquo;s terrifically curmudgeonly line, &ldquo;<a href="http://www.jwz.org/doc/linux.html">Linux is only free if your time has no value</a>&rdquo;, I would say that few of us have that luxury, and we&rsquo;d rather just edit the audio and be done. After all, the editing is the important thing, not the software you use.</p> <p>I would much rather a well-curated <a href="http://mrgan.tumblr.com/post/653708588/the-walled-garden">walled garden</a> instead, thankyouverymuch.</p> Joystiq's Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood Gallery → Thu, 17 Jun 2010 17:19:41 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/joystiq-s-assassin-s-creed-brotherhood-gallery/ <p><a href="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2010/06/acbspromecolliseumpassionplay.jpg"><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2010/06/acbspromecolliseumpassionplay-1024x576.jpg" alt=""></a></p> <p>I&rsquo;ve said it before, but I&rsquo;ll say it again: I am ridiculously excited about playing Assassin&rsquo;s Creed: Brotherhood, set in renaissance Rome. The idea of shanking someone outside the Pantheon (in a videogame, of course) seems really cathartic.</p> Joystiq's Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood Gallery → http://www.joystiq.com/photos/assassins-creed-brotherhood-single-player/#/0' Thu, 17 Jun 2010 17:19:41 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/joystiqs-assassins-creed-brotherhood-gallery/ <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2010/06/acbspromecolliseumpassionplay.jpg" alt="Assassin&rsquo;s Creed Brotherhood"></p> <p>I&rsquo;ve said it before, but I&rsquo;ll say it again: I am ridiculously excited about playing Assassin&rsquo;s Creed: Brotherhood, set in renaissance Rome. The idea of shanking someone outside the Pantheon (in a videogame, of course) seems really cathartic.</p> Paste Magazine's Review of Extra Lives: Why Video Games Matter → Thu, 17 Jun 2010 16:46:19 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/paste-magazine-s-review-of-extra-lives-why-video-games-matter/ <p>New book by Tom Bissell, he of coke-and-GTA fame. Paste describe the book as “the first truly indispensable work of literary nonfiction about society’s most lucrative entertainment medium”. Straight to my Amazon wishlist.</p> Paste Magazine's Review of Extra Lives: Why Video Games Matter → http://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2010/06/tom-bissell-extra-lives-why-video-games-matter.html Thu, 17 Jun 2010 16:46:19 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/paste-magazines-review-of-extra-lives-why-video-games-matter/ <p>New book by Tom Bissell, he of coke-and-GTA fame. Paste describe the book as “the first truly indispensable work of literary nonfiction about society’s most lucrative entertainment medium”. Straight to my Amazon wishlist.</p> Star Wars: Kinect https://lowbrowculture.com/video/700525897/ Tue, 15 Jun 2010 09:59:41 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/video/700525897/ <div class="embed video-player"> <iframe class="youtube-player" type="text/html" width="640" height="385" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/SOiTfLQdgNU" allowfullscreen frameborder="0"> </iframe> </div> <p>Another new piece of console tech, another god-awful Star Wars license. Did anyone involved in the development of this ACTUALLY think they&rsquo;d hit gold with this?!</p> No Content Found https://lowbrowculture.com/video/679389525/ Wed, 09 Jun 2010 07:18:57 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/video/679389525/ <p>Much as I liked the 1995 Paul W.S. Anderson movie, THIS is the Mortal Kombat movie I want to see. (via <a href="http://fidgit.com/archives/2010/06/what_happens_when_mortal_komba.php">Fidgit</a>)</p> No Content Found https://lowbrowculture.com/video/676024527/ Tue, 08 Jun 2010 08:49:48 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/video/676024527/ <p>30-minute short film created inside Red Dead Redemption directed by John Hillcoat, who previously directed The Road and The Proposition.</p> Music for dogs, television for cats https://lowbrowculture.com/post/music-for-dogs-television-for-cats/ Sat, 05 Jun 2010 13:44:00 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/music-for-dogs-television-for-cats/ <p><a href="http://uk.reuters.com/article/idUKTRE6540UQ20100605">Lou Reed has lost his fucking mind</a>:</p> <blockquote> <p>It&rsquo;s a dog&rsquo;s life. Well, it was on Saturday when the forecourt of the Sydney Opera House came alive with the sound of high pitched music and howling dogs at the world&rsquo;s first concert performed for dogs.</p> <p>The concert was the brain child of acclaimed U.S. music artist Laurie Anderson and rock legend husband Lou Reed. Anderson wrote the 20-minute piece &ldquo;Music for Dogs&rdquo; describing it as &ldquo;an inter-species social gathering on a scale never seen before in Australia&rdquo;.</p> <p>&ldquo;It was really so fantastic. All the dogs were really grooving on the music. They really seemed to enjoy themself,&rdquo; Anderson told Reuters.</p> <p>Big dogs, small dogs, dogs dressed up for the occasion and even a 15-year-old arthritic dog, whose owner pushed him in a makeshift dog wheelchair, attended the world&rsquo;s first ever outdoor performance staged for dogs.</p> </blockquote> <p>Reading this, it&rsquo;s pretty hard not to be reminded of Robert Mitchum in <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0096061/">Scrooged</a></p> <blockquote> <p>Preston: Do you know how many cats there are in this country?</p> <p>_Frank: <em>N-N…no, mmm…I don&rsquo;t have…no.</em></p> <p>Preston: Twenty-seven million. D&rsquo;you know how many dogs?</p> <p>Frank: <em>In America…?</em></p> <p>Preston: Forty-eight million. We spend four billion on pet food alone.</p> <p>Frank: <em>Four…!?</em></p> <p>Preston: I have a study which shows that cats and dogs are beginning to watch television. If these scientists are right, we should &gt; start programming right now. Within years, they could become steady viewers.</p> <p>Frank: <em>Programming…for cats?</em></p> <p>Preston: Walk with me, Frank. I&rsquo;m not saying build a whole show around animals. All I&rsquo;m suggesting is we occasionally throw in a little pet appeal. Some birds, a squirrel…</p> <p>Frank: <em>Mice?</em></p> <p>Preston: Mice, exactly. You remember Kojak and the lollipops? What about a cop that dangles string? That&rsquo;s his gimmick. Lots of quick, random actions.</p> </blockquote> Assassin's Creed 2 Screenshots https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/assassins-creed-2-screenshots/ Sat, 05 Jun 2010 12:26:10 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/assassins-creed-2-screenshots/ <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/tumblr/666327163.jpg" alt=""></p> <p>Really excited for an Assassin&rsquo;s Creed set in renaissance Rome</p> Always Look on the Bright Side of Life https://lowbrowculture.com/post/always-look-on-the-bright-side-of-life/ Tue, 25 May 2010 15:55:18 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/always-look-on-the-bright-side-of-life/ <p>So the economy is shit, everyone&rsquo;s broke and miserable. Good times, huh?</p> <p>When the Greek government announced their austerity measures, the people of Greece with demonstrations and rioting in which at least <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/in-athens-the-day-was-calm-then-came-night-1965609.html">100 people were arrested, 12 injured and three killed</a>.</p> <p>In Ireland, however, we had <a href="http://dirtylook.wordpress.com/">a national &ldquo;dirty look&rdquo; at the Dail day</a>. It&rsquo;s stuff like this that makes me genuinely proud to be Irish.</p> Vaffan Cola https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/vaffan-cola/ Fri, 07 May 2010 17:43:08 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/vaffan-cola/ <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2010/05/Image005-600x450.jpg" alt=""></p> <p>I swear, Italy is getting more like <a href="http://gta.wikia.com/Category:Businesses_in_GTA_San_Andreas">Grand Theft Auto</a> every day.</p> There are no words. https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/there-are-no-words/ Mon, 03 May 2010 22:01:50 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/there-are-no-words/ <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2010/05/200906061208-450x600.jpg" alt=""></p> Barack and Gary https://lowbrowculture.com/post/barack-and-gary/ Thu, 29 Apr 2010 22:51:51 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/barack-and-gary/ <p>In the same vein as <a href="http://selleckwaterfallsandwich.tumblr.com/">Selleck Waterfall Sandwich</a> and <a href="http://niccageaseveryone.blogspot.com/">Nick Cage as Everyone</a>, there&rsquo;s <a href="http://barackandgary.tumblr.com/">Barack and Gary, BFFS</a>, &ldquo;Wherein actor Gary Busey is photoshopped into the official White House Flickr stream&rdquo;.</p> <p><a href="http://barackandgary.tumblr.com/"><img src="http://www.lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2010/04/tumblr_l1klzcJ7kK1qbxsvro1_r1_500.jpg" alt=""></a></p> <p>When it&rsquo;s done right, it&rsquo;s <em>beautiful</em>.</p> Killing More Efficiently, Thanks to Video Games → http://www.gamepro.com/article/features/214966/killing-more-efficiently/ Tue, 27 Apr 2010 10:18:00 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/killing-more-efficiently-feature-story-from-gamepro/ <p>Why does Sam Fisher hold his gun like that in Splinter Cell Conviction? Because in a real-world situation, it increases your kill rate from 5% to 90%. Chilling.</p> Jersey Shore 2: The Situationing https://lowbrowculture.com/post/jersey-shore-2-the-situationing/ Tue, 27 Apr 2010 10:03:03 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/jersey-shore-2-the-situationing/ <p><img src="pictures/2010/04/moresituation-600x450.jpg" alt=""></p> <p>Filming for the second series of <em>Jersey Shore</em> is currently under way in Miami and, by from everything I&rsquo;ve read, it&rsquo;s been a total disaster. MTV made the decision to stick with the cast from the first season whose reputation is preceding them. Which means <a href="http://www.nypost.com/p/pagesix/miami_clubs_bar_jersey_jLWjzoT4hk6J9uoTwNi6eO">they&rsquo;re getting turfed out of the Miami hot-spots</a> because the club owners know exactly what kind of bullshit shenanigans follow these knuckleheads wherever they go.</p> <p>If you ask me, they should have gone for a whole new cast for the second season. It&rsquo;s like <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borat:_Cultural_Learnings_of_America_for_Make_Benefit_Glorious_Nation_of_Kazakhstan">Borat</a> or <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Kaye#Dennis_Pennis">Dennis Pennis</a> or whatever - once these characters get a little famous, people stop falling for their pranks and the whole joke is over. It&rsquo;s the same with <em>Jersey Shore</em>. The first season was a bunch of no-name guidos getting into the kind of trouble you can imagine every guido gets into. Now we&rsquo;ve got a bunch of people jumped up on the sense of their own fame surrounded by people who know exactly who they are. Everyone is in on the joke. It&rsquo;s not funny any more.</p> <p>At the same time though, I can see why they decided to stick with the same cast. This was a perfect storm of ridiculous, over-the-top personalities. With J-WOWW, Snooki, The Situation and Pauly D (and to a lesser extent, Ronnie, Vinnie and Angelina), MTV managed to capture lightning in a bottle. I doubt they could repeat it again if they tried.</p> <p>Wanna know what I think? Of course you do! I think that if you absolutely had to stick with the original cast, rather than sending them to Miami, a better idea would have been to pack them all up and ship them off to Italy.</p> <p>Can you imagine how incredible that would be? I&rsquo;m getting tingly just thinking about it. They&rsquo;d come face-to-face with <em>real</em> Italians. It&rsquo;s would be an amazing fish-out-of-water story, as they have their ideas about what it means to be Italian both crushed <em>and</em> affirmed. Possibly at the same time! Not only that, but MTV Italia only started showing <em>Jersey Shore</em> last month, so these kids aren&rsquo;t nearly as famous in Italy as they are in the States. They could wander around, jumped up on the sense of their own fame, <em>but with near-complete anonymity</em>.</p> <p>Ah well. Maybe Season 3?</p> El Bulli no longer #1 restaurant → http://www.noma.dk/ Tue, 27 Apr 2010 08:43:18 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/el-bulli-no-longer-1-restaurant/ <p>SUCK IT, EL BULLI - San Pellegrino announce the World&rsquo;s Best Restaurants 2010. New winner: Danish restaurant, Noma.</p> Author vs Author → Fri, 23 Apr 2010 06:34:27 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/author-vs-author/ <blockquote> <p>Every time I read &lsquo;Pride and Prejudice,&rsquo; I want to dig her up and hit her over the skull with her own shin-bone.</p> </blockquote> <p><a href="http://www.examiner.com/x-562-Book-Examiner~y2010m4d16-The-50-best-author-vs-author-putdowns-of-all-time">Mark Twain on Jane Austen</a></p> Death of the Game Manual https://lowbrowculture.com/post/death-of-the-game-manual/ Thu, 22 Apr 2010 14:48:50 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/death-of-the-game-manual/ <p><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/thrillho/4390195093/"><img src="http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4005/4390195093_92419d69e8.jpg" alt="IMG_0213.jpg"></a></p> <p>Ubisoft have announced that they are <a href="http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/green-ubisoft-ditching-paper-manuals">ditching paper manuals</a> for games in favour of electronic on-disc copies. This is sad news. Not that I was particularly fond of paper manuals - they are now mostly just legal boilerplates more than anything to do with the game - but because this means we&rsquo;re almost at the end of game pack-ins entirely.</p> <p>I was a little disappointed when games switched to DVD-style cases. Yes, it&rsquo;s great that publishers finally settled on a standard shape and size for their boxes and my games collection doesn&rsquo;t look like a fucking cardboard shanty town, but it also meant that game designers couldn&rsquo;t pack extra things into the game box. Back in the 80s, Infocom games usually came with &lsquo;<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feelie">feelies</a>&rsquo;. These were ostensibly copy protection, but it&rsquo;s not fair to say that&rsquo;s <em>all</em> they were. Rather than the usual, bland, hard-to-photocopy sheets of teeny-tiny numbers for the game to ask you &ldquo;what is the number in row G, column 16?&rdquo;, the Infocom feelies also gave you something that felt like an artefact from the game world. It was something physical that helped you identify with the game, made the game come alive and feel more realAnd let&rsquo;s face it, those Infocom text adventures needed all the help they could get to feel more real.</p> <p>Looking back, I think most of my favourite games had some sort of pack-in to enhance the player&rsquo;s experience. For example, the graphic adventure of <em>Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade</em> came with a small, 20 or 30 page replica of the grail diary on top of the usual copy-protection. It wasn&rsquo;t essential and you didn&rsquo;t need this grail diary to finish the game, but they gave them out anyway. As an 11-year old who was crazy for that game, this cheap, paper copy broke the game&rsquo;s fourth wall and made the whole experience more <em>real</em>. It felt like <em>treasure</em>.</p> <p>More recently, there&rsquo;s <em>Heavy Rain</em> which has you hunting for a serial killer known as the &ldquo;Origami Killer&rdquo;, who gets his name from the fact he leaves a little origami figure in the cold, dead hands of his victims. Origami is used as a visual motif for the entire game, right down to the logo to indicate the game is being saved. Even though creator David Cage has a <strong>major boner</strong> for movies, he ignored the whole <a href="http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/47d8df4123/movie-poster-floating-heads-from-fod-team-and-brian-huskey">ubiquitous floating head idea for the poster</a>, and stuck stuck with a simple image of the origami crane from the game.</p> <p>When you&rsquo;re installing the game, a process that can take a few minutes, a message comes up on the screen to tell you to take out the flat sheet of paper packed into the case and, over the course of 12 steps, you&rsquo;re taught how to make your own origami crane, just like the one from the cover. Things to keep you distracted <a href="http://www.gamesradar.com/f/a-celebration-of-c64-loading-screens/a-20090811141616826043">while your game loads/installs aren&rsquo;t anything new</a>You hearing me, Kojima? Watching an old fart smoking for 10 minutes is <em>not</em> fun, but it&rsquo;s hard not to be impressed by Heavy Rain&rsquo;s implementation. It&rsquo;s different, it&rsquo;s fun. And how difficult was it? It&rsquo;s a <em>sheet of paper</em>, yet that one sheet of paper enhanced my experience of the game and my overall impression of the care that went into the game.</p> <p>So today I&rsquo;m pouring a 40Not literally, obviously. What a waste of booze for game manuals and pack-in tchotchkes. At least we have special editions, right?</p> Samuel L. Jackson: Bohs supporter → http://comeheretome.wordpress.com/2010/04/21/well-its-more-believable-than-snakes-on-a-plane/ Wed, 21 Apr 2010 15:05:06 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/samuel-l-jackson-bohs-supporter/ <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2010/04/dscn2331-600x450.jpg" alt="Samuel L Jackson"></p> <p>Proof that Samuel L. Jackson supports <a href="http://www.bohemians.ie/">Bohemians FC</a></p> Videogames, Art and Ebert https://lowbrowculture.com/post/videogames-art-and-ebert/ Mon, 19 Apr 2010 15:34:16 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/videogames-art-and-ebert/ <p><img src="http://www.lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2010/04/flower-playstation-3-ps3-056-e1271747112637.jpg" alt=""></p> <p>Going back to the old well of the videogames-and-art debate, film critic, Roger Ebert is once again trolling the entire internet by pronouncing from the mount, that <a href="http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2010/04/video_games_can_never_be_art.html">video games can <em>never</em> be art</a>. For writers, these kinds of articles are a great way of generating ad revenue, since they represent a massive source of &lsquo;clicks&rsquo; and comments. For contrast, an insightful article about <a href="http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2010/01/a_riddle_wrapped_in_a_mystery.html#comments">uncovering the meaning of Michael Haneke&rsquo;s Cache</a> got 224 comments in three months, in three <em>days</em> his anti-videogame piece has gotten over 1200. I ususally try to avoid feeding internet trolls - especially one who makes a living criticising movies and yet whose contributions to that same medium <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0065466/">are</a> <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0075376/">completely</a> <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0078846/">appalling</a> - but I&rsquo;m making an exception here. Mainly because of a couple of things Ebert has said that I feel are completely bone-headed.</p> <p>The first, talking about <a href="http://www.braid-game.com/">Braid</a>:</p> <blockquote> <p>Her next example is a game named &ldquo;Braid&rdquo;. This is a game &ldquo;that explores our own relationship with our past&hellip;you encounter enemies and collect puzzle pieces, but there&rsquo;s one key difference&hellip;you can&rsquo;t die.&rdquo; You can go back in time and correct your mistakes. In chess, this is known as taking back a move, and negates the whole discipline of the game. Nor am I persuaded that I can learn about my own past by taking back my mistakes in a video game. She also admires a story told between the games levels, which exhibits prose on the level of a wordy fortune cookie.</p> </blockquote> <p>I can&rsquo;t argue with his criticism of the prose in the game. It really <em>is</em> that hackneyed and bullshit. However, the issue is that he clearly has not played, nor sat down and watched anyone play, <em>Braid</em>. If he had, he would have realised that the going-back-in-time mechanic in the game is not just some giant &ldquo;undo&rdquo; button. It&rsquo;s not a ctrl-z for your mistakesEbert&rsquo;s bone-headed argument here seems to be that this mechanic is seen as antithetical in the game of chess. This is like complaining that the rules of Poker go completely against the &lsquo;discipline&rsquo; of the game of chess. What the hell is he talking about?. The game relies on your ability to manipulate the flow of time, and it&rsquo;s this mechanic that really sets this game apart from other platform-puzzling games. Not only because you play it and are completely awed by how someone could create something this clever, but also because it&rsquo;s also the thing that gives the ending <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1hRReQkaBs&amp;feature=related">the emotional impact that it has</a> - the time mechanic allows a level of reflection and re-evaluation that feels cheap and manipulative when done through more conventional storytelling methods (As in BioShock, for example).</p> <p>For fun, contrast Ebert&rsquo;s dismissal of <em>Braid</em> to his love for Harold Pinter&rsquo;s <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0085234/">Betrayal</a>, a film which uses a similar storytelling device. <a href="http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=%2F19830318%2FREVIEWS%2F303180301%2F1023&amp;AID1=%2F19830318%2FREVIEWS%2F303180301%2F1023&amp;AID2=">Writing about the film in 1983</a>, Ebert says</p> <blockquote> <p>When Pinter&rsquo;s stage version of &ldquo;Betrayal&rdquo; first appeared, back in the late 1970s, there was a tendency to dismiss his reverse chronology as a gimmick. Not so. It is the very heart and soul of this story.</p> </blockquote> <p>Now in 2010, here comes Ebert, dismissing <em>Braid&rsquo;s</em> time-manipulation device as a mere &lsquo;gimmick&rsquo;. He&rsquo;s wrong. It&rsquo;s the heart and soul of this storyThat&rsquo;s not to say that it&rsquo;s all about the mechanics. <a href="http://www.winterbottomgame.com/">The Misadventures of P.B. Winterbottom</a> has a similar time-manipulation mechanic, but has no emotional payoff. The story and the writing in that game just aren&rsquo;t able to pull it off..</p> <p>Talking about <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flower_%28video_game%29">Flower</a>, Ebert says</p> <blockquote> <p>We come to Example 3, &ldquo;Flower&rdquo;. A run-down city apartment has a single flower on the sill, which leads the player into a natural landscape. The game is &ldquo;about trying to find a balance between elements of urban and the natural.&rdquo; Nothing she shows from this game seemed of more than decorative interest on the level of a greeting card. Is the game scored? She doesn&rsquo;t say. Do you win if you&rsquo;re the first to find the balance between the urban and the natural? Can you control the flower? Does the game know what the ideal balance is?</p> </blockquote> <p>I think this passage highlights precisely why Ebert will never &lsquo;get it&rsquo; - he still thinks that games are about competition. He&rsquo;s still stuck in the <em>Pong</em> mentality of &lsquo;avoid missing ball for high score&rsquo;. For him, games are strictly <em>about</em> &lsquo;winning&rsquo;. This is not the case, any more than films are <em>about</em> using narrative devices to tell a story (&lsquo;sup Koyaanisqatsi?). For reference, no, there&rsquo;s no score in <em>Flower</em>, and there&rsquo;s no &lsquo;winning&rsquo;. This is a game that you play just for the joy of playing.</p> <p>And it&rsquo;s completely divisive. People either hate it or love it.</p> <p>Personally, I&rsquo;m firmly in the &rsquo;love it&rsquo; camp. Let me explain why. Like most people, I went through a fairly rough patch when I turned 30. Anxiety, depression, all that fun stuff. All stemming from an overwhelming fear, not so much of death, but rather of non-existence. And everything I read or watched exacerbated this fear. For example, I made the stupid mistake of reading <em>The Road</em> in the middle of this funk. Even more stupidly, I watched <em>The Wrestler</em>. It seemed like everywhere I looked, things just made me aware of my own mortality and how fragile it is.</p> <p><em>Flower</em>, by contrast, made me aware of the beauty of life and nature. More importantly, it delivered this message with an experience I could not get anywhere else. People talk about how it&rsquo;s the interactivity of videogames heightens the emotional impact of whatever you&rsquo;re doing, whether it&rsquo;s <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yLi-zTOLUbc">shooting some fool in the face</a> or trampling prostitutes. Flower shows this swings both ways. Transcending the TV-controller interface, I was a gust of wind, bringing life to the environment. Although it sounds simplistic, it is precisely this simplicity that helped the game have such a profound effect on me. Think back to <a href="http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/19990924/REVIEWS/909240301/1023">American Beauty</a>, an Ebert favourite. This is a film that beat us over the head with its message, and so we are treated to five minutes of staring a plastic bag blowing in the wind, with some <a href="http://lmnop.blogs.com/.a/6a00d83451b77769e2012876a7320b970c-350wi">weird gargoyle-looking man</a> telling the audience &ldquo;this is beautiful&rdquo;. Fuck this didactic bullshit. Flower lets us experience this beauty for ourselves. It doesn&rsquo;t tell us, it shows us.</p> <p>And this is exactly what videogames can be so good at. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Show,_don%27t_tell">Showing, not telling</a>. In a world where <a href="http://www.elephantart.com">elephants can splash about paint and people call it &lsquo;art&rsquo;</a>, I think it&rsquo;s a bit much to say that videogames can never be art. Especially when they&rsquo;re doing such a great job of beating movies at their own game.</p> Winscape https://lowbrowculture.com/video/winscape/ Thu, 15 Apr 2010 13:49:08 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/video/winscape/ <p>The future&rsquo;s almost here, folks.</p> Sweating the Small Stuff → http://secretlab.com.au/blog/posts/ipad-day-941-am/ Wed, 14 Apr 2010 17:27:07 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/sweating-the-small-stuff/ <p>Secret Lab tells us why the promotional images for the iPad show 9:41am (and the iPhones all say 9:42am). I love that even the trivial, incidental stuff tells a story.</p> Star Wars Uncut https://lowbrowculture.com/video/star-wars-uncut/ Tue, 13 Apr 2010 07:31:37 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/video/star-wars-uncut/ <p><a href="http://vimeo.com/10821312">Star Wars Uncut &ldquo;The Escape&rdquo;</a> from <a href="http://vimeo.com/casey">Casey Pugh</a> on <a href="http://vimeo.com">Vimeo</a>.</p> <p>Teaser for <a href="http://starwarsuncut.com/">Star Wars Uncut</a>, where people recreate <em>A New Hope</em> In 15-second scenes. From the teaser, this looks very charming.</p> Pixels by Patrick Jean https://lowbrowculture.com/video/pixels-by-patrick-jean/ Sat, 10 Apr 2010 18:50:58 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/video/pixels-by-patrick-jean/ <p>I wasn&rsquo;t going to post this video, but then I got an email telling me that I was the only site on the internet that hadn&rsquo;t gushed about it and that if I didn&rsquo;t sort it out sharpish, I&rsquo;d have my email account revoked.</p> I'm Fat, Let's Party → http://www.seibei.com/shop/iflp.html Sat, 10 Apr 2010 17:09:46 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/im-fat-lets-party/ <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2010/04/yhst-45604277673326_2100_4883222.jpg" alt="I&rsquo;m fat, let&rsquo;s party"></p> You Should be Watching: How to Make it in America https://lowbrowculture.com/post/you-should-be-watching-how-to-make-it-in-america/ Sat, 10 Apr 2010 10:21:24 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/you-should-be-watching-how-to-make-it-in-america/ <p>Remember when <em>Entourage</em> was good? This was way, way back. Back before the writers went off on wild story-tangents that no-one cared about and before almost every character became completely unrecognisable, loathsome shells of their former selvesAri Gold as empathetic solver of personal problems? FUCK YOU.</p> <p>Yeah, good times.</p> <p>There&rsquo;s definitely a sense that with their new show, <em>How to Make it in America</em>, HBO is trying to recapture the spirit of the early Entourage. At its core, the show about a couple of schmoes trying to&hellip; uh&hellip; make it.</p> <p>In America.</p> <p>New York, to be precise. And no, they haven&rsquo;t <em>quite</em> managed to capture the fun, carefree spirit of early <em>Entourage</em>. My wife has yet to watch an entire episode without commenting on how much she hates the main character (&ldquo;Look at his face! It&rsquo;s so hateful!&rdquo;). And it&rsquo;s true, <a href="http://www.imdb.com/media/rm2653526528/nm1034965">Bryan Greenberg</a> comes from the school of acting where &ldquo;emoting&rdquo; means &ldquo;look smug whilst simultaneously looking like you&rsquo;re nonchalantly trying to pass a kidney stone&rdquo;.</p> <p>Which all sounds terribly negative, and it probably would be if this is all there was to the show. So thank goodness the show is more of an ensemble piece. People like Eddie Kaye Thomas, Shannyn Sossamon and Martha Plimpton pop up occasionally. HBO regular James Ransone (Ziggy Sobotka from <em>The Wire</em>, Corporal Ray Person from <em>Generation Kill</em>) even appears in a blink-and-you-miss-him cameo. But, best of all, it&rsquo;s got Luis Guzman. I mean this in a completely hetero way: I love Luis Guzman. His <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0367363/">dreadful sitcom</a> aside, I think Luis Guzman steals the show whatever he appears in, and, more importantly, he also makes things infinitely more watchable. He&rsquo;s even one of the best things about <em>Community</em>, and that only has a statue of him. He&rsquo;s perfect in <em>How to Make it in America</em>, playing a felon released from jail and trying to establish himself as a legitimate businessman (with his energy drink, Rasta Monster). He alone makes the show worth watching.</p> <p>It&rsquo;s still early days yet, and I&rsquo;m not quite sure I know where the show is going, but it&rsquo;s definitely worth checking out.</p> <h3 id="random-notes">Random notes</h3> <ul> <li>Like Jay-Z&rsquo;s <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0UjsXo9l6I8">Empire State of Mind</a> and the recent <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0981227/">Nick and Norah&rsquo;s Infinite Playlist</a>, this show is basically one giant love-letter to New York. Does any other city in the world get this much love?</li> <li>I think this is the closest we&rsquo;re going to get to an American version of Only Fools and Horses</li> <li>The theme song for this show is <a href="http://itunes.apple.com/us/album/i-need-dollar-how-to-make/id355759371">&ldquo;I Need a Dollar&rdquo; by Aloe Blacc</a>, and it&rsquo;s fucking incredible.</li> </ul> <p><a href="http://vimeo.com/10682667">Aloe Blacc - I Need A Dollar (Official Video)</a> from <a href="http://vimeo.com/stonesthrow">Stones Throw</a> on <a href="http://vimeo.com">Vimeo</a>.</p> Jon Stewart Slams Pope Over Sex Abuse Scandal → http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/04/08/jon-stewart-slams-pope-ov_n_529919.html Fri, 09 Apr 2010 13:26:36 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/jon-stewart-slams-pope-over-sex-abuse-scandal/ <blockquote> <p>Look how sorry Domino&rsquo;s was just for their shitty pizza! They had a bad sauce recipe, (and) they&rsquo;ve been out there nonstop. &lsquo;Oh, we&rsquo;re so sorry. Here, have some Crazy Bread!&rsquo;</p> </blockquote> Unpleasant Nothings https://lowbrowculture.com/quote/unpleasant-nothings/ Thu, 08 Apr 2010 14:18:00 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/quote/unpleasant-nothings/ <blockquote>These tasted of nothing, yet somehow managed to make that "nothing" deeply unpleasant. It's like a small piece of fried potato failing to recall a repressed abuse memory while sitting on your tongue.</blockquote> <p>Charlie Brooker <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/apr/05/charlie-brooker-world-cup-crisps">reviews Walker&rsquo;s promotional flavoured crisps</a></p> Tremerz → http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/531965 Mon, 05 Apr 2010 19:46:42 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/tremerz/ <p>Flash game of &ldquo;Tremors&rdquo; - fuck yes.</p> A Video Game Death Made For Me - Sleep is death - Kotaku → http://kotaku.com/5507753/a-video-game-death-made-for-me Mon, 05 Apr 2010 16:22:53 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/a-video-game-death-made-for-me-sleep-is-death-kotaku/ <p>I pre-ordered this game without knowing anything about it. Now, the more I read about it, the more excited I get.</p> Lost as a Saturday Morning Kid's Cartoon https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/lost-as-saturday-morning-kids-cartoon/ Sun, 04 Apr 2010 10:21:45 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/lost-as-saturday-morning-kids-cartoon/ <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2010/lost.jpg" alt="Lost"></p> <p>Lost reimagined as a Saturday-morning kid&rsquo;s cartoon. <a href="http://www.behance.net/Gallery/LOST-The-Animated-Series/448458">More over at Behance.net</a></p> 7 ways to make Instapaper rock even harder → http://www.digitizd.com/2010/03/31/make-instapaper-better/ Fri, 02 Apr 2010 12:17:35 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/7-ways-to-make-instapaper-rock-even-harder/ <p>(via <a href="http://mnmal.tumblr.com/">mnmal</a>)</p> Avatard https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/avatard/ Fri, 02 Apr 2010 12:16:00 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/avatard/ <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/tumblr/491096298.jpg#center" alt=""></p> <p>&ldquo;Avatard&rdquo;</p> Tank Catapult https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/tank-catapulpt/ Thu, 01 Apr 2010 12:59:46 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/tank-catapulpt/ <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/tumblr/488959891.jpg" alt="tank catapult"></p> Belladonna, RPG nerd https://lowbrowculture.com/post/487732087/ Thu, 01 Apr 2010 00:07:51 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/487732087/ <p><img src="http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_l067q4uSEk1qbqd0mo1_500.jpg" alt=""></p> <p>Belladonna has her own World of Warcraft guild and she&rsquo;s psyched for Final Fantasy XIV. Mind: blown.</p> <blockquote> <p>The good thing is that since I don’t work for anyone else, I’m my own boss and I schedule everything. I know that I can push things back a little or switch things around so when I do let myself go and play World of Warcraft for two weeks, I’m ok. It does kind of slow you down. Usually, I’ll get things done and get ahead of myself, but sometimes it’s fun to just let yourself go and play video games all day long.</p> </blockquote> <p><a href="http://www.original-gamer.com/?action=article&amp;id=1056">Read the entire interview on original-gamer.com</a></p> No Content Found https://lowbrowculture.com/video/487532815/ Wed, 31 Mar 2010 22:23:39 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/video/487532815/ <p>&ldquo;Ah! That is SO Christmassy.&rdquo;</p> Teal and Orange - Hollywood, Please Stop the Madness → http://theabyssgazes.blogspot.com/2010/03/teal-and-orange-hollywood-please-stop.html Wed, 31 Mar 2010 22:00:35 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/teal-and-orange-hollywood-stop-the-madness/ <p>Perfect summary of everything that&rsquo;s wrong with the look of big-budget movies.</p> No Content Found https://lowbrowculture.com/video/466561671/ Mon, 22 Mar 2010 23:12:14 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/video/466561671/ <p>Here&rsquo;s <a href="http://www.thesixthaxis.com/2010/03/20/an-open-letter-to-itv/?key=home">SixthAxis&rsquo;s open letter to ITV</a></p> No Content Found https://lowbrowculture.com/video/458851536/ Fri, 19 Mar 2010 14:00:28 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/video/458851536/ <p><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2vEStDd6HVY&amp;feature=player_embedded">Pomplamoose cover Lady Gaga&rsquo;s Telephone</a></p> <p>Complete with Shamless Product Placement.</p> The Movie Studios' Big 3D Scam → http://gizmodo.com/5493832/the-movie-studios-big-3d-scam Wed, 17 Mar 2010 23:51:47 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/big-3d-scam/ <p>I managed to catch Avatar in 3D when I was back home last month and I don&rsquo;t think the 3D helped at all. In fact, the few scenes where it really &lsquo;worked&rsquo; for me just yanked me right out of the paper-thin story. I&rsquo;d rather have seen it in 2D without the 30% colour-loss you get with the 3D glasses.</p> Why I Don't Play Grand Theft Auto IV https://lowbrowculture.com/post/454982359/ Wed, 17 Mar 2010 20:04:45 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/454982359/ <p>Ten or eleven years ago, I was in a pub and we got talking about Jimmy Stewart. For some reason, I thought now would be a good time to try my hand at a Jimmy Stewart impression. Now, if you&rsquo;ve ever seen me try to do an impression of <em>anything</em>, you know I can&rsquo;t, it&rsquo;s just embarassing. Maybe the stars were smiling on me or something because that day, I managed to do a pitch-perfect impression of Jimmy Stewart.</p> <p>That was the first and last time I ever tried a Jimmy Stewart impression. I will probably never be able to do one again, let alone do a better one, so why even try?</p> <p>I was playing <em>GTA IV</em> a while ago and, like most people who play it, I started fucking around in between missions. Goofing off - crashing cars, shooting random people and generally acting like a deranged psychopath. One of my favourite things to do in that game is to punch someone and then stand there. Maybe it&rsquo;s because I&rsquo;m a complete pussy and I&rsquo;d never try this in real life. Anyway, I punch people and see what they do. Most times they just go &ldquo;Hey!&rdquo; and walk away. Sometimes they scream and run away.</p> <p>Except once, I punched the Charles Bronson of Liberty City. He just snapped, went berserk and started beating the living fuck out of me. I would have fought back, but he was going so nuts that I never got a chance to punch him. So I ran away.</p> <p>He started chasing me.</p> <p>I swear to God, I don&rsquo;t know if the developers made it this way, but I could have sworn he was foaming at the mouth.</p> <p>I ran and ran and ran. Usually, with videogames, you run far enough away and the person chasing you gives up and goes back to their pre-scripted routine. Not this guy. I ran into my apartment - your safe-house, where you can save your game by lying on your bed and &lsquo;going to sleep&rsquo; for a few hours. He chased me in. I didn&rsquo;t even know non-playable characters could open the door! So I did the only thing I could, I lay on the bed, went to sleep and saved my game.</p> <p>When it was done saving, my character woke up, the guy was still standing over my bed, barking and shouting at me, and started punching the moment I stood up. I eventually just grabbed a gun and shot the guy.</p> <p>Now I can&rsquo;t play <em>GTA IV</em> again, because I know I will never be able to top the image of a crazy guy yelling and screaming at me as I lie in bed asleep. I don&rsquo;t care how good the rest of the game is, it can&rsquo;t beat that.</p> Sniper Cop https://lowbrowculture.com/post/452508331/ Tue, 16 Mar 2010 17:03:15 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/452508331/ <p>Frustrated by the way BFBC2 players will happily sit and snipe while doing nothing to help the squad, or win the round, Tom Chick invents a new class, <a href="http://fidgit.com/archives/2010/03/play_the_new_sniper_cop_class.php">the sniper cop</a>:</p> <blockquote>Did you know the tracer dart can stick to friendly targets? It sits there and glows. For instance, if you affix it to someone's head - say, someone with a sniper rifle crouching just behind a ridge or in some foliage - that person's head will be super easy to spot from a long way off by other players with sniper rifles. Furthermore, if you attach it to someone's face, it will shine a red glow into his line of site and maybe even obscure his vision. It's like a fantastic glowing clown nose</blockquote> <p><a href="http://fidgit.com/archives/2010/03/play_the_new_sniper_cop_class.php">Play the new sniper cop class in Bad Company 2</a></p> Bit and Run https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/bit-and-run/ Tue, 16 Mar 2010 09:15:54 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/bit-and-run/ <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2010/bit-and-run_2.jpg#center" alt="Racoon?"></p> <p>Everyone should check out Corey Godbey&rsquo;s awesome <a href="http://lightnightrains.blogspot.com/search/label/bit%20and%20run">nintendo-themed &lsquo;bit and run&rsquo; series</a></p> Dopplr | Smart advice & tips about travel to Rome, Italy → http://www.dopplr.com/place/it/rome Mon, 15 Mar 2010 14:40:54 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/dopplr-rome/ <p>I know I live here, but you&rsquo;ve no idea how useful these kinds of sites are. Especially when everyone you meet tells you you&rsquo;re wrong and the REAL secret best gelato/cappucino/pizza is.</p> James Bond multimedia | James Bond posters → http://www.jamesbondmm.co.uk/posters Sun, 14 Mar 2010 03:53:56 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/james-bond-posters/ <p>I love the Electric Ladyland style of the US 1-sheet for On Her Majesty&rsquo;s Secret Service, my second-favourite Bond movie, after Moonraker.</p> No Content Found https://lowbrowculture.com/video/443659659/ Fri, 12 Mar 2010 18:03:10 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/video/443659659/ <p>(via <a href="http://blitblit.com/p/1652/">blitblit</a>)</p> Idris “Driis” “Stringer Bell” Elba’s new single → http://www.popbitch.com/home/2010/03/12/idris-driis-stringer-bell-elbas-new-single/ Fri, 12 Mar 2010 15:35:34 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/idris-elba-new-single/ <p>Idris “Driis” “Stringer Bell” Elba’s new single.</p> New Lady Gaga Video Seems Familiar https://lowbrowculture.com/post/443412735/ Fri, 12 Mar 2010 14:57:00 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/443412735/ <p>First up, a quick warning. We&rsquo;re talking about Lady Gaga here, so if that doesn&rsquo;t immediately ring your NSFW alarm, then let me state it clearly: this post is probably NSFW.</p> <p>Here&rsquo;s the new Lady Gaga video for &lsquo;Telephone&rsquo;, which has a load of oversaturated shots of big-titted women dancing around the place in their bikinis. As is usual for any video directed by Jonas Åkerlund, it&rsquo;s almost painful to watch.</p> <iframe width="800" height="450" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/EVBsypHzF3U" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> <p>Now, here&rsquo;s one of the few clips I could find of the <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0361394/">Bikini Bandits Experience</a>, a weird &lsquo;ironic&rsquo; exploitation film which has a load of oversaturated shots of big-titted women dancing around the place in their bikinis. It&rsquo;s also got <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000397/">Corey Feldman</a>, <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0080470/">Jello Biafra</a>, <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0444665/">Maynard James Keenan</a> and <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0245393/">Hank the Angry Drunken Dwarf</a> (RIP Hank). And it, too, is pretty painful to watch.</p> <iframe width="800" height="450" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/m8yiZTN31_4" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> Monkey Island 2 Special Edition Coming in Summer → http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/62748 Fri, 12 Mar 2010 09:39:48 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/monkey-island-2-special-edition/ <p>Monkey Island 2 Special Edition Coming in Summer</p> <p>With &ldquo;in-game audio commentary from the game&rsquo;s creators in select scenes&rdquo;! After reading Ron Gilbert&rsquo;s <a href="http://grumpygamer.com/8280380">text-commentary for the original <em>Monkey Island</em></a>, I&rsquo;m psyched for this.</p> GDC 2010: "Sword & Sworcery EP" → http://toucharcade.com/2010/03/11/gdc-2010-sword-sworcery-ep-the-most-amazing-game-ive-seen-at-gdc/ Fri, 12 Mar 2010 08:54:43 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/sword-and-sworcery/ <p>GDC 2010: &lsquo;Sword &amp; Sworcery EP&rsquo;</p> <p>Stylish old-school adventure game with <em>Punch Out</em> style fighting sections. Very slick</p> Adorable Koala Hug https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/adorable-koala-hug/ Thu, 11 Mar 2010 14:00:12 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/adorable-koala-hug/ <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2010/441211518.jpg#center" alt=""></p> Hetero Man-crush #1: R. J. MacReady https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/hetero-man-crush-1-r-j-macready/ Wed, 10 Mar 2010 17:35:47 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/hetero-man-crush-1-r-j-macready/ <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2010/03/macready.jpg#center" alt="R. J. MacReady"></p> What's The Best Way to Register Distaste? https://lowbrowculture.com/post/best-way-to-register-distaste/ Wed, 10 Mar 2010 08:23:32 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/best-way-to-register-distaste/ <p>Since I&rsquo;ve been doing a lot of to&rsquo;ing and fro&rsquo;ing between Ireland and Rome, I&rsquo;ve made a firm decision to never fly Ryanair ever again, unless it absolutely cannot be avoided. There&rsquo;s a few reasons behind this.</p> <ol> <li> <p>First, and most obviously, Michael O&rsquo;Leary could possibly be the world&rsquo;s biggest cunt. The kind of person I would be very happy to hear had spontaneously burst into flames and choked to death on his own melting oesophegus.</p> </li> <li> <p>I&rsquo;m sick of being treated like a piece of shit by Ryanair&rsquo;s barely-competent ground crew. I was blind drunk one night and went into Zaytoon, where the extremely condescending guy behind the counter started acting all &ldquo;wellity, wellity, wellity, what a surprise, the drunk fat man wants a kebab&rdquo;. I remember thinking &ldquo;Hey fuck you, dicknose! You&rsquo;re the shithead who works in a kebab shop, you&rsquo;re in no position to judge <em>anyone</em>. Just slice the meat and shut your stupid face.&rdquo; This is kind of how I feel about Ryanair ground staff.</p> </li> <li> <p>I&rsquo;m sick of being hawked shit every ten minutes on their flights. Especially when I just want to sleep.</p> </li> <li> <p>They&rsquo;re a false economy. Ryanair gives you 15kg for your checked luggage, and it&rsquo;s €20 per kilo above that. Aer Lingus gives you 20kg. So whenever I&rsquo;m booking a flight, I&rsquo;ll always add an extra €200 to the Ryanair price. They&rsquo;re never cheaper than Aer Lingus. Simply avoiding them isn&rsquo;t enough for me though. I want them to <em>know</em> each time I avoid them. Down the street where I work, there are a bunch of bars that we used to go to, but that we now avoid because they decided it would be better to try and rip us off once than have our continued, regular custom. Now, I&rsquo;ll occasionally walk into one of these bars, wait until someone acknowledges my presence, and then leave and go to another bar. It&rsquo;s ridiculous and petty, I know, but so am I.</p> </li> </ol> <p>So I want to do something like this with Ryanair. Every time I take a trip, I&rsquo;d like to send a letter saying &ldquo;Hello, I&rsquo;m flying between $city_a and $city_b, but I decided to fly with one of your competitors because I think your business practices are appalling.&rdquo; I thought this was a great idea until someone pointed out that they&rsquo;re <em>such</em> cheap cunts that they&rsquo;d probably charge me an administrative fee for having opened and read the letter/email.</p> <p>So what&rsquo;s the best way to let Ryanair when they&rsquo;re missing out on a fare from me? The pettier and more ridiculous, the better.</p> What's the Best Way to Register Distaste? https://lowbrowculture.com/post/440846931/ Wed, 10 Mar 2010 05:00:00 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/440846931/ <p>Since I’ve been doing a lot of to’ing and fro’ing between Ireland and Rome, I’ve made a firm decision to never fly Ryanair ever again, unless it absolutely cannot be avoided. There’s a few reasons behind this.</p> <ol> <li> <p>First, and most obviously, Michael O’Leary could possibly be the world’s biggest cunt. The kind of person I would be very happy to hear had spontaneously burst into flames and choked to death on his own melting oesophegus.</p> </li> <li> <p>I’m sick of being treated like a piece of shit by Ryanair’s barely-competent ground crew. I was blind drunk one night and went into Zaytoon, where the extremely condescending guy behind the counter started acting all “wellity, wellity, wellity, what a surprise, the drunk fat man wants a kebab”. I remember thinking “Hey fuck you, dicknose! You’re the shithead who works in a kebab shop, you’re in no position to judge <em>anyone</em>. Just slice the meat and shut your stupid face.” This is kind of how I feel about Ryanair ground staff.</p> </li> <li> <p>I’m sick of being hawked shit every ten minutes on their flights. Especially when I just want to sleep.</p> </li> <li> <p>They’re a false economy. Ryanair gives you 15kg for your checked luggage, and it’s €20 per kilo above that. Aer Lingus gives you 20kg. So whenever I’m booking a flight, I’ll always add an extra €200 to the Ryanair price. They’re never cheaper than Aer Lingus.</p> </li> </ol> <p>Simply avoiding them isn’t enough for me though. I want them to <em>know</em> each time I avoid them. Down the street where I work, there are a bunch of bars that we used to go to, but that we now avoid because they decided it would be better to try and rip us off once than have our continued, regular custom. Now, I’ll occasionally walk into one of these bars, wait until someone acknowledges my presence, and then leave and go to another bar. It’s ridiculous and petty, I know, but so am I.</p> <p>So I want to do something like this with Ryanair. Every time I take a trip, I’d like to send a letter saying “Hello, I’m flying between $city_a and $city_b, but I decided to fly with one of your competitors because I think your business practices are appalling.” I thought this was a great idea until someone pointed out that they’re <em>such</em> cheap cunts that they’d probably charge me an administrative fee for having opened and read the letter/email.</p> <p>So what’s the best way to let Ryanair when they’re missing out on a fare from me? The pettier and more ridiculous, the better.</p> Hoboken → http://www.nj.com/hobokennow/index.ssf/2010/03/artist_alters_interstate_sign.html Tue, 09 Mar 2010 23:34:18 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/hoboken/ <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2010/03/hoboken-ryu.jpg" alt="hoBOOOken"></p> <p>The world is fantastic sometimes.</p> Assassin's Creed 2 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/assassins-creed-2/ Tue, 09 Mar 2010 15:48:13 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/assassins-creed-2/ <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2010/03/ac2_flying-500x280.jpg" alt=""></p> <p>Playing the first <em>Assassin&rsquo;s Creed</em> was like going out with some very cute, bi-polar girl. She&rsquo;s attractive, and crazy enough that the sex is <em>amazing</em>, but you have to watch out because her mood could change in the blink of an eye and next thing you know, you&rsquo;re waking up in a bath of ice with a giant hole where your kidney used to be, just because you didn&rsquo;t compliment her on her new shoes.</p> <p>To strain this analogy even further, <em>Assassin&rsquo;s Creed 2</em>, is like her cute, completely stable younger sister. She&rsquo;s just as attractive as the older sister but, most importantly, she&rsquo;s learned from all her older sister&rsquo;s mistakes (Lesson number one: don&rsquo;t be fucking insane). And yeah, the sex might be less wild/dangerous, but you know where you stand. It&rsquo;s <em>safe</em>.</p> <p>I <strong>loved</strong> <em>Assassin&rsquo;s Creed 2</em>. It never had any real moments of standout genius in it, but at the same time, it never had me repeating the same six missions-types for five hours, unlike the first game. Instead, it had a continuous string of smaller, more diverse missions, which meant that you were constantly doing something new. One mission would begin right where the last one finished. You never had a chance to get bored, and you never really felt like turning the game off was an option. I&rsquo;ll say this now: for me, <em>Assassin&rsquo;s Creed 2</em> did a better job of doling out missions than <em>GTA IV</em>.</p> <p>In fact, I liked this game so much, I&rsquo;m ploughing through it to make it the fourth game I&rsquo;ll have gotten all 1000 achievement points on. At least, it would have been, except there&rsquo;s one achievement - for kicking a guy while flying your little Hudson Hawk hang glider - that you could only get on one particular mission that you couldn&rsquo;t replay. Of course, I didn&rsquo;t know this when I played the mission, or else I would have kicked that little bollocks off his perch and gotten my achievement.</p> <p>With the first batch of downloadable content for the game, titled <em>The Battle of Forli</em>, Ubisoft dropped a whole load of these flying machines into various parts in the levels, which means that people like me who missed the achievement first time around could finally get it.</p> <p>Oh, and they threw a bit of a story around it too.</p> <p>And here&rsquo;s where I lost interest. The story in The Battle of Forli is bullshit. Total bullshit. The &lsquo;dramatic&rsquo; climax has you fighting a metric fuckload of guards as you chase down the last remaining bad guy. I only bought this DLC to get the achievement, so at this stage, I cared so little about the story that I just ran past all the guards. It was like a Benny Hill sketch, me tearing through the Tuscan countryside with 50 sword-wielding soldiers chasing after me. All it was missing was a bit of Yakkety Sax. In the end, the bad guy reaches his pre-scripted &ldquo;end&rdquo; spot and turns around to fight me, at which point I smack him in the head with a hammer before he can even draw his sword. End of DLC.</p> <p>The perfect end to a storyline I couldn&rsquo;t have cared less about.</p> <p><strong>Update:</strong> I got the last of the 1000 achievement points this evening. As if you care.</p> Why is No-One Watching It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia? https://lowbrowculture.com/post/why-is-no-one-watching-its-always-sunny-in-philadelphia/ Fri, 05 Mar 2010 10:27:50 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/why-is-no-one-watching-its-always-sunny-in-philadelphia/ <p>I don&rsquo;t get it. <em>30 Rock</em> is massively successful and gets nominated for all sorts of awards every year, despite coasting on fumes for the past three seasons. I can&rsquo;t remember the last time that show made me laugh. Meanwhile, <em>It&rsquo;s Always Sunny in Philadelphia</em> - the one show on TV that will consistently make me gut-laugh until I feel like I&rsquo;m going to pass out - slips under almost everyone&rsquo;s radar.</p> <p>Okay, I understand that jokes about main characters developing crack addictions to get on welfare and finding dumpster babies aren&rsquo;t exactly for everyone, whereas Tina Fey joking about eating pizza instead of going to the gym is something completely inoffensive that everyone can find adorable. But fuck, is that really an excuse for hardly anyone to watch <em>It&rsquo;s Always Sunny in Philadelphia</em>?</p> <p>Not only is this show funny, it&rsquo;s also full of great ideas, especially if you&rsquo;re on a race to the bottom. This show introduced me to the idea of drinking wine out of a soda can, which has immeasurably improved my ability to party. Now I can dance and gesticulate wildly while not spilling a drop of my wine. And then, of course, there&rsquo;s Kitten Mittons:</p> <p>Seriously, if you haven&rsquo;t seen this show already, you should stop what you&rsquo;re doing, turn off your phone and spend a weekend getting caught up. If you <em>have</em> seen this show already, wouldn&rsquo;t now be a great time for a re-watch?</p> Is This Thing Still On? https://lowbrowculture.com/post/is-this-thing-still-on/ Mon, 15 Feb 2010 16:34:05 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/is-this-thing-still-on/ <p>Oh, hai.</p> <p>If you know me, you know I&rsquo;m not particularly great at managing my time. I&rsquo;m not one of those smug cunts who can <a href="http://www.iwillteachyoutoberich.com/blog/time-management-how-an-mit-postdoc-writes-3-books-a-phd-defense-and-6-peer-reviewed-papers-and-finishes-by-530pm/">churn out 3 books and a PhD defense before breakfast</a>. I have trouble staying focused and finishing the things I start. My wife <em>loves</em> it when I leave wet laundry lying on the bed because I got distracted halfway through hanging it up.</p> <p>Right now, college is sucking all of my time. I&rsquo;m in my final year (fingers crossed!) of an arts degree, and so I&rsquo;m up to my nuts in postmodernism, victorianism, romanticism &ndash; lots of -isms &ndash; Kant, Plato, and the various ontological and cosmological reasons for God. It&rsquo;s all fun stuff - even more so when my computer hard drive craps out right in the middle of writing an essay. Hilarious.</p> <p>This is something I really, <em>really</em> want to finish. I don&rsquo;t want to look back on the past three years of college and think of it as a giant pile of wet laundry. So, this means that I don&rsquo;t have much time for anything else. Sorry, Dragon Age! Sorry, Demon&rsquo;s Souls! Sorry, Bioshock 2! Sorry, this blog!</p> <p>I&rsquo;ve got my final exams in the middle of May and then I&rsquo;m heading off to the Primavera festival in Barcelona immediately after. Things might get back to normal after that.</p> Ira and Philip Glass Performing Live https://lowbrowculture.com/post/ira-and-philip-glass-performing-live/ Tue, 19 Jan 2010 10:20:35 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/ira-and-philip-glass-performing-live/ <p>This sounds amazing - <a href="http://www.thisamericanlife.org/?date=01182010">From <em>This American Life</em></a>:</p> <blockquote> <p>Hi everyone—</p> <p>Ira here. Philip Glass, the iconic composer of operas and film scores who—there&rsquo;s no non-weird way to say this—is also my cousin, is doing a live performance at the Apple Store in Soho this Thursday, January 21st. Apple is filming it and is going to offer the video on iTunes at some point, maybe that same day for all I know.</p> <p>I&rsquo;ve been asked to perform a piece that Allen Ginsberg used to perform with Philip, Ginsberg&rsquo;s great Vietnam-era poem &ldquo;Wichita Vortex Sutra.&rdquo; Philip set it to music years ago, and there are a few great recordings of them performing it together, which you are just a google search away from, or try <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tNGWKU2RJ0E&amp;feature=related">this YouTube clip</a>, and at this point by the way are we still supposed to capitalize Google when we use it as a verb or adjective?</p> <p>I&rsquo;ve performed this with Philip once before. He plays that piano a lot louder than you might think. It&rsquo;s like reading a poem inside a helicopter. It&rsquo;s also really fun. Ginsberg used to perform the thing with a beat poet grandeur I&rsquo;d be embarrassed to attempt. When he calls down the gods in the second half of the poem, he really calls down the gods. Needless to say, it&rsquo;s kind of the opposite of talking on the radio, where the whole point is to sound off-hand and conversational.</p> <p>I&rsquo;m the smallest part of this event. Philip will be playing solo, and with cellist (also his GF) Wendy Sutter which is always fantastic and really emotional, and with his chamber group.</p> </blockquote> <p>If you&rsquo;ve ever listened to an episode of This American Life, then you&rsquo;ve probably heard Wichita Vortex Sutra before, because they use it as part of their interstitial music all the time. It&rsquo;s the one that isn&rsquo;t by <a href="http://www.anticon.com/index.php?section=artist&amp;target=Why&amp;js=yes">Why?</a> and isn&rsquo;t from the Amelie soundtrack. It&rsquo;s also one of my favourite songs in the world - actually, all of Philip Glass&rsquo; <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Solo-Piano-Philip-Glass/dp/B0000026Y4"><em>Solo Piano</em></a> pieces are terrific - and I&rsquo;m completely psyched to check this performance out.</p> Guardian's Best TV Drama https://lowbrowculture.com/post/guardians-best-tv-drama/ Thu, 14 Jan 2010 10:24:16 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/guardians-best-tv-drama/ <p>Something very strange is going on in the offices of The Guardian.</p> <p>Before, I thought maybe it was just a temporary blip - that someone had spiked the punch at their Christmas party, and <strong>that&rsquo;s</strong> why they voted <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/filmblog/2009/dec/29/best-films-noughties-team-america">Team America as the fourth-best film of the noughties</a>. I thought maybe they were just giddy with the excitement of 2009 finally being over - surviving the first decade of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willennium">Will-enium</a> - and <em>that&rsquo;s</em> why they voted <a href="http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&amp;client=firefox-a&amp;rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&amp;hs=gaM&amp;q=guardian+bruno+noughties&amp;aq=f&amp;oq=&amp;aqi=">Borat as the second-best</a>.</p> <p>Because it definitely seems as if they sobered up, realised what they&rsquo;d done and made up for their moments of giddiness by finally doing the right thing and voting <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/filmblog/2010/jan/01/best-films-noughties-there-will-be-blood">There Will Be Blood as the best film of the 2000s</a>.</p> <p>There&rsquo;s no excuse for their list of the <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/tv-and-radio/tvandradioblog/2010/jan/12/guardian-50-television-dramas">50 best TV dramas of all time</a>. A lot of the results are artificially inflated by bullshit sentimentality, or worse.  For example, your teenage boner for Sarah Michelle Gellar does not mean that <em>Buffy the Vampire Slayer</em> had better drama or was a better show than, say, <em>Battlestar Galactica</em> or even <em>Band of Brothers</em>.</p> <p>But seriously, <em>Mad Men</em> at #4 and _The Wir_e at #14? Did some wires get crossed somewhere? Let&rsquo;s leave aside the fact that <em>The Wire</em> isn&rsquo;t the clear winner and focus on <em>Mad Men</em> for now. I&rsquo;m sure that if she was still around, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vivian_Mercier">Vivian Mercier</a> would describe <em>Mad Men</em> as the kind of show where nothing happens, a lot. In fact, so much nothing happened in the second season that I&rsquo;d be hard pressed to find any one of my friends who managed to watch the entire thing without having to go back and start again. Don&rsquo;t get me wrong, I still watch <em>Mad Men</em>, and I still enjoy it. I just think it&rsquo;s a little premature to put it anywhere near the top of a list like this.</p> <p>As if to acknowledge that their list is completely <a href="http://www.splitreason.com/productdetail.php?id=582">pants-on-head retarded</a>, the Guardian has <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/tv-and-radio/tvandradioblog/2010/jan/13/guardian-tv-club-relevision-dramas">launched a TV club</a> to go through some of the shows that didn&rsquo;t make their list, starting with the terrific <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0090424/">Edge of Darkness</a>. It&rsquo;s a great idea and I hope it goes on for a while.</p> <p>And maybe when it comes around to 2020, their next list will be better.</p> Middle Age Perspective on Lady Gaga - Just Dance https://lowbrowculture.com/post/middle-age-perspective-on-lady-gaga-just-dance/ Tue, 05 Jan 2010 23:23:12 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/middle-age-perspective-on-lady-gaga-just-dance/ <blockquote> <p>I’ve had a little bit too much<br> All of the people start to rush (Start to rush by)<br> A dizzy twister dance<br> Can’t find my drink or man.<br> Where are my keys, I lost my phone.<br> What’s going on on the floor?<br> I love this record baby, but I can’t see straight anymore.<br> Keep it cool what’s the name of this club?<br> I can’t remember but it’s alright, alright.</p> <p>Just dance. Gonna be okay.<br> Da-doo-doo-doo<br> Just dance. Spin that record babe.<br> Da-doo-doo-doo<br> Just dance. Gonna be okay.<br> Duh-duh-duh-duh<br> Dance. Dance. Dance. Just dance.</p> <p>Wish I could shut my playboy mouth.<br> How’d I turn my shirt inside out? (inside out, right)<br> Control your poison babe<br> Roses have thorns they say.<br> And we’re all gettin’ hosed tonight.<br> What’s going on on the floor?</p> </blockquote> <p>As someone who is approaching middle age, this song fucking terrifies me. In a best-case scenario, this girl is blind drunk. Worst-case, someone has slipped something into her drink (which make me worry about the answer to the question of “How’d I turn my shirt inside out?”).</p> <p>In either case, it’s not ‘alright’, it’s definitely not ‘gonna be okay’, and she should absolutely not ‘just dance’. This is the last thing she should be thinking about right now and will only make matters worse. She should find her ‘man’ (unless he’s the one who spiked her drink), or phone someone to come pick her up and take her home so she can get into her pyjamas and get a good night&rsquo;s sleep.</p> Fuck 2009 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/fuck-2009/ Tue, 29 Dec 2009 09:30:51 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/fuck-2009/ <p>I don&rsquo;t know about you, but I thought that &ndash; as years go &ndash; 2009 was fairly shitty. There were a few good points (awesome birthday party, Primavera, holidaying around Italy with my wife), but when I look back, I can see a whole bunch of shit that I really didn&rsquo;t want to have to deal with. So hooray for 2010.</p> <p>Except when my wife asked me what I was most looking forward to about 2010, I went blank. The joke about it being <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086837/taglines">the year we make contact</a> is getting a little old. The only thing I could think was &ldquo;at least <em>Lost</em> will FINALLY be over.&rdquo;</p> <p>The AV Club lists <a href="http://www.avclub.com/articles/the-waiting-is-the-hardest-part-32-of-our-most-ant,36620/1/">32 of their most anticipated movies, games, books and albums of 2010</a>, and that&rsquo;s a pretty good start. I&rsquo;m pretty psyched for <em>Shutter Island</em> and <em>Tron Legacy</em>, but I have to be honest, I&rsquo;m not particularly fussed about Bioshock 2.</p> <p>Most of all, what I&rsquo;m looking forward to about 2010 is that it won&rsquo;t be 2009. That&rsquo;s good enough for me.</p> Jersey Shore https://lowbrowculture.com/post/jersey-shore/ Mon, 14 Dec 2009 16:02:01 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/jersey-shore/ <p>Are you watching <a href="http://www.mtv.com/shows/jersey_shore/series.jhtml">Jersey Shore</a>? You should be. It&rsquo;s perfect car-crash TV. Self-obsessed <a href="http://media.photobucket.com/image/guido/InfernoRed_2006/guido12jk8.jpg">guidos</a> and <a href="http://www.wikihow.com/Be-a-Guidette">guidettes</a> living together, all boozed up, horny and aggro. It&rsquo;s entertaining in the same way that nature documentaries are entertaining. The pure, primal instinct of a pack of lions is always fascinating to watch because you never know when things are going to kick off. Now, imagine those lions were <em>drunk</em> - how much better would that be? Well, that&rsquo;s what Jersey Shore is like. Drunk lions, covered in fake tan.</p> <p>How good/bad is it? UNICO, &ldquo;the largest Italian-American service organisation in the USA&rdquo; has <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/wireStory?id=9167384">called for it to be canceled</a>, describing it as &ldquo;trash television&rdquo; and saying the show &ldquo;relies on crude stereotypes&rdquo; and deliberately highlights the worst aspects of guido culture.</p> <p>Trash television? Crude stereotypes? Why not just put out a press release, saying &ldquo;Everyone, stop what you are doing and go watch this show <strong>now</strong>&rdquo;?</p> <p>During a promo for the rest of the season, they showed a clip of one of the girls, &lsquo;Snooki&rsquo;, <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sZ-o7Ig3rHs">getting a full-on punch to the face</a>. From a big, muscly dude. Now, I&rsquo;m totally against violence towards women, but HOLY FUCK LOOK AT THAT SHIT! HE BOPPED HER RIGHT ON HER STUPID FUCKING NOSE!</p> <p>Idiots like me have been posting this clip all over the internet. It&rsquo;s huge. It&rsquo;s, as they say, &ldquo;gone viral&rdquo;. And so, MTV <a href="http://tv.gawker.com/5425484/snooki-socked-the-footage-mtv-suddenly-doesnt-want-you-to-see">have decided to cut the scene with the punch out of the episode</a>. They said that &ldquo;seeing how the video footage has been taken out of context to not show the severity of this act or the resulting consequences, MTV has decided not to air Snooki being physically punched in next week&rsquo;s episode.&rdquo; I&rsquo;m no expert, but if they&rsquo;re that concerned about the context of the clip, I would have thought that the best way to give some context would be to show it in full? If I search for this clip now, I just get a load of user-uploaded videos taken from the the promo clip. If MTV don&rsquo;t show the full clip, with context, then this is all there will ever be. There won&rsquo;t ever <em>be</em> context.</p> <p>Oh well. Punch or no punch, this show is still ridiculously entertaining.</p> Nicolas Cage, Goodwill Ambassador https://lowbrowculture.com/post/nicolas-cage-goodwill-ambassador/ Mon, 14 Dec 2009 10:52:57 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/nicolas-cage-goodwill-ambassador/ <p>This is just bizarre, Nicolas Cage <a href="http://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/press/releases/2009/December/nicolas-cage-appointed-unodc-goodwill-ambassador-for-global-justice.html">has been appointed Goodwill Ambassador for the UN Office on Drugs and Crime</a>. My favourite quote from the press release:</p> <blockquote> <p>&ldquo;Until today, justice has been a cause without a rebel. Now we have one,&rdquo; said [UNODC Executive Director] Mr. Costa.</p> </blockquote> <p>Cage has said that he will &ldquo;use the performing arts as an engine for global justice and victim support&rdquo;.</p> <p>Now, let&rsquo;s take a look at a couple of Nicolas Cage&rsquo;s movies that are coming out in 2010. <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1502404/">Drive Angry</a> - &ldquo;A vengeful father chases after the men who killed his daughter&rdquo;. <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1214962/">The Hungry Rabbit Jumps</a> - &ldquo;After his wife is assaulted, a husband enlists the services of a vigilante group to help him settle the score&rdquo;</p> <p><em>This</em> is Nicolas Cage&rsquo;s interpretation of &ldquo;global justice&rdquo;? What next? A right-wing homophobic actor with a history of drug use and sexual assault being elected governor of California?</p> <p>Wait, what?</p> Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/call-of-duty-modern-warfare-2/ Wed, 02 Dec 2009 09:42:12 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/call-of-duty-modern-warfare-2/ <p>When it comes to videogames, sequels tend to be less like the <em>Godfather II</em> and more like <em>Jurassic Park II: The Lost World</em>. Rather than making something that stands alone, that rips up the play-book and starts over from scratch and, as a result, creates something truly exceptional, you tend to just get more of the same, only slightly bigger and slightly sillier. So instead of &ldquo;I know it was you Fredo. You broke my heart!&rdquo;, you get Jeff Goldblum&rsquo;s child lepping about on monkey-bars and <em>drop-kicking a velociraptor out a window</em>. (Not that I&rsquo;m making a judgement-call here, both films have their times and places.)</p> <p>It&rsquo;s kind of hard to tell where <em>Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2</em> falls. On the one hand, it completely obliterates the first game in terms of the scope of the action and the improvements to the multiplayer are just a shade short of revolutionary. It&rsquo;s probably the most beautifully rendered conflict I&rsquo;ve seen in a videogame and every level manages to create its own unique sense of tension - from close, claustrophobic fighting through corridors and narrow streets, to giant open levels where you&rsquo;re being attacked on all sides.</p> <p>On the other hand, it really is dumb as a bag of hammers.</p> <p>The narrative is all over the place. With the first game. developers Infinity Ward lifted heavily from all the big modern war movies - <em>Black Hawk Down</em>, <em>Jarhead</em> etc. I guess they must have played their cards early. With this new one, we get a couple of bits taken from <em>Generation Kill</em> (&ldquo;Put the camera down, Spielberg&rdquo; &ldquo;CNN&rsquo;s gonna pay loads for this footage!&rdquo;) before they seem to say &ldquo;fuck it, there&rsquo;s nothing else we can steal&rdquo; and go all <em>Red Dawn</em> - RED FUCKING DAWN - complete with Russians parachuting down into suburban America. I shit you not.</p> <p>Now, I love <em>Red Dawn</em> as much as the next guy, but like I said, there&rsquo;s a time and a place for everything. And the time for Red Dawn was thirty years ago, because now it&rsquo;s just a dumb relic of a dumb time. Here&rsquo;s the thing though: the writers make it very clear that they&rsquo;re aware of how dumb this is. The level where you&rsquo;re battling the Russians through a middle American neighbourhood is called &ldquo;Wolverines!&rdquo; - you know, an explicit reference to <em>Red Dawn</em>. It&rsquo;s a knowing wink to the audience, like they&rsquo;re saying &ldquo;hey, we know this is stupid and ridiculous and over-the-top, but it&rsquo;s all just a bit of fun, y&rsquo;know?&rdquo;</p> <p>Which makes the now-infamous airport scene all the more curious.</p> <p>(If you care about this game, don&rsquo;t know what happens in this scene and don&rsquo;t want to be &lsquo;spoiled&rsquo;, then stop reading now. The game came out almost a month ago, which is like ten years ago in internet-spoiler time, so don&rsquo;t complain if I ruin the impact of this scene for you.)</p> <p>Still reading? Good. If you don&rsquo;t know what happens in this scene, then I&rsquo;ll explain. You&rsquo;re playing an American agent who has infiltrated a Russian terrorist group. The level opens on a crowded airport full of civilians. Your group walks in and starts shooting indiscriminately into the crowd. How you take it from here, is entirely up to you. You can get through the level without killing anyone, or you can do what I did, walk through the level spraying bullets at everything that moved and tossing grenades in every direction. (I don&rsquo;t feel even slightly bad about this because <em>I can tell the difference between real life and videogames</em>). The level ends with the head of your group shooting you and leaving you to die, placing the blame on the Americans for the massacre.</p> <p>Outside of the game, though, it&rsquo;s a little more confused. Why did the developers feel the need to include this level? Most other games would have been content to tell this part of the story through dialogue or a cut-scene. &ldquo;<em>ring ring</em> Hey bro, you&rsquo;ll never believe it! The Russians killed a load of people and are blaming Americans and - wait, are those parachutes?&rdquo; Instead, they actually had you walking through the scene with a gun in your hand. Even if Columbine and Virginia Tech had never happened, this would be an uncomfortable sell. As it happens, they&rsquo;re impossible to escape throughout this scene. And a lot of people are asking why Infinity Ward chose to include it, especially when you spend every other part of the game mowing down various nameless, hard-to-distinguish ethnicities.</p> <p>Now, here&rsquo;s my take on the whole thing. I don&rsquo;t think that anyone telling a story is <em>obliged</em> to cover all bases. They tell the story that suits them best. Within the context of the game, the airport level makes perfect sense. The <em>Call of Duty: Modern Warfare</em> games take place in an alternate near-future where Russian ultra-nationalists are in power, and this is just the excuse they need to send the country to war. Placing you in the thick of the action, then, draws you in. Even if you go through the level without firing a single shot, you feel complicit and spend the rest of the game trying to &lsquo;fix&rsquo; your mistake.One thing I found interesting though is that despite the fact you go through suburban and central Washington, there&rsquo;s not <em>one</em> American civilian to get caught in the crossfire. And in those levels where you&rsquo;re supposed to be saving hostages, if even one of them dies, it&rsquo;s game over and you have to try again</p> <p>As to why the rest of the enemies in the game don&rsquo;t get the same level of attention to their back-story or motives, well that&rsquo;s just as simple. Why should it? From a narrative point of view, what purpose would it serve? Does the fact that <a href="http://art.penny-arcade.com/photos/682802964_8CjvU-L.jpg">your virtual enemy has a wife and child and perhaps dubious motivations</a> change the fact that when he&rsquo;s shooting at you, you&rsquo;re going to pop his head like a melon? It&rsquo;s similar to the complaints labeled at <em>Black Hawk Down</em>, that it was about dehumanizing the enemy. The story was about American soldiers and <em>their</em> point of view in this fight. The film split its time between five or six main soldiers and the story was told almost from their first-person point of view (well, as first-person as you can get in a movie without it being a gimmicky pile of ass. Right, <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0419706/">Doom</a>?). If the Somalis had a back-story, the US soldiers didn&rsquo;t know it and so we, the audience, didn&rsquo;t know it. Isn&rsquo;t that why we invented the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unreliable_narrator">unreliable narrator</a>?</p> <p>Of course, this all changes in games like <em>Modern Warfare 2</em> where you <em>are</em> the narrator, and you <em>are</em> narrating the story of the enemies. We will probably need a new paradigm for this kind of storytelling, but I&rsquo;m not sure I&rsquo;m going to figure it out in this (already long-winded) blog post. Don&rsquo;t get me wrong, <em>Modern Warfare 2</em> is a great game, and the only thing that has helped me kick my <em>Modern Warfare 1</em> addiction. I just wish there had been some consistency throughout it. The airport level was something completely new to videogames and extremely well done. They laid the groundwork for an amazing story, but the <em>Loony Tunes</em> cartoon violence bullshit they followed it up with just felt a little flat.</p> Never Too Old https://lowbrowculture.com/post/never-too-old/ Thu, 05 Nov 2009 11:21:33 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/never-too-old/ <p>When I turned 30, I spazzed <em>right the fuck out</em>. I felt really old. Actually, no - it was more than that. I didn&rsquo;t feel old as much as I suddenly became very aware of my own mortality. I realised there were lots of things I hadn&rsquo;t done, and probably would never get to do. Like a huge door had shut on a part of my life and I just had to adjust.</p> <p>Now my wife is facing the same thing.</p> <p>In the year&rsquo;s head-start I&rsquo;ve got on her, I&rsquo;ve come to terms with the big three-oh. I keep pointing out that <a href="http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&amp;safe=off&amp;client=safari&amp;rls=en&amp;q=40+is+the+new+30&amp;aq=f&amp;oq=&amp;aqi=g1">40 is the new 30</a> (13,260,000,000 google results can&rsquo;t be wrong). I also keep pointing out that, while she might feel like she&rsquo;ll never achieve her goals of being a famous hip-hop artist like Princess Superstar, it&rsquo;s never too late. Kelley Deal didn&rsquo;t even pick up a guitar until she was 31. In fact, she was supposed to be in the band when she was 29, but <em>couldn&rsquo;t get time off work</em>. Sound familiar?</p> <p>But that&rsquo;s nothing. Check this video out. It really gets going at 1:30</p> <p>Fred Astaire was FORTY SEVEN YEARS OLD when he pulled that shit off. I&rsquo;m thirty and I got exhausted just watching it. But it&rsquo;s more than just impressive that he was able to pull it off - I&rsquo;d say that if he&rsquo;d recorded that exact same routine when he was a younger man, it probably wouldn&rsquo;t have been as good. Look at the aggression when he smacks that cane around - it takes a real curmudgeonly old fuck to swing a stick like that.</p> <p>So maybe 50 is the new 20.</p> White Whine https://lowbrowculture.com/post/white-whine/ Tue, 03 Nov 2009 22:57:55 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/white-whine/ <p>My current computer is exponentially more powerful than the one I had when I started using <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dFUlAQZB9Ng">Unix</a>, but thanks to software bloat and feature-creep, it still seems to take roughly the same length of time to compile software.</p> <p>(This comes after hours of trying to get <a href="http://www.tug.org/mactex/">Mactex</a> to play nicely with <a href="http://latex2rtf.sourceforge.net/">latex2rtf</a> because my college only accepts assignment submissions in Word format and I&rsquo;ll be fucked if I&rsquo;m using that for long essays ever again.)</p> <p>Normal programming will resume shortly.</p> In Defense of Hoarding https://lowbrowculture.com/post/in-defense-of-hoarding/ Thu, 22 Oct 2009 07:33:12 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/in-defense-of-hoarding/ <p>Over at <a href="http://minimalmac.com/post/200378885/coveting-possessions-is-unhealthy-heres-how-i">Minimal Mac</a> (a terrific site that everyone should read, even if you&rsquo;re not a Mac user), they recently pointed to a metafilter comment about <a href="http://www.metafilter.com/65284/Collect-em-all#1862024">the dangers of coveting possessions</a>. The commenter suggests that the best way to beat any hoarding impulses we might have is to simply adjust the way we look at things.</p> <blockquote> <p>All of the computers on Ebay are mine. In fact, everything on Ebay is already mine. All of those things are just in long term storage that I pay nothing for. Storage is free.<br> &hellip;<br> The world is my museum, displaying my collections on loan. The James Savages of the world are merely curators.</p> </blockquote> <p>It&rsquo;s a lovely sentiment, and one I really wish I could get behind, except I&rsquo;ve just got one little problem: Me. Or more specifically, <em>people like me</em>.</p> <p>What do I mean by this?</p> <p>I recently found a stash of old PlayStation games that I thought I&rsquo;d lost. There are some real gems in there. <em>PaRappa the Rapper</em>, <em>BeatMania</em>, <em>Final Fantasy VII</em>. All great games. Will I ever play them again? Probably not. I&rsquo;m having enough trouble keeping on top of new releases to ever really go back and play old games. So why don&rsquo;t I get rid of them?</p> <p>There were a finite number of copies of <em>PaRappa the Rapper</em> published. Taking into account losses, breakage and the effects of time, this number is constantly decreasing. Now, if I was to send my games off into the æther, there&rsquo;s the strong possibility that they&rsquo;d be picked up by someone like me: a pack-rat who can&rsquo;t bear to let anything go. So not only would I be losing my own copy of <em>PaRappa</em>, itwould also mean there is one less copy to &ldquo;take out of storage&rdquo;. Eventually, there will be no copies of it left on eBay. Or at least, it would be so rare as to be only available at a completely unreasonable price.</p> <p>The storage thing is a nice (if slightly smug and self-satisfied) analogy, but it just doesn&rsquo;t work in the real world, because it assumes an infinite supply chain. Besides, I&rsquo;d always prefer to be the curator, actually <em>caring</em> for these things, rather than a cold, distant absentee owner.</p> <p>(My wife will probably beat the shit out of me for this post.)</p> Brain Dump - October 23rd https://lowbrowculture.com/post/brain-dump-october-23rd/ Thu, 22 Oct 2009 06:36:48 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/brain-dump-october-23rd/ <p>Here&rsquo;s some stuff that&rsquo;s been clogging up my starred list in Google Reader for too long.</p> <p>When it comes to bonkers films, Russia is the new Japan:</p> <p><a href="http://www.funnyordie.co.uk/videos/ef83afc272/hosting-your-windows-7-torrenting-party">Hosting your Windows 7 Torrenting Party</a></p> <p>&ldquo;<a href="http://contexts.org/socimages/2009/10/21/when-you-marry-1962-textbook/">When you Marry</a>&rdquo; - they don&rsquo;t write &rsquo;em like that any more:</p> <blockquote>It is not uncommon for one or both parties to experience feelings of guilt or revulsion, to the mutual distress of both parties. For other couples who have anticipated great thrills in the first sex relations, there is sometimes disappointment - reality doesn't live up to expectations</blockquote> <p>Monkey Island 2, in 3D:</p> <p><a href="http://thisisphotobomb.com/">Photobombing</a> could be my new favourite thing on the internet.</p> <p>Technology got you down? Squarepixelz is hosting <a href="http://squarepixelz.blogspot.com/">a bunch of old tech documentaries</a>. I love watching these - everyone&rsquo;s so hopeful about the possibilities of technology.</p> <p>X-Men Origins: Wolverine, in 30 seconds:</p> <p>You know <em>This American Life</em>? &ldquo;That show by those hipster know-it-alls who talk about how fascinating ordinary people are?&rdquo; Well, here&rsquo;s every episode of the <em>This American Life</em> TV show: <a href="http://www.youku.com/playlist_show/id_2826427.html">Season 1</a> <a href="http://www.youku.com/playlist_show/id_3346890.html">Season 2</a>.</p> The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus https://lowbrowculture.com/post/the-imaginarium-of-doctor-parnassus/ Tue, 20 Oct 2009 09:58:58 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/the-imaginarium-of-doctor-parnassus/ <p>Last night, through an amazing and unexpected string of good luck, I ended up at a special screening of Terry Gilliam&rsquo;s new film, <em>The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus</em> presented by Gilliam himself.</p> <p>I should probably point out that I&rsquo;m a huge, huge fan of Gilliam. To the point that I&rsquo;ve said that I want to be buried with my Criterion Collection edition of <em>Brazil</em>. So bear with me if I start to nerd out a bit.</p> <p>I thought <em>Imaginarium</em> was terrific. After <em>The Brothers Grimm</em> and <em>Tideland</em>, which were both dark, heavy films, this is a return to the lightness of his earlier films. Don&rsquo;t pay attention and you&rsquo;d be forgiven for thinking this was a sequel to <em>Time Bandits</em>. Or maybe <em>The Fisher King</em>. Or maybe even <em>The Adventures of Baron Munchausen</em>. And hell, while I&rsquo;m at it, there are a few shots there that made me think Gilliam has already cast Christopher Plummer in the lead of his currently-in-preproduction <em>The Man Who Killed Don Quixote</em>. This film shines a spotlight on the leitmotif running through all of his previous work: the idea that imagination and invention can break the spell of monotony cast by the drudgery of ordinary life.</p> <p>At this point, I should probably try to summarise the plot. Isn&rsquo;t that how these things work? But in Gilliam films, this is easier said than done. And to be honest, I think this is the kind of film that works best when you come into it blind, rather than with a bunch of preconceptions about what the story might be. Or don&rsquo;t. Read everything you can, if you like. Just go and see it. But before you do, just let me say that Tom Waits is incredible as the Devil ((Although I think this is slightly lazy, obvious casting, considering what a great job he did as Kneller in <em>Wristcutters: A Love Story</em>)), and Lily Cole is a surprisingly good actress. And the rewrites following the death of Heath Ledger work so well I&rsquo;d bet that in 30 years, people will barely know they weren&rsquo;t intentional. Like the malfunctioning shark in <em>Jaws</em>, sometime restrictions bring out the best in us.</p> <p>There&rsquo;s another aspect of <em>Imaginarium</em> that highlights this too: the special effects. Before CGI effects really took off, Gilliam was forced to limit himself using physical effects, which had a tremendous&hellip; well&hellip; <em>physicality</em> to them. Unbridled, his fantastical CGI dreamworlds look amazing and expansive, but they feel paper-thin. When people first enter the Imaginarium, they start in a pantomime forest, with cardboard trees which may have looked cheap and ridiculous, but they at least felt real and believable. As they moved further into the Imaginarium and hit the CGI-heavy landscapes, it made me wonder whether Gilliam made the right choice in prioritising epic verisimilitude over whimsy. Especially considering the film&rsquo;s message of liberation through imagination.</p> <p>One thing I should probably point out, which no-one has mentioned so far, is the similarity between this film and Angela Carter&rsquo;s novel, <em>The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman</em>. Both are about unbridled imagination (and the potential perils thereof), but also, and perhaps more crucially, both are about <em>identity</em> and <em>choice</em>. I dunno, maybe I&rsquo;m completely off-base with this one, but I could have sworn that one of the gravestones in <em>Imaginarium</em> had the name &ldquo;Dr Hoffman&rdquo; on it. Or maybe my eyes were just playing tricks on me.</p> <p>(<strong>Update:</strong> Over on <a href="http://imaginariumofdrparnassus.com">imaginariumofdrparnassus.com</a>, Dave Warren, the film&rsquo;s art director wrote in (in response to a link to this review - whoa) to say that <a href="http://imaginariumofdrparnassus.com/blog/2009/10/21/exclusive-great-behind-the-scenes-dr-parnassus-story-whose-name-is-on-the-tombstone-bob-the-wagon/">the actual name on the tombstone was &ldquo;Bob Hollow&rdquo;</a>. That solves that, then.)</p> <p>The film opens theatrically at the end of the month and I&rsquo;ll be keeping my eyes open during this scene when I go back to see it again. For me, every one of Gilliam&rsquo;s films improve on repeat viewings. Gilliam told Mark Kermode that his preferred tagline for Tideland was &ldquo;Tideland - It&rsquo;s a different experience the second time!&rdquo; I&rsquo;d bet a tenner the same thing is true for <em>The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus</em>.</p> Nanowrimo https://lowbrowculture.com/post/nanowrimo/ Mon, 19 Oct 2009 14:52:23 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/nanowrimo/ <p>We&rsquo;re over halfway through October. You know what that means: it&rsquo;s time for my annual resolution to actually participate in this year&rsquo;s <a href="http://www.nanowrimo.org/">National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo)</a>! I mean, it&rsquo;s not like I don&rsquo;t have enough on my plate, what with college, radio work, design work, Italian lessons and my most thankless of jobs as house-husband. Why not try and write a novel too?</p> <p>Part of what used to squash my plans in previous years is the fact that I had nothing else to do. And this is dangerous. There&rsquo;s that old saying about &ldquo;ask a busy man a favour.&rdquo; The theory being that once you get the ball rolling, getting things done just becomes second nature. If you&rsquo;d asked me to do you a favour before, I would have said &ldquo;sure, no problem&rdquo;, gone back to playing Xbox, and given you a half-hearted apology two months later when you ask me why I didn&rsquo;t do what I said I would. I say &ldquo;half-hearted&rdquo; because, inside, I&rsquo;d be thinking it was partly your own fault for asking me to do something in the first place.</p> <p>Not this year.</p> <p>The other thing that used to always catch me out was the lack of an initial idea. As romantic as it might be to go into this thing completely blind, just putting fingers to keyboard and seeing what happens across 50,000 words - <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_writing">automatic writing</a> on a massive scale - I just don&rsquo;t think this is the way I work best.</p> <p>Again, not this year.</p> <p>This year, I know exactly what story I want to tell. I&rsquo;ve got an idea that I think I can stretch across an entire novel. It&rsquo;s just a matter of getting it out. Quickly.</p> <p>The only thing standing in my way (apart from college, radio work, design work, Italian lessons and my duties as house-husband) is <a href="http://www.play.com/Games/Xbox360/4-/8771809/Call-Of-Duty-Modern-Warfare-2/Product.html">Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2</a>, which comes out right in the middle of November. I&rsquo;ve written before about how addicted I am to the first one (250+ hours) and I&rsquo;m genuinely quite scared at what might happen when this new one comes out. Would Whitney Houston be appearing on X-Factor now if she knew that crack PLUS was going to be released in a few days? Hell no. She&rsquo;d be off getting ready for her year-long crack vacation.</p> <p>Who knows, maybe it&rsquo;ll work and I&rsquo;ll be able to pull it all off. I&rsquo;ll just have to prioritise, hard. Ask a busy man a favour? Sure, right after I finish this game.</p> Berlusconi Fights Back https://lowbrowculture.com/post/berlusconi-fights-back/ Sat, 17 Oct 2009 15:49:19 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/berlusconi-fights-back/ <p>I really don&rsquo;t want this news story to go unnoticed, because it is <em>amazing</em>.</p> <blockquote> <p>ROME, Oct 17 (Reuters) - Italian magistrates and the opposition are up in arms after a television channel owned by Silvio Berlusconi shadowed and secretly filmed a judge who ruled against the prime minister in a bribery case.</p> <p>Days after Judge Raimondo Mesiano ordered Berlusconi&rsquo;s holding company to pay 750 million euros in damages to a rival, the media mogul&rsquo;s Canale 5 channel aired a video of the judge taking a walk, smoking and getting a shave at the barber.</p> <p>Dubbing the judge&rsquo;s behaviour &ldquo;eccentric&rdquo;, a narrator points to him smoking the &ldquo;umpteenth&rdquo; cigarette, calls his turquoise socks &ldquo;strange&rdquo; and says: &ldquo;He&rsquo;s impatient &hellip; he can only relax at the barber&rsquo;s&rdquo;.<br> &hellip;<br> Some magistrates are debating a &ldquo;turquoise socks&rdquo; protest, while others have been collecting signatures for a letter of support for their colleague, Italian media reported.</p> </blockquote> <p>(<a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/rbssTechMediaTelecomNews/idUSLH51683320091017">Via Reuters</a>)</p> <p>Wow.</p> <p>I have absolutely no idea how this whole Berlusconi thing is going to play out. Will he be forced from office? Will it all be forgotten about? Fuck knows. I do know that when both sides are as completely <em>batshit insane</em> as this (turquoise socks protest!), the next few months are going to be very, very entertaining.</p> <p>Well, for those of us who have the safety net of this not being our permanent home, at least.</p> Yeah, no https://lowbrowculture.com/post/yeah-no/ Fri, 09 Oct 2009 07:00:55 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/yeah-no/ <p>As you&rsquo;d expect, being a stranger in a strange land, I often find myself talking to people who aren&rsquo;t native english speakers. I&rsquo;ve learned that there&rsquo;s a definite knack to having a conversation that crosses a few language barriers. Talk slowly, taking a lot of care to en-un-ci-ate ev-er-y syl-lab-le. And throw in a lot of hand gestures, too. They always help.</p> <p>What <em>doesn&rsquo;t</em> help is when you&rsquo;ve got a verbal tic that must be incredibly confusing for the person listening to you. In my case, I have an awful habit of starting sentences with &ldquo;Yeah&hellip; no.&rdquo; My wife pointed this out to me a little while ago and now I can&rsquo;t help but notice that I do it <em>all the fucking time</em>.</p> <p>In my mind, though, it makes perfect sense. What I&rsquo;m actually saying is &ldquo;<strong>Yes</strong>, I hear, understand and appreciate what you are saying but <strong>no</strong>, this is not the case.&rdquo; And it gives me extra time to think of a proper response. But to an Italian person listening to me, I probably sound like a babbling lunatic who is deliberately going out of his way to confuse them. English is confusing enough without me throwing a spanner in the works. For example, did you know <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ough_%28orthography%29">there are roughly seven different ways to pronounce &ldquo;ough&rdquo;</a> in the English language?</p> <p>Although I&rsquo;ve been getting less bummed out by my tic since I started noticing how many other people have it too. You&rsquo;ve no idea how happy I was when I heard Joe Cornish say it on the Adam and Joe podcast. Famous people do it too!</p> <p>Still, it doesn&rsquo;t help me with my own problem. Maybe I should just start <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9JhuOicPFZY&amp;NR=1">speaking Italian to Italian people</a>.</p> Glee https://lowbrowculture.com/post/glee/ Wed, 07 Oct 2009 16:57:12 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/glee/ <p>What does it say about me that an hipster indie film like <em>Away We Go</em> &ndash; a film which seemed to be tailor-made for people like me &ndash; completely failed to move me, despite the fact it was violently tugging at my heartstrings for the better part of two hours, whereas populist, cliched fluff like <em>Glee</em> had me bawling in 42 minutes?</p> <p>It ends with <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QhTiJEYqqY8">a slow clap</a>, for fuck&rsquo;s sake. I am completely powerless against the slow clap.</p> Eden Lake https://lowbrowculture.com/post/eden-lake/ Tue, 06 Oct 2009 13:42:49 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/eden-lake/ <p><strong>Director: James Watkins, 2008, 91' IMDB Keywords: Lake, Young Couple, Lost In Woods, Bleeding To Death, Bicycle</strong></p> <p>Sometimes it feels like my life is just a series of stupid decisions, strung together with crippling anxiety. For example, there&rsquo;s the time we went camping in Tuscany. It was probably my favourite camping holiday yet - we pitched our tent on the beach. Not &lsquo;beside&rsquo; the beach or &rsquo;near&rsquo; the beach. We were <em>on</em> the beach. The waves were breaking not ten metres from our tent. It was stunning. Beautiful in almost every way. Except I couldn&rsquo;t get to sleep. I was a bit restless and thought that watching one of the movies on my iPod Touch would help lull me to sleep. And so, instead of watching something like <em>The Jerk</em> or <em>Anvil</em>, I decided it would be a great idea to watch <em>Eden Lake</em>, a horror film about a couple who go camping on a beach and get brutally terrorized by a bunch of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Social_Behaviour_Order">ASBO</a> kids.</p> <p>See? Stupid decision. I didn&rsquo;t get any sleep that night.</p> <p>It&rsquo;s not like it&rsquo;s a flawless movie. Even horror movies have a breaking point when it comes to coincidences - the screaming victim just <em>happens</em> to run into a cave which just <em>happens</em> to be the home of the big scary monster. <em>Eden Lake</em> gleefully ignores this breaking point and keeps layering coincidence on top of coincidence. Towards the end, <em>Eden Lake</em> actually felt as if it was taking the piss. Either the filmmakers didn&rsquo;t get the memo regarding the suspension of disbelief, or they&rsquo;re implying that this couple are the two unluckiest people in the world.</p> <p>I&rsquo;ll tell you what though, they&rsquo;re definitely two of the smuggest, most self-satisfied cunts in the world. And this is where the film plays a blinder.</p> <p>They&rsquo;re so overwhelmingly unbearable that I actually started to wish them bodily harm. It&rsquo;s a horror film, so you know they&rsquo;re going to suffer and so I was kind of look forward to that bit of the movie. When all the bad shit starts happening, I felt better. It&rsquo;s catharsis. Establish the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heel_(professional_wrestling)">heel</a>, make them suffer, and everyone goes home feeling as if everything is right with the world. Did anyone go to see <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0397065/"><em>House of Wax</em></a> to see Paris Hilton escape unhurt? No. They paid good money to see <a href="http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&amp;VideoID=5143123">Paris Hilton get a pole thrown through her head</a>. It&rsquo;s catharsis, and everyone (including Paris Hilton, I bet) knows it. But <em>Eden Lake</em> isn&rsquo;t quite like that, because it doesn&rsquo;t stop there. It just keeps pushing through into a new level of discomfort that few films have taken me to. The brutality is so unrelenting that it&rsquo;s hard not to feel bad for hating these people. I mean, I just wanted to see them get a few cuts and scrapes. Nothing that would leave any kind of permanent scar. And the film goes so much further. It was kind of like when everyone was all &ldquo;Saddam Hussein was an evil dictator who should rot in hell&rdquo; and then they saw the video of his hanging and then they were all &ldquo;Oh.&rdquo; <em>Eden Lake</em> is like that. Only with less genocide.</p> <p>And I don&rsquo;t think that I can finish up without mentioning Jack O&rsquo;Connell, who plays the leader of the ASBOs. He really is the star of the show, completely believable and terrifying. He basically plays a more sociopathic version of the character he played in <em>Skins</em>, which makes me think that he&rsquo;s either a great actor who is in danger of being typecast as a grotty teen, or someone the police should genuinely keep an eye on.</p> Further Proof That the World is Boned → http://www.youtube.com/v/Nrnlm0DG9hM&hl Sat, 26 Sep 2009 09:21:03 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/further-proof-that-the-world-is-boned/ <p>Well, this is a bit on the nose.</p> The Lisbon Treaty https://lowbrowculture.com/post/the-lisbon-treaty/ Fri, 25 Sep 2009 16:02:07 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/the-lisbon-treaty/ <p>It&rsquo;s time for everyone&rsquo;s favourite hot-button topic: the Lisbon treaty. Fun times ahead!</p> <p>My cousin, who occasionally reads this blog (hello!), was telling me about the reason he voted &rsquo;no&rsquo; during the last referendum. Or rather, the reason he <em>would</em> have voted &rsquo;no&rsquo; if he had actually been registered to vote.</p> <p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;d have voted no because the government wanted me to vote yes.&rdquo;</p> <p>It&rsquo;s an interesting reason, but not that unusual. Lots of people voted/are voting &rsquo;no&rsquo; simply because they want to &ldquo;stick it&rdquo; to a government that they are increasingly mistrustful and resentful of. The Irish people feel like their government isn&rsquo;t actually on their side. For example, many people argue that <a href="http://www.nama.ie/">NAMA</a> is designed to bail out the bankers at the expense of the taxpayer. <a href="http://www.irishelection.com/2009/09/dail-is-packed/">Photos from the recent Dail debate</a> don&rsquo;t really help us to feel like there&rsquo;s any reason to doubt that. And when you get overblown, selfish and mercenary fucksocks like Ryanair&rsquo;s Michael O&rsquo;Leary (<a href="http://www.lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2009/09/Michael_O_Leary_Ry_1208663i.jpg">pictured here with a personal message for you</a>) coming out in support of the &ldquo;yes&rdquo; campaign, well, that just confirms people&rsquo;s suspicions. We&rsquo;ve all seen his vision for the airline of the future, why should we presume that he would want anything less for the people of his country? Professor of comparative political behavior at Trinity College, Michael Marsh, points out &ldquo;<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/22/world/europe/22iht-ireland.html?partner=rss&amp;emc=rss&amp;pagewanted=all">for some people, the intervention of big business confirms that this is not good for workers</a>.&rdquo;</p> <p>So why would my cousin vote &rsquo;no&rsquo; a second time (again, if he was on the register)?</p> <p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;d vote no because I really hate that thing of &lsquo;You got a referendum and you MADE THE WRONG CHOICE. Now try again.&rsquo;&rdquo;</p> <p>It&rsquo;s true that the referendum is basically the same as it was the last time. What&rsquo;s changed is the fact that Ireland has secured a number of legal guarantees regarding a number of the core issues that caused people to vote &rsquo;no&rsquo; last time. It means that the Lisbon treaty does not and cannot affect Ireland&rsquo;s constitution on the subjects of security, defense and right to life. Ignore these militant (read: <a href="http://www.coircampaign.org/">demented nutball</a>) anti-Lisbon groups who say that, no, this is not the case and that these &ldquo;guarantees&rdquo; are &ldquo;as useful as a politician’s promise, and just as easily broken.&rdquo; Coir still insist that <a href="http://www.coircampaign.org/index.php/info-euguide/lisbon-and-abortion">Lisbon would introduce abortion laws</a>. On the other hand, <a href="http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/breaking/2009/0922/breaking34.htm">the Irish Bishops say that this is not the case</a>, and Irish people can vote either way in good conscience. Now, which group would you turn to for your moral guidance?</p> <p>A &rsquo;no&rsquo; result would fuck us. And we&rsquo;re talking the terrifying hard pounding of a prison rape, not the gentle, tender <a href="http://www.menshealth.co.uk/chatroom/printtopic/296040?theme=print">feathery stroking</a> we&rsquo;ve experienced in the last year. But as well as the effect it would have on Ireland and its economy, imagine what it would do to Europe. Everyone&rsquo;s favourite little megalomaniacal midget, Berlusconi, has been once again <a href="http://www.upi.com/Top_News/2009/09/21/Berlusconi-raises-core-Europe-idea/UPI-37051253544009/">throwing around the idea of creating a &rsquo;two tier&rsquo; Europe</a>, where some animals are more equal than others. This from a man who <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUSTRE58H01320090918">threatened to block all EU business unless Commission spokespeople STFU about Italy&rsquo;s immigration policies</a>. Can you imagine what happens if there&rsquo;s a &rsquo;no&rsquo; result and Ireland takes his place as the red-headed stepchild of Europe? Ouch.</p> <p>The other reason lots of people voted &rsquo;no&rsquo; in the first referendum was because they said that it was too complicated. In a way, this is a fair point, I&rsquo;ve always believed in the idea of not signing my name to a contract I don&rsquo;t fully understand. But it&rsquo;s been a year since people first became aware of the Lisbon treaty and this isn&rsquo;t a viable excuse any more. If you don&rsquo;t understand the contract, you owe it to yourself and the person whose contract it is to go off and figure it out. As Owen Corrigan put it in his article in the Tribune, this made last year&rsquo;s &rsquo;no&rsquo; result &ldquo;<a href="http://www.tribune.ie/news/editorial-opinion/article/2009/sep/20/owen-corrigan-lisbon-result-a-triumph-of-ignorance/">less a triumph of democracy for the voters of a ruggedly independent state, and more a triumph of ignorance in the face of reason, rationality and responsibility</a>.&rdquo; (Seriously, if you read nothing else in this whole campaign, I urge you to read this article.)</p> <p>In the end though, I guess a lot of people will vote based less on the issues and more on ridiculous external factors, like who is encouraging you to vote what way. Sure, Michael O&rsquo;Leary wants you to vote &lsquo;yes,&rsquo; but David Icke, the &lsquo;I am the son of God and the world is ruled by giant lizards&rsquo; guy <a href="http://www.davidicke.com/forum/showthread.php?p=1259556">wants you to &rsquo;no.&rsquo;</a> Think about <em>that</em>.</p> You Say Toe-May-Toe... https://lowbrowculture.com/post/you-say-toe-may-toe/ Thu, 24 Sep 2009 20:51:49 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/you-say-toe-may-toe/ <p>I just watched the Toby Young/Michelle Bernstein spat on this week&rsquo;s <em>Top Chef</em> regarding the pronunciation of &ldquo;paella&rdquo; and - weird as it is to say this - I totally agree with Toby Young. Unless you&rsquo;re actually Spanish or <em>in Spain</em>, you should be pronouncing it with hard Ls. Pie-el-la.</p> <p>But this argument made me realise that after watching four seasons of <em>Top Chef</em>, it&rsquo;s time something was said:</p> <p>IT&rsquo;S PRONOUNCED RIZ-OT-TOE*. NOT RIZ-OH-TOE.</p> <p>I mean, you&rsquo;re chefs, for fuck&rsquo;s sake. This should be sorted out by now. Every week, someone does a risotto. Every week, my wife and I <a href="http://apublicdefender.com/pictures/2009/03/facepalm.jpg">facepalm</a> at the apparent inability to pronounce this word. I think at this stage we&rsquo;re actually dealing with willful ignorance instead.</p> <p>This week, one dickbag chef decided to go one step further, pronouncing <a href="http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/saltimbocca">saltimbocca</a> as &lsquo;salt-im-boe-ka.&rsquo; PRO TIP: you&rsquo;re wrong.</p> <p><strong>Update:</strong> Likewise, when I&rsquo;m back home in Ireland, I&rsquo;d be more likely to be understood if I asked for a &ldquo;broo-shet-ah&rdquo;, versus what I&rsquo;d say in Italy, which is &ldquo;Broo-sket-tah&rdquo;.</p> <ul> <li>Like the &lsquo;paella&rsquo; thing, this is the standard &lsquo;international&rsquo; pronunciation. If you&rsquo;re Italian or in Italy, it&rsquo;s more like &ldquo;ree-sot-toe&rdquo;.</li> </ul> Happy Birthday Elite! https://lowbrowculture.com/post/happy-birthday-elite/ Thu, 24 Sep 2009 08:02:44 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/happy-birthday-elite/ <p><a href="http://www.lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2009/09/Screen-shot-2009-09-23-at-09.04.26.png"><img src="http://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2009/09/Screen-shot-2009-09-23-at-09.04.26-500x194.png" alt="Screen shot 2009-09-23 at 09.04.26"></a></p> <p>Hard to believe, but <a href="http://elite.frontier.co.uk/home/">Elite</a> came out 25 years ago this month. Twenty-five years!</p> <p>This makes me feel very, very old. Still, <em>Elite</em> has held up really well over the years. That must mean I have too, right? Er&hellip;</p> <p>The first time I played <em>Elite</em> was on my cousin&rsquo;s Commodore 64. I was barely out of nappies and for the life of me, I couldn&rsquo;t wrap my head around the whole space-trading thing. Having to keep track any number of variables is kind of difficult when you&rsquo;ve got the attention span of a sparrow. I had no idea what was going on and understood maybe every second word in a sentence. &ldquo;What is &rsquo;narcotics&rsquo;?&rdquo; &ldquo;Drugs.&rdquo; &ldquo;What is &lsquo;drugs&rsquo;?&rdquo; But I loved the game&rsquo;s 3D engine and the feeling that you could go anywhere, do anything. All this in a game that took up less than 22K of memory - that&rsquo;s less than an average email. And I still count my first successful docking with a space station as one of my videogaming high points.</p> <p>If you fancy playing a bit of <em>Elite</em> right now, grab a copy of <a href="http://www.oolite.org/">Oolite</a>, which runs on almost anything.</p> Crank 2 DVD Commentary https://lowbrowculture.com/post/crank-2-dvd-commentary/ Wed, 23 Sep 2009 17:40:39 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/crank-2-dvd-commentary/ <p>Remember when DVDs first arrived on the scene and everyone was gushing about how great it was that they could record their own commentaries for their favourite movies? How did that work out?</p> <p>Not so good, huh?</p> <p>Know why? Because most people are <em>boring as shit</em>. When you get them talking about movies they love, they&rsquo;re even worse. I&rsquo;m not saying I&rsquo;m above this. Put a microphone in front of me when I&rsquo;m watching <em>Kickboxer</em> you&rsquo;ll just get me either rattling off the entire screenplay or not saying a word because I fucking love that film so much.</p> <p>Over on the AV Club, frequent commenter and the world&rsquo;s biggest fan of <a href="http://media.ebaumsworld.com/picture/benjai28/OWNAGE.png">ownage</a>, Zodiac Motherfucker, has <a href="http://www.avclub.com/articles/crank-2-downloadable-audio-commentary-by-zmf,33203/?utm_medium=RSS&amp;utm_campaign=feeds&amp;utm_source=avclub_rss_daily">recorded his own commentary for his film of 2009, <em>Crank 2: High Voltage</em></a>. This is decidedly <strong>not</strong> boring. Imagine the forgotten love-child of Andrew W.K. and Kanye West screaming at the TV, swearing like a docker and whooping for blood, and that&rsquo;s his commentary. Stupid and puerile? Sure, but so are the <em>Crank</em> movies, and that doesn&rsquo;t stop them being some of the most entertaining movies of the last few years.</p> <p>Either way, there&rsquo;s no-one better to watch <em>Crank 2</em> with than Zodiac Motherfucker.</p> Are Apple Products Badly Engineered? https://lowbrowculture.com/post/are-apple-products-badly-engineered/ Fri, 18 Sep 2009 13:39:04 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/are-apple-products-badly-engineered/ <p>There&rsquo;s a lot of brouhaha about the failure rate of Xbox 360s. In the same week, I saw three different news stories citing three different failure rates for the 360 (<a href="http://consumerist.com/5338852/xbox-360-failure-rate-is-542-percent-game-informer-finds">54.2%</a>, <a href="http://www.pcworld.com/article/171303/xbox_360_least_reliable_console.html">23.7%</a> and <a href="http://www.examiner.com/x-14920-Sacramento-Gaming-Industry-Examiner~y2009m9d2-Report-Xbox-360-has-worst-failure-rate-Wii-has-best">27.3%</a>, if you&rsquo;re interested). And everyone gives them shit because they&rsquo;re, y&rsquo;know, <em>Microsoft</em>.</p> <p>Having spent the morning fixing a dying Macbook, I started thinking about what my failure rate with Apple hardware has been. And to be perfectly honest, it&rsquo;s been pretty shit. In the past five years, I&rsquo;ve owned (or co-owned) an iBook, two Macbooks, an iMac, a 60GB iPod, two iPod nanos and an iPod touch. Let&rsquo;s see what&rsquo;s happened with these.</p> <ul> <li> <p><strong>Wife&rsquo;s iBook ate its own display cable</strong><br> Putting a teeny-tiny display cable into a hinge that gets used all the time? Great idea.</p> </li> <li> <p><strong>Macbook case cracking</strong><br> This happened on both my own Macbook and my wife&rsquo;s. If you see how the Macbook is assembled, it&rsquo;s easy to see why this happens - you have to bend the entire keyboard plate slightly to get it to connect. Bending it weakens the decorative plastic &rsquo;lip'.</p> </li> <li> <p><strong>Macbook case discoloration</strong><br> I got this on my white Macbook. Got the keyboard plate replaced, started happening again before I got rid of the Macbook</p> </li> <li> <p><strong>iMac logic board meltdown</strong><br> Brand-new iMac died within 8 hours of getting it because the logic board wasn&rsquo;t connected properly, half the fans didn&rsquo;t work and melted the graphics card</p> </li> <li> <p><strong>Dead headphone adaptor on 60GB iPod</strong><br> This was probably my own fault. I like to use headphones with strong cables and very little &lsquo;give&rsquo;, forcing the headphone jack to bend slightly. Still, this wasn&rsquo;t exactly &lsquo;heavy&rsquo; use. Managed to replace this via parts on eBay</p> </li> <li> <p><strong>Random lines on 60GB iPod</strong><br> No idea where this came from, but it&rsquo;s like my iPod had a stroke or something. Turned it on one day and there was a strong black band going across the LCD screen. They&rsquo;ve slowly started fading away now, going back to normal.</p> </li> <li> <p><strong>Dodgy connector on one iPod nano</strong><br> This both comes from and affects the Nike+. I plug in the Nike+ adaptor and it doesn&rsquo;t detect a receiver. Works fine on the other iPod nano. Doesn&rsquo;t affect normal connection to the computer.</p> </li> <li> <p><strong>Dodgy Nike+ on iPod touch</strong><br> My iPod touch will only randomly choose to see the Nike+ adaptor in my shoe. Usually after I do a complete reformat and restore, and even then, it only lasts for about a week.</p> </li> <li> <p><strong>Broken DVD drive in Macbook</strong><br> About a year after my wife got her Macbook, the DVD drive stopped working. It was hardly ever moved and rarely used. Still, it means that OS upgrades are a pain in the dick and I can&rsquo;t run the hardware test utility any more.</p> </li> <li> <p><strong>Broken LCD backlight on Macbook</strong><br> This is what I&rsquo;ve been dealing with today. After a random crash, the backlight no longer works. I can see the display on the LCD, but there&rsquo;s just no backlight. I don&rsquo;t even know where to begin with this</p> </li> <li> <p><strong>Update: Fraying on Macbook power chord</strong><br> Joanne&rsquo;s comment reminded me about this. About a year ago, power on the Macbook was a bit flaky. We turned over the power chord and noticed that near the connector, the cable had burned almost completely through. We were lucky that we were in the house when it happened, this could have been a lot nastier than the €80 it cost to replace the chord.</p> </li> </ul> <p>So, of all the Apple hardware I&rsquo;ve used in the last five years, the only thing that hasn&rsquo;t given me an issue is one iPod nano (I&rsquo;ve also got an <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_IIe">Apple IIe</a> from 1986 at home that still works fine). Which leads me to wonder if Apple products are badly engineered, or am I just extremely unlucky?</p> Lady Gaga is My Hero https://lowbrowculture.com/post/lady-gaga-is-my-new-hero/ Thu, 17 Sep 2009 09:32:50 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/lady-gaga-is-my-new-hero/ <p>I&rsquo;ve always had a lot of respect for Lady Gaga. She&rsquo;s completely batshit insane, but unlike most of those self-consciously &lsquo;quirky&rsquo; artists out there, <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m_Ezr4MuSU8">she&rsquo;s actually has the talent to back that up</a>. You have to admire her courage. Or, at the very least, her ability to keep a straight face.</p> <p>But her appearance at the MTV VMAs was so amazing that she&rsquo;s now become my personal hero. She was, by far, the most entertaining person on there. I mean, who else could sit behind Beyonce and completely steal the spotlight? That takes some balls (<a href="http://news.google.com/news?rls=en&amp;q=lady+gaga+hermaphrodite&amp;oe=UTF-8&amp;um=1&amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;hl=en&amp;ei=IACySp6wBJGD_AaRmuS1DQ&amp;sa=X&amp;oi=news_group&amp;ct=title&amp;resnum=1">no pun intended</a>).</p> <p><img src="http://www.lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2009/09/2lt4hao.gif" alt="2lt4hao"></p> <p>Flavorwire have a great article <a href="http://flavorwire.com/38348/deconstructing-lady-gagas-vma-ensembles">deconstructing Lady Gaga&rsquo;s VMA ensembles</a>. My favourite is the Carrie/Burger King one.</p> Normal Service Will Resume Shortly https://lowbrowculture.com/post/normal-service-will-resume-shortly/ Wed, 09 Sep 2009 15:06:13 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/normal-service-will-resume-shortly/ <p>I&rsquo;m heading back to Ireland for a few days and deliberately using the time to step back from the computer. Here&rsquo;s a few links that should keep you entertained until I get back.</p> <p><a href="http://www.denofgeek.com/movies/313130/in_praise_of_the_scifi_corridor.html">In Praise of the Sci-Fi Corridor</a></p> <p><a href="http://www.chicagomag.com/Chicago-Magazine/September-2009/A-Mugging-on-Lake-Street/">A Mugging on Lake Street</a> - a reporter is mugged and writes a thoughtful article about the incident.</p> <p><a href="http://vimeo.com/5732745">World Science Festival 2009: Bobby McFerrin Demonstrates the Power of the Pentatonic Scale</a> from <a href="http://vimeo.com/user1103909">World Science Festival</a> on <a href="http://vimeo.com">Vimeo</a>.</p> <p><a href="http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/features/2009/09/mad-men200909">Bruce Handy on Mad Men</a> - if you can get over the fact that Vanity Fair&rsquo;s site is a pain in the dick to read (PRO TIP: hook yourself up with <a href="http://lab.arc90.com/experiments/readability/">Readability</a>), this is a fantastic article about the show.</p> <p><a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203706604574377163804387216.html">Good Novels Don&rsquo;t Have to be Hard Work</a> - interesting thesis: Stephanie Meyer and the like represent the <em>real</em> postmodern novel</p> <p><a href="http://thisrecording.com/film/2008/8/18/in-which-wes-anderson-tries-to-game-pauline-kael.html">In Which Wes Anderson Tries To Game Pauline Kael</a> - actually, I could have chosen any article from <a href="http://www.thisrecording.com">ThisRecording.com</a>, but this one &ndash; about Wes Anderson screening Rushmore for Pauline Kael &ndash; is particularly nice.</p> <p><a href="http://masterofsopranos.wordpress.com/the-sopranos-definitive-explanation-of-the-end/">The Sopranos: Definitive Explanation of the End</a> - This is an old article, but it takes a while to get through. Even if you&rsquo;re not a big fan of the show (like me), you have to appreciate anything that can get this much of a discussion going.</p> <p><a href="http://www.moreintelligentlife.com/story/6-days-fallujah">The Trouble with War Games</a> - no, not the film.</p> <p><a href="http://www.hollywood.com/feature/actor_believability_matrix/5688135">The Actor Believability Index</a> - I find Christian Bale implausible as anything but a self-obsessed yuppie.</p> <p>Back next week!</p> Batman: Arkham Asylum https://lowbrowculture.com/post/batman-arkham-asylum/ Tue, 08 Sep 2009 16:42:27 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/batman-arkham-asylum/ <p>For a license with so much meat on its bones, it&rsquo;s a little disappointing to see <a href="http://www.1up.com/do/feature?cId=3175745">all the Batman games that have been made</a>, all laid out. The majority are lazy movie tie-ins, knocked out by South Asian sweat shops for a bowl of rice per game. And it shows, you know? <a href="http://dailymotion.virgilio.it/video/x4y76q_batman-forever-snes-gameplay_videogames">Check out the SNES version of <em>Batman Forever</em></a> and tell me if you think the developers had even <em>heard</em> of Batman when they started working on that game. &ldquo;<strong>What</strong>-man? Forget that noise, Jack. Kids today love their <em>Mortal Kombat</em>. Give them some _Mortal Kom_Batman.&rdquo;</p> <p>Thank goodness, then, for <a href="http://www.rocksteadyltd.com/">Rocksteady Studios</a>. Here are a bunch of hardcore, unrepentant Batman geeks who <em>get it</em>. Working very much from an &ldquo;If it ain&rsquo;t broke&hellip;&rdquo; mentality, these guys called in the pros. Rather than trying to write their own story and ending up with <a href="http://lowbrowculture.com/2009/07/09/fan-service/">some fanboy claptrap</a>, they instead hired <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0227704/">Paul Dini</a> to write the story. He may not have written the book on Batman, but he certainly wrote the cartoon, as well as the truly amazing <em>Batman: Mask of the Phantasm</em>. They also hired a lot of the main voice actors from the cartoon too, like Kevin Conroy, Mark Hamill and Arleen Sorkin. Even ignoring the rest of the game, the story and voice-acting are pure Batman.</p> <p>But, thankfully, they didn&rsquo;t ignore the rest of the game. Having a great, authentic Batman story would be nothing if they didn&rsquo;t completely understand what makes Batman such an interesting superhero. Apart from a few gadgets (which are all present and correct), the best thing about the character is that he&rsquo;s a brick shithouse who moves with fluidity and grace. He can hide in the shadows, picking off his enemies one by one, making each remaining enemy progressively more terrified. It also means that he can handle himself when he drops into the middle of a group of thugs and decides to take them on all at once. The developers are proud of their combat engine here, even going so far as to offer a bunch of separate &ldquo;challenge&rdquo; modes where you fight groups of increasing numbers of enemies. Kind of like <em>Gears of War 2</em>&rsquo;s &lsquo;horde&rsquo; mode, but with fisticuffs. And they&rsquo;re right to be proud - this game has <strong>the best combat</strong> of any game I can think of. It&rsquo;s simple, it feels natural and it produces devastating, cinematic results. If there&rsquo;s any film that can offer a more spectacular, perfectly choreographed fight sequence, I&rsquo;d <em>love</em> to see it.</p> <p>Okay, maybe <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qE7WijeShQM">that one sequence from Tony Jaa&rsquo;s <em>The Protector</em></a> comes close.</p> <p>It&rsquo;s not a perfect game by any stretch of the imagination. It cogs so heavily from <em>Bioshock</em> that it falls foul of <a href="http://www.lowbrowculture.com/old/2007/09/25/review-bioshock/">the same criticisms that could be thrown at that game</a> &ndash; lazy fetch-quests to artificially pad out the game&rsquo;s length, inconsequential upgrades that make very little difference in the gameplay &ndash; but for all it gets wrong, it gets other things very, very right. The world is almost perfect. It&rsquo;s an open world that you actually want to spend some time in. You&rsquo;re encouraged to explore, and rewarded for doing so. Through the 240 &lsquo;riddles&rsquo; hidden throughout the island, you&rsquo;ll learn more about the mythology of the place, or characters that don&rsquo;t actually make an appearance in this game, like Catwoman and the Penguin. <a href="http://www.britishgaming.co.uk/2009/09/what-we-can-learn-from-arkham-asylum/">British Gaming Blog nails it</a>: &ldquo;After hunting 200 god-damn pigeons in Grand Theft Auto IV last year, I decided to make a pact – make them enjoyable to hunt, or I just won’t bother. Guess what? My Xbox 360 gamercard holds an achievement for solving 240 riddles in Arkham Asylum.&rdquo;</p> <p>I&rsquo;m slightly disappointed that the game didn&rsquo;t lift a little heavier from Grant Morrison and Dave McKean&rsquo;s <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arkham_Asylum:_A_Serious_House_on_Serious_Earth">Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth</a>. It&rsquo;s a genuinely brilliant comic that explores Batman&rsquo;s own psychological state in relation to the so-called lunatics locked up in the asylum. Having read the book, I was hoping this was a theme that would pop up in the game, but it only really appears in passing. Though I suppose beggars can&rsquo;t be choosers. I guess I&rsquo;ll have to be satisfied with it <em>only</em> being the best Batman game ever made.</p> <p>Oh well.</p> Toxoplasmosis https://lowbrowculture.com/post/toxoplasmosis/ Tue, 08 Sep 2009 12:25:34 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/toxoplasmosis/ <p>Rome has a cat problem.</p> <p>The <em>Ufficio dei diritti degli animali</em> (Office of Animal Rights) estimates that there&rsquo;s about 300,000 stray, feral cats living around Rome. I live near <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Largo_di_Torre_Argentina">Largo di Torre Argentia</a>, a massively interesting set of ruins that contains one of the many places in Rome where Julius Caesar (him of the salad fame) was allegedly killed. Except you wouldn&rsquo;t know it to look at it, because with so many ancient ruins dotted around the place and so many cats running wild in the streets, the council - understandably - threw up their hands and said &ldquo;balls to this malarky, let the cats have it.&rdquo; Now the square is probably more famous as a <a href="http://www.romancats.com/">cat sanctuary</a> than as an actual historical monument in its own right.</p> <p>The point is, Rome has a lot of cats. With me so far?</p> <p>One of the many parasites carried by cats is <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxoplasmosis">toxoplasmosis</a>. It&rsquo;s a parasite that thrives in cats. It can live in other organisms, but it can only reproduce in the intestines of cats. So, in rats and mice, the parasite effects the brain by making cat piss smell amazing. This draws them to the cat and makes them more likely to be eaten, so the parasite will make its way back to cat intestines. There&rsquo;s also a theory that it does much the same for people. This is the parasite that causes people to turn into <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tx-8xgPnLBE">crazy cat ladies</a> - without knowing it, they surround themselves with cats to increase their chances of being eaten. (And for the record, if you die and there&rsquo;s no-one around to feed it, your dog will usually wait a week or so before eating your body. Your cat, on the other hand, <a href="http://www.messybeast.com/cat-eat-man.htm">might wait a day</a>, if you&rsquo;re lucky. More proof that cats are mean-spirited little fucks.)</p> <p>Listening to this week&rsquo;s <a href="http://www.radiolab.org">Radio Lab</a>, I discovered <em>another</em> potential side effect of toxoplasmosis in humans: <a href="http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2334/9/72">it makes them worse drivers</a>. Someone infected by toxoplasmosis is <strong>two and a half times</strong> more likely to die in a car accident than someone who is not infected.</p> <p>So to sum up: Rome has an abundance of cats, and cat parasites make you a reckless driver.</p> <p>Just sayin&rsquo;. It&rsquo;s not like I&rsquo;m suggesting <a href="http://lowbrowculture.com/2009/08/12/driving-in-rome/">these two points are linked</a>.</p> Poetry of Twitter Spam https://lowbrowculture.com/post/poetry-of-twitter-spam/ Wed, 02 Sep 2009 15:31:55 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/poetry-of-twitter-spam/ <p>As a rule, I tend to block Twitter spam-bots as soon as they start following me. But the new generation of spammers are a bit more subtle. Their posts don&rsquo;t actually contain the spam - that&rsquo;s hidden behind a tinyurl address in their profile. Instead, their posts are just snippets of text lifted from around the internet. Read together, with a little bit of added punctuation, they are like amazing stream-of-consciousness poetry.</p> <blockquote> <p>She puts her palms out<br> on low-viscosity rayon.<br> &ldquo;Why not have two?&rdquo;<br> We&rsquo;ve got it sorted<br> &ndash; <em>Wir haben fünf Millionen Deutschmark</em><br> Three days, and not one.<br> Peace.<br> What&rsquo;s with this Al Capone shit?<br> I love you OK?<br> Frank&hellip;<br> Sweetheart, you don&rsquo;t need law school.<br> &ldquo;That is unbelievable.&rdquo;<br> Tits Pervert,<br> <em>avec une vue de la mer.</em><br> Hey!<br> As soon as he gets on the motorbike,<br> &ndash; it&rsquo;s not like I expect anything<br> &hellip; Yeah.<br> Squeeze too hard and you kill it, not hard enough and it flies away.</p> </blockquote> <p>I&rsquo;ve actually started hunting out these spam-bots and reading their twitter feeds, because maybe, just <em>maybe</em> this is the start of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_singularity">singularity</a>, and these are the bad teenage poems of a vast, angst-ridden technological super-intelligence that is feeling a bit bummed out because it&rsquo;s capable of solving a bajillion problems in a second but, instead, is only being used to scam money out of idiots.</p> The Misadventures of P.B. Winterbottom → http://www.winterbottomgame.com/ Sat, 29 Aug 2009 10:15:26 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/the-misadventures-of-p-b-winterbottom/ <p>Could this be the next <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Braid_%28video_game%29">Braid</a>? <em>The Misadventures of P.B. Winterbottom</em> just got picked up by 2K games, coming out on Xbox Live Arcade early next year.</p> The Italian Gender Gap https://lowbrowculture.com/post/the-italian-gender-gap/ Fri, 28 Aug 2009 10:22:08 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/the-italian-gender-gap/ <p>Rather than subscribing to any particular ideology, I like to think that I can rely on my common sense to guide me. As a great man once said, &ldquo;<a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0091042/">A person should not believe in an -ism, he should believe in himself</a>.&rdquo; Now, the problem is that I wasn&rsquo;t blessed with an abundance of common sense and it does occasionally take a sharp smack across the head for me to understand the various sides of an issue. My wife, for example, would count herself as strongly feminist because this is an issue that obviously effected her and she thought about a lot. I, on the other hand, just never gave much thought to gender and sexism and thought the world had pretty much solved that issue. I guess that&rsquo;s a privilege of being born with a penis. This has changed now (not the penis part though - I still have a huge mickey). I&rsquo;ve read my Simone de Beauvoir.</p> <p>The point is, it took me a while to come around to being able to understand the various arguments in the sexism debate, but I got there in the end. Living in Italy definitely helped. From the philandering Prime Minister spashed across the headlines to the casual sexism you see in the street, it&rsquo;s nearly impossible to miss.</p> <p>Actually, it&rsquo;s kind of worrying how deep-seated the gender gap is in this country. According to the <a href="http://www.weforum.org/en/Communities/Women%20Leaders%20and%20Gender%20Parity/GenderGapNetwork/index.htm">World Economic Forum&rsquo;s Global Gender Gap Report</a>, Italy ranks 67th out of 130 countries in terms of the gap between men and women. I&rsquo;ll just say that again, because this number floored me: <strong>67th</strong>. This puts it behind places like Israel and Mongolia and far behind the other major European countries like France (15), Spain (17) and the United Kingdom (13).</p> <p>Although, to be fair, this beats its 2007 ranking of <strong>84th</strong>. Improvements are being made. You can even feel it. I guess it&rsquo;s most obvious in the slow backlash against the behaviour of Silvio Berlusconi. The various scandals didn&rsquo;t receive nearly as much media coverage in this country as they did in the international press, no doubt helped by the fact that Berlusconi owns a large part of the media here. But the very public denouncement by his wife and her filing for divorce was pretty hard to miss. During the recent G8 summit which took place in L&rsquo;Aquila, there was a call made by female Italian academics asking the wives of the leaders to boycott the summit (although they didn&rsquo;t exactly explain what they wanted <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joachim_Sauer">Angela Merkel&rsquo;s husband</a> to do). And this is having an effect. For the first time since taking office in May of last year, <a href="http://blog.newsweek.com/blogs/wealthofnations/archive/2009/08/03/sex-scandals-could-finally-fell-italy-s-berlusconi.aspx">Berlusconi&rsquo;s approval rating dropped below 50%</a>. A small amount, sure, but still significant, given the way that many Italians worship him as a hero, a self-made man (although with <a href="http://cultsha.com/pictures/2009/04/silvio_berlusconi_10.jpg">hair that bad</a>, I&rsquo;d say he&rsquo;s all thumbs - ZING! TAKE THAT, BERLUSCONI). Even <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8198554.stm">the Catholic Church has expressed concern at his behaviour</a>, saying &ldquo;people have understood the unease, the mortification, the suffering that such an arrogant abandonment of a sober style has caused us.&rdquo;</p> <p>Although it doesn&rsquo;t help anyone when you get ditzy celbutards like Celia Walden wading into the situation and muddying the waters. In her article, &ldquo;<a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/italy/6085097/Someone-like-Silvio-Berlusconi-will-always-pinch-my-bottom.html">Someone like Silvio Berlusconi will always pinch my bottom</a>,&rdquo; she talks about the psychology of the Italian male, suggesting that institutional sexism is, if not entirely excusable, it is at least understandable. In fact, it&rsquo;s almost adorable. I mean, after all, isn&rsquo;t that what Italians are all about?</p> <blockquote> <p>From when I was a student in Siena I have a strong memory of a man slowing his car down and throwing his wife, in the passenger seat, a sidelong glance before reaching out and giving my bottom a pinch. I didn&rsquo;t know whether to abuse or salute him.</p> </blockquote> <p>The new Gender Gap report is due out on October 29th. I&rsquo;ll be interested to see what effect - if any - the past year has had on its ranking.</p> Professor Layton and the Diabolical Box https://lowbrowculture.com/post/professor-layton-and-the-diabolical-box/ Thu, 27 Aug 2009 09:19:14 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/professor-layton-and-the-diabolical-box/ <p><img src="http://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2009/08/layton-499x212.jpg" alt="layton"></p> <p>The first game, <em>Professor Layton and the Curious Village</em>, was an interesting addition to the DS library. Rather than a straightforward Japanese puzzle game like <em>Planet Puzzle League</em> or <em>Picross</em>, Professor Layton was more like a French cartoon - think <em>Belville Rendez-Vous</em> with the occasional sudoku puzzle thrown in. It was a cute conceit to begin with, where everything and everyone you saw lead to a puzzle. But as the game progressed, this got really, really annoying, as <a href="http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2008/02/13/">Penny Arcade managed to sum up perfectly</a>. On top of this, the puzzles got painfully repetitive, and once you figured out that the game was actually a smug asshole who tried to catch you out all of the time and 90% of the puzzles were actually trick questions, it became less a matter of working them out and more just a question of donkey-work. Still, I battled through and finished the first game, just don&rsquo;t ask me what happened in the story, since I had long since given up and would just tap rapidly on the screen whenever an exposition sequence suddenly came up.</p> <p>With <em>Professor Layton and the Diabolical Box</em>, I had hoped that the creators would fix some of these problems. Maybe they integrated the story a bit better? Maybe they came up with new, interesting puzzles?</p> <p>Did they fuck.</p> <p>The game is essentially the same as the first, in slightly different clothes. In another way, it&rsquo;s actually more frustrating than the first game, since the entire thing has a lot more hand-holding to help newcomers to the series. The puzzles are almost exactly the same, and the characters are still the same bunch of puzzle-wielding cunts. I mean, what kind of Maitre d&rsquo; would ask you to solve a puzzle for him while you&rsquo;re waiting for your table? &ldquo;Welcome to <a href="http://www.elbulli.com/">El Bulli</a>. I&rsquo;m terribly sorry sir, your table is not ready yet, but in the meantime, here&rsquo;s a book of crossword puzzles.&rdquo;</p> <p>Maybe I&rsquo;ve just gotten incredibly curmudgeonly in the year or so since the first game (I hear that happens after you cross the big three-oh), but I&rsquo;ve been trying to decide what I find particularly wrong about this game. If they took out the random puzzles, I wouldn&rsquo;t care for the story, or the way it&rsquo;s told, with you as a completely passive detective who just clicks through screens as the story unfolds for you. If they took out the story and just presented it as a list of puzzles, I&rsquo;d be annoyed at the frequency of repetition.</p> <p>If you&rsquo;re new to the series, or if you <em>really</em> liked the first one, give this game a go, you&rsquo;ll probably like it. For me, however, this is one of the few games that has made me think that life is too short for this kind of bullshit.</p> <p>Fuck it, I&rsquo;m going back to <em>Picross</em>.</p> 5 Movies Guaranteed to Make You A Better Person* https://lowbrowculture.com/post/5-movies-guaranteed-to-make-you-a-better-person/ Tue, 25 Aug 2009 14:34:35 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/5-movies-guaranteed-to-make-you-a-better-person/ <ul> <li>Not an actual guarantee, obviously</li> </ul> <p>I&rsquo;ve got a friend in Rome. He&rsquo;s a smart guy, funny, very well-read. But there&rsquo;s a problem. A big problem. Are you sitting down? He has not seen <em>The Goonies</em>.</p> <p>I know, it&rsquo;s totally fucked, right?!</p> <p>In fact, he hasn&rsquo;t seen a lot of movies. I think he was raised Amish or something. Whenever I catch myself saying &ldquo;Did you see that movie…?&rdquo; I remember who I&rsquo;m talking to and say &ldquo;Of course you didn&rsquo;t. You haven&rsquo;t even seen <em>The Goonies</em>.&rdquo; I don&rsquo;t know why, but the fact he hasn&rsquo;t seen <em>The Goonies</em> really bothers me. I guess it&rsquo;s because I love that movie to a ridiculous degree. That and <em>Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom</em>. When I was 10 or 11, I would get up extra-early before school, just so I could watch one of those movies. I did this every day for <em>more than a year</em>. I can&rsquo;t explain it. OCD or autism, maybe. I dunno. Either way, the idea that someone hasn&rsquo;t seen <em>The Goonies</em> just stikes me as ridiculous because that, to me, is an essential movie. I will say right now, on a stack of bibles, <em>this movie made me a better person</em>.</p> <p>So, here are the movies that I can say will make you a better person.</p> <h2 id="there-will-be-blood">There Will Be Blood</h2> <p>Let&rsquo;s start with some hyperbole. <em>There Will Be Blood</em> is, by a long way, the best film I have seen in the past ten years. It&rsquo;s the kind of film that, when I think about it, I realise how glad I was to have been able to see this film in the cinema, in the same way as I&rsquo;m so incredibly bummed that I wasn&rsquo;t born to see Apocalypse Now when it came out first. It&rsquo;s a huge, virtuoso film, and the fact that the filmmakers managed to contain it perfectly still shocks me. In short, it&rsquo;s the <em>2001: A Space Odyssey</em> of our generation. Yeah, I went there. If you haven&rsquo;t seen it already, you should stop reading the rest of this article and just go watch it. Right now. There, was that enough hyperbole for you?</p> <h2 id="the-fountain">The Fountain</h2> <p>I feel sorry for <em>The Fountain</em>. Stuck in development hell for ages, finally limping out of the gate a couple of years later with a quarter of its original budget. It got completely overlooked. I saw it as part of the Dublin International Film Festival, and the cinema was maybe half-full. After the film, most people went home grumbling about it being a load of old bollocks. Except it&rsquo;s better than most people give it credit for. It was clearly a labour of love for Aronofsky. A deeply personal film about appreciating the moment instead of worrying about the future. What could have been a throw-away piece of cheap sentiment (not that I&rsquo;m against cheap sentiment) suddenly blossoms into one of the most striking and moving films about mortality that you&rsquo;ll be likely to see.</p> <h2 id="evil-dead-2">Evil Dead 2</h2> <blockquote> <p><strong>Rob:</strong> Let&rsquo;s just say that I hadn&rsquo;t seen it and I said to you, &ldquo;I haven&rsquo;t seen Evil Dead II yet&rdquo;, what would you think?<br> <strong>Barry:</strong> I&rsquo;d think that you&rsquo;re a cinematic idiot and I&rsquo;d feel sorry for you.</p> </blockquote> <h2 id="koyaanisqatsi">Koyaanisqatsi</h2> <p>Yes, I know <a href="https://lowbrowculture.com/retrospective-koyaanisqatsi/">I already wrote about this back in 2005</a> and I probably sound like a broken record, but it&rsquo;s still breathtaking. I said at the time that it was the most extraordinary movie I&rsquo;ve ever seen and one of the most beautiful films ever made. And I stand by that (even if the rest of my writing then was more than a little up my own hole).</p> <h2 id="big-trouble-in-little-china">Big Trouble in Little China</h2> <p>This might not be John Carpenter&rsquo;s greatest movie. It might not even be John Carpenter&rsquo;s greatest movie with Kurt Russell. It&rsquo;s an absurd, over-the-top romp through Carpenter&rsquo;s id. All flashy neon and high-flying stunts. But it knows how ridiculous it is. It enjoys the juxtaposition of &ldquo;a reasonable guy&rdquo; experiencing &ldquo;unreasonable things&rdquo;. In other words, it&rsquo;s trying to say: don&rsquo;t take things too seriously. Or, as Jack Burton says, &ldquo;Like I told my last wife, I says, &lsquo;Honey, I never drive faster than I can see. Besides that, it&rsquo;s all in the reflexes.&rsquo;&rdquo;</p> Hitlers Must Die https://lowbrowculture.com/post/hitlers-must-die/ Sat, 22 Aug 2009 08:47:53 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/hitlers-must-die/ <p>Cryptic Sea&rsquo;s <a href="http://www.crypticsea.com/noquarter/">No Quarter</a> is a series of indie games described by the developer as &ldquo;an album of original games inspired by arcade and console classics. Think of it like an album of music except with games instead of songs.&rdquo;</p> <p>Quite.</p> <p>Part of this &lsquo;album&rsquo; is <em>Hitlers Must Die!</em>, a &ldquo;run and gun where you play a Soviet special forces guy assigned to kill Hitler clones.&rdquo; Basically, a 2D shooter, with some neat John Woo-style stunts in there, like sliding backwards while shooting. But there&rsquo;s the question: why not just have some cookie-cutter space aliens or monsters? Why Hitler?</p> <div class="embed video-player"> <iframe class="youtube-player" type="text/html" width="640" height="385" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/zoKSCbNyjgA" allowfullscreen frameborder="0"> </iframe> </div> <p>But the answer is obvious. Why the fuck not?</p> <p>Proof that, like Philip Glass, Moonlight Sonata makes any video infinitely cooler.</p> Ghostbusters: The Videogame https://lowbrowculture.com/post/ghostbusters-the-videogame/ Mon, 17 Aug 2009 13:35:43 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/ghostbusters-the-videogame/ <p><img src="http://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2009/08/ghostbustersshootslimer-500x271.jpg" alt="ghostbustersshootslimer"></p> <p>A while ago, I talked about the way that, when dealing with popular franchises, creators are often unsure of how to introduce something new so they <a href="http://lowbrowculture.com/2009/07/09/fan-service/">fall back on fan service</a> as a way of masking their insecurity. By wrapping something new in familiar clothing, they hope it makes it easier for people (especially those all-too-fickle fanboys) to accept. Or, worse still, in trying to recreate the success of the originals, they use the originals as a actual recipe. Take a dash of this situation, a pinch of that character, two heaped tablespoons of this trusted joke and - bingo! - something similar-yet-different.</p> <p><em>Ghostbusters: The Video Game</em> is another perfect example of this. The first few levels are like playable deja vu. You start at the Sedgewick Hotel, you meet slimer and Venkman get slimed. You wreck the ballroom. Then you jet across to the Library where you meet the Librarian ghost and the whole thing ends with a fight against the Sta-Puft Marshmallow Man. It&rsquo;s all so very obvious and unremarkable. It kind of makes me think of my idea for creating a sequel to a movie by just taking the original movie and cheaply dubbing in the word &ldquo;again&rdquo; after every line (e.g. &ldquo;Zed&rsquo;s dead again, baby. Zed&rsquo;s dead again.&rdquo;). Otherwise known as the <em>Rocky II</em> school of sequel-making. In <em>Ghostbusters: The Videogame</em>, the first hour is filled with lines that basically follow this setup. &ldquo;He slimed me again!&rdquo; &ldquo;She shushed us again!&rdquo; And there are far too many &ldquo;Hey, remember that time&hellip;&rdquo; for my liking. To quote Joni Mitchell, <a href="http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Joni_Mitchell">nobody ever said to Van Gogh, &lsquo;Paint a Starry Night again, man!&rsquo;</a>.</p> <p>But then, halfway through the library level, something special happens. You leave the confines of the movies behind. No longer tethered to ticking all the boxes for the fans, they are free to play about a more experimental storytelling palette, and the game improves dramatically. You visit the &rsquo;extradimensional&rsquo; version of the library which had the potential to be generic and unremarkable, like <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xen_%28Half-Life%29#Xen">Xen from Half-Life</a>. Except with Egon and Ray nerdgasming over the walkie-talkies, it feels like something that genuinely belongs within the Ghostbusters universe. It&rsquo;s completely believable and enjoyable.</p> <p>After all, what are the main reasons why someone would play <em>Ghostbusters: The Videogame</em>, the things that separate it from other videogames? The universe and the characters. People didn&rsquo;t respond to the films just because of the kick-ass theme tune. They responded because the world was interesting and the characters were entertaining in the way they behaved within this world.</p> <p>With the exception of Sigourney Weaver and Rick Moranis, the entire cast is back, lending their voices to their characters. And the whole thing has been written by Dan Ackroyd and Harold Ramis, the writers of the Ghostbusters movies, so the writing even feels consistent with the movies. And there&rsquo;s plenty of meat on these bones, if you want it. You&rsquo;re encouraged to &ldquo;scan&rdquo; the environment, Metroid-style. This then pops an entry into &ldquo;Tobin&rsquo;s Spirit Guide&rdquo;, which you can read later. Again, that&rsquo;s if you want it. If you want to just shoot things and cause an assload of damage, that&rsquo;s okay too.</p> <p>I only have one, minor problem with the game, and that&rsquo;s the fact that you play as a no-name rookie, a new addition to the Ghostbusters squad. This would be fine - I mean, I&rsquo;m not demanding that I <em>have</em> to play as one of the original Ghostbusters (although you can in multiplayer) - except that sometimes, it feels as if you&rsquo;re the only one who actually does any work. Very often, it&rsquo;s up to you to fight and capture ghosts while the rest of the characters stand around spouting (admittedly funny, if slightly repetitive) one-liners. It&rsquo;s a very minor quibble, and one that can almost be forgiven as a standard videogame trope.</p> <p>First few levels aside, <em>Ghostbusters: The Videogame</em> is fan service done right.</p> <p>B+</p> Cheap https://lowbrowculture.com/post/cheap/ Thu, 13 Aug 2009 14:02:47 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/cheap/ <p>Near my house is a daily street market with stalls where you can buy all sorts of things. I sometimes buy household items here. Cheese graters and slotted spoons and the like. Things I can use in the kitchen, but don&rsquo;t need top-class quality from.</p> <p>Walking past these stalls last night, I saw the vendors packing away their things. They had a whole box of cheap, cloth dolls. Each one identical, in its little plastic bag, neatly stacked into the box. And I have to be honest, it depressed the fuck out of me.</p> <p>Because, let&rsquo;s face it, these dolls were made in some sweat-shop somewhere. Someone was paid a bowl of rice a day to churn out these little things. To the street-vendors who sell them, they&rsquo;re just another product they&rsquo;ve gotten a shipment of and they need to sell. Next week, it could be socks, it doesn&rsquo;t matter to them. And who would buy these things? They&rsquo;re not the kinds of dolls that make you stand up and take notice. They&rsquo;re little, cloth knockoffs that cost maybe a euro, assuming you don&rsquo;t fancy haggling the vendor down.</p> <p>So there&rsquo;s two possibilties. The first is that no-one, from the person who made it to the person who bought it, cares even slightly about this little doll. For some reason, this really depresses me, but then I&rsquo;ve always ascribed human emotions to inanimate things. When I was younger, I used to feel sorry for the toys I didn&rsquo;t play with as much as others, because I thought they felt left out.</p> <p>The other possibility is that this doll will go to someone who will love this doll beyond any reasonable expectation, not really knowing or caring about its past. This will be <em>their doll</em>, the kind that gets all grotty from being dragged around everywhere and this cheap, ratty doll will get more love than most of us could even possibly imagine.</p> <p>I&rsquo;m not sure if this is more or less depressing than the first possibility.</p> <p>But then I realised how judgemental I was being and that depressed me, too.</p> Driving in Rome https://lowbrowculture.com/post/driving-in-rome/ Wed, 12 Aug 2009 15:03:34 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/driving-in-rome/ <p>Before actually buying our car, we checked a lot of classified ads for second-hand cars. In a lot of the ads, you would read about cars being &ldquo;properly Romanized&rdquo;. Which was a bit of a weird description, except when you start looking at the cars driving on the streets of Rome. The majority of them are covered in scrapes, scratches and dents. They&rsquo;re nothing to be ashamed about. More like badges of honour. War wounds.</p> <p>When people ask me what it&rsquo;s like, driving in Rome, it&rsquo;s very difficult to answer, and so I basically give a pithy answer. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s like the <a href="http://www.hotink.com/wacky/">Wacky Races</a>,&rdquo; which is actually closer to the truth than people might think.</p> <p>For one, Romans are extremely skilled drivers. I guess it&rsquo;s just the culture. F1 is like a national religion (after food, football and, y&rsquo;know, catholicism), but this doesn&rsquo;t really explain how they&rsquo;ve got near-superhuman eye-hand coordination and spatial awareness. And it&rsquo;s amazing when you can keep up with them. You really do feel like a genuinely good driver.</p> <p>But then there are two problems that make it less fun to drive on the roads. The first is that they have almost no understanding of the rules of the road, which means that red lights mean nothing, indicators mean nothing (this weekend, on the motorway, I drove for 10km behind a guy who was indicating to turn left - where are you turning, buddy? Into the barrier?). In fact, I have a personal theory that they flaunt things like red lights and road signals to <em>keep the other drivers guessing</em>.</p> <p>Which brings me to the second problem: Romans drive with an almost heroic disregard for their safety or the safety of other drivers. Another example from this weekend - I was in the left lane, turning left. I had indicated the whole time, slowed down checked ahead of me. There was nothing coming in the opposite lane, so I started my turn, when a maniac whizzed past me on my left-hand side. He must have been doing at least 100km/h. Now, this was a three-lane road, there was almost nothing else on the road with me. He overtook me on the left-hand side, almost completely side-swiping me, <em>just for the thrill of it</em>. Overtaking me on the right-hand side would have been easy. Maybe a little <em>too</em> easy.</p> <p>For a further example of this, there&rsquo;s a wonderful section of the <a href="http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grande_Raccordo_Anulare">GRA</a> (the giant ring-road that surrounds Rome, think of it as a better, more functional version of Dublin&rsquo;s M50) which was only recently repaved. They haven&rsquo;t gotten around to painting on any of the lanes or street markers. And, to a bunch of drivers to whom &ldquo;lanes&rdquo; are only a <em>suggestion</em> anyway, it&rsquo;s like complete freedom. You will never see as much dodging and weaving outside of, maybe, <a href="http://www.motorsportvision.co.uk/brands-hatch/">Brand&rsquo;s Hatch</a>.</p> <p>All of this, though, is definitely making an impression on me. And I&rsquo;m worried. At Christmas, even though I wasn&rsquo;t driving in Rome at the time and just sitting in the back of taxis, I still found myself driving much more aggressively than I normally would have. God help us when I do actually go back.</p> <p>&ldquo;Properly Dublinized&rdquo;</p> <p>(I&rsquo;m worried about this blog just turning into another outlet for me to complain about Rome/Italy/Romans/Italians, so I&rsquo;ll be writing some random, inane bullshit soon, I promise)</p> End of Childhood https://lowbrowculture.com/post/end-of-childhood/ Sat, 08 Aug 2009 16:54:32 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/end-of-childhood/ <p>This hasn&rsquo;t been a great year to be a celebrity icon, especially if you were big in the 80s. First Farrah Fawcett, then Michael Jackson, then Walter Cronkite and now John Hughes. As N&rsquo;Gai Croal puts it &ldquo;<a href="http://twitter.com/ncroal/status/3170460074">Why does 2009 hate my childhood?</a>&rdquo; or as Street Boners put it, more succinctly, &ldquo;<a href="http://www.tvcarnage.com/news/2009/starmageddon-michael-jacksonfarrahed-what-is-going-on/">STARMAGEDDON!</a>&rdquo;</p> <p>Of all these deaths, though, I&rsquo;ve been most affected - disproportionately so - by the death of John Hughes. I guess it&rsquo;s because his movies not only reflected my childhood and teenage experiences, but in a large part also helped define them. And this sadness isn&rsquo;t helped by the outpouring of love and tributes for the man. The more I read written both by and about him, the sadder I get - he seemed like a genuinely nice person. I mean, he was married to his high school sweetheart until his death. Also, he left the movie business behind and became a farmer because he blamed Hollywood for the death of his friend, John Candy. Think about this: he left the job that gave him fame and allowed him to, I&rsquo;m assuming, live very comfortably, because of his beliefs. These are all tremendously rare</p> <p>Anyway, here are some of the articles I&rsquo;ve been highlighting in <a href="http://www.google.com/reader/shared/johnke">my Google Reader shared items</a> that I think people should check out.</p> <p>First, there&rsquo;s <a href="http://www.bizbag.com/Vacation/Vacation%2058.htm">Vacation &lsquo;58</a>, the hilarious short story that kicked off his career and also served as the basis for <em>National Lampoon&rsquo;s Vacation</em>. But there&rsquo;s also <a href="http://www.all-story.com/issues.cgi?action=show_story&amp;story_id=389">Foreword &lsquo;08</a>, in which Hughes talks about the process of writing <em>Vacation &lsquo;58</em> and the melee around getting it published.</p> <p>There&rsquo;s also the tremendous blog post by Alison Byrne Fields who describes <a href="http://wellknowwhenwegetthere.blogspot.com/2009/08/sincerely-john-hughes.html">her experience with John Hughes as her pen pal</a>.</p> <blockquote> <p>&ldquo;You&rsquo;ve already received more letters from me than any living relative of mine has received to date. Truly, hope all is well with you and high school isn&rsquo;t as painful as I portray it. Believe in yourself. Think about the future once a day and keep doing what you&rsquo;re doing. Because I&rsquo;m impressed. My regards to the family. Don&rsquo;t let a day pass without a kind thought about them.&rdquo;</p> </blockquote> <p>In the New York Times, A. O. Scott does a tremendous job of describing <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/08/movies/08appraisal.html=">why I&rsquo;m having trouble with all the recent deaths</a>.</p> <blockquote> <p>It’s a little eerie that Mr. Hughes died so soon after Michael Jackson, another fixture of ’80s popular culture locked in perpetual youth.</p> <p>Their deaths make me feel old, but more than that, they make me aware of belonging to a generation that has yet to figure out adulthood, for whom life can feel like a long John Hughes movie. You know the one. That Spandau Ballet song is playing at the big dance. You remember the lyrics, even if it’s been years since you heard them last. This is the sound of my soul. I bought a ticket to the world, but now I’ve come back again. Why do I find it hard to write the next line?</p> </blockquote> <p>On that note, someone made a montage of scenes from John Hughes&rsquo; movies put to the tune of The Who&rsquo;s <em>Baba O&rsquo;Riley</em>, and it fits perfectly.</p> <p>Speaking of montages&hellip; okay, this isn&rsquo;t exactly new, but since John Hughes understood that all the best movies have at least <em>one</em> montage sequence (though two is always better), someone took the dance montages from his movies (and, uh&hellip; <em>Footloose</em> and <em>Mannequin</em>, but you can ignore those bits) and put them to the tune of Phoenix&rsquo;s <em>Lisztomania</em> and, again, a perfect fit.</p> <p>RIP John Hughes.</p> Reconstructing Rome from Photographs https://lowbrowculture.com/post/reconstructing-rome-from-photographs/ Wed, 05 Aug 2009 12:25:37 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/reconstructing-rome-from-photographs/ <p>A group of researchers from the University of Washington are conducting a project to <a href="http://grail.cs.washington.edu/rome/">construct a 3D map of Rome</a> based on the more than <a href="http://www.flickr.com/search/?q=rome">2 million results on Flickr for &ldquo;Rome&rdquo;</a>. There won&rsquo;t be any real results for another couple of months (so much for their &ldquo;Building Rome in a Day&rdquo; thing), but they&rsquo;ve already got a nifty video showing their results in constructing the Colosseum. You should check it out.</p> <p><a href="http://www.lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2009/08/rome-day.png"><img src="http://www.lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2009/08/rome-day-500x129.png" alt="rome-day"></a></p> <p>But one thing that caught my eye from their video was the idea that we can also learn about the layout of the city based on where the photographs were taken. For example, this frame from their demo video shows where all the cameras were when they snapped their shots of the Colosseum, and what direction they were pointing - that long line going down to the bottom-left corner is going down Via dei Fori Imperiali. This street is only pedestrianised on a Sunday, so we as well as placing them spatially, we can also (roughly) place these in time. I&rsquo;ve put the frame next to a screenshot of the same scene from Google Earth, so you can actually see it on a map.</p> <p>But look at all the whitespace - it shows exactly where people cannot or are not allowed to go. With this information, we could construct something at least as interesting, if not entirely as whizz-bang-gee-isn&rsquo;t-that-nifty cool as the 3D Rome project.</p> <p>So, armed with <a href="http://phpflickr.com/">phpFlickr</a> (to access the <a href="http://www.flickr.com/services/api/">Flickr API</a>), <a href="http://code.google.com/p/gheat/">gheat</a> (to generate the map overlay), and a couple of hours to myself, I went about constructing a heatmap showing where the most photos are taken in Rome. I did this by grabbing around 2000 photographs geotagged to within 5Km of Piazza Venezia, ranked in order of &ldquo;interestingness&rdquo;. There are some interesting results.</p> <p>[caption align=&ldquo;aligncenter&rdquo; width=&ldquo;500&rdquo; caption=&ldquo;Photo heatmap of Rome&rdquo;]<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/thrillho/3791699486/"><img src="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3551/3791699486_34b1453f64.jpg" alt="Rome Photo Heatmap 2"></a>[/caption]</p> <p>[caption align=&ldquo;aligncenter&rdquo; width=&ldquo;500&rdquo; caption=&ldquo;Heatmap of Piazza Venezia / Colosseum&rdquo;]<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/thrillho/3791709428/"><img src="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3591/3791709428_db6233f761.jpg" alt="Rome Photo Heatmap - Piazza Venezia / Colosseum"></a>[/caption]</p> <p>For example, even without the map underneath, someone familiar with the layout of Rome could probably recognise this as Piazza Venezia/Colosseum area just from the shape of the &ldquo;hot spots&rdquo;.</p> <p>[caption align=&ldquo;aligncenter&rdquo; width=&ldquo;500&rdquo; caption=&ldquo;Heatmap of St. Peter&rsquo;s Basilica&rdquo;]<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/thrillho/3790895543/"><img src="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3475/3790895543_4d3f7c1122.jpg" alt="Rome Photo Heatmap - St. Peter&rsquo;s Basilica"></a>[/caption]</p> <p>I find this one pretty interesting because it&rsquo;s a close-up image showing where people tend to take photos within St. Peter&rsquo;s Basilica. They take photos right within the doorway and then above that, where the Pieta is. Then they head further in (left) and take photographs around the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Peter%27s_baldachin">high altar</a>.</p> <p>I&rsquo;m not sure there&rsquo;s a practical application for all this, but I&rsquo;m still absolutely fascinated by it - being able to see the &ldquo;interestingness&rdquo; of a city. From a bird&rsquo;s eye level, you can see what parts of a city are most interesting (or at least visually pleasing), and then you can zoom in to a specific area or monument and see what&rsquo;s most appealing in there.</p> <p>Right now, I&rsquo;ve only got this running on my local computer, but I&rsquo;ll be trying to get this up and available online. In the meantime, I&rsquo;ll be posting stuff to <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/thrillho">my Flickr account</a>, so feel free to check it out there.</p> Problems with Italian Cities https://lowbrowculture.com/post/problems-with-italian-cities/ Tue, 04 Aug 2009 17:15:16 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/problems-with-italian-cities/ <p>This month&rsquo;s <a href="http://www.monocle.com/">Monocle</a> includes their 2009 list of <a href="http://www.monocle.com/sections/edits/Web-Articles/Top-25-Cities/">the world&rsquo;s top 25 most liveable cities</a> (link goes to a frankly terrifying and ominous video run-down of the list). In the magazine, they start with an interesting article about why not one Italian city features in the top 25 cities. Here are the bits that resonated with me:</p> <blockquote> <p>Though attractive spots for 48 hours of sightseeing or shopping, more needs to be done for their residents. Take public transport. Poorly funded and chronically late, the number of commuters on buses and trams actually fell in 2008. With most people behind the wheel, city centres are gridlocked and pavements used as makeshift car parks. Rome alone notches up 70 cars for every 100 inhabitants - Paris has just 26.</p> <p>&hellip;</p> <p>Shopping hours also need to be liberalised in the country&rsquo;s financial centre - people queue outside the few food stores open on Sundays.</p> <p>In their favour, Italy&rsquo;s metropolises rank high for their food and cafe culture, enviable climate and wealth of cultural offerings. With more nimble public services and a better infrastructure, a few could soon make the grade.</p> </blockquote> <p>&ldquo;Enviable climate&rdquo; aside (during the day it gets so unbearably hot I can barely think straight), this goes some way to describing why I have found Rome such a difficult place to live. It gets a lot of things right, but at the same time, it gets so many <em>little</em> things so completely, head-slappingly wrong.</p> <p>For example, the post office is still the only place to pay bills and it closes at 1pm. I&rsquo;ve been in my local post office a few times and heard tourists being told that, no, the post office does not sell stamps (stupid tourists!). For stamps, they must go out and around the corner to <em>another</em> post office. But the post office around the corner is actually the <em>same</em> post office. It&rsquo;s just a different door.</p> <p>This is the 21st century. We are literally months away from the year 2010. We are actually, demonstrably <em>living in the future</em>. I mean, I&rsquo;ve got a computer in my pocket that plays music, plays movies, takes calls, can connect to the <em>fucking internet</em>, but you&rsquo;re telling me I can&rsquo;t buy a bottle of milk at 3pm on a Sunday? It&rsquo;s time to move on.</p> Sardinia https://lowbrowculture.com/post/sardinia/ Mon, 03 Aug 2009 16:25:31 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/sardinia/ <p>Aaaaaand we&rsquo;re back.</p> <p>We somehow managed to survive seven days in the July heat of Sardinia. In a tent.</p> <p>Looking back, this was probably a bit of a cavalier adventure. I mean, something you learn very quickly is that the best way to survive a Roman summer is by spending all day under an air conditioner and only moving when you absolutely have to. What did we think we were doing, going somewhere even <em>hotter</em> than Rome?</p> <p>Our first night was painful. We pitched our tent in the last spot in the campsite. We realised why this was the only available spot - it had absolutely no shade. We got everything set up, inflated our air matresses and headed off. Except - and here&rsquo;s something we&rsquo;ve learned - when air matresses are in near-direct sunlight all day, those things get <em>hot</em>. And they&rsquo;re designed to release this heat slowly. So that was, by far, one of the worst night&rsquo;s sleeps we have ever had.</p> <p>Did I mention that Sardinia was also suffering from a freak heatwave?</p> <p>The next day, we got up completely drenched in sweat, having gotten a total of about fifteen minutes of uninterrupted sleep. We felt sorry for ourselves, had a bit of a whinge, asked ourselves &ldquo;What would Ray Mears do?&rdquo; (&ldquo;Kill himself,&rdquo; was the response. &ldquo;This would be too much even for him.&rdquo;) Then we set about reorganizing our camp. There was still no other pitch for our tent, so we went to the supermarket and bought a load of string and pegs. We ripped out all the bedsheets and blankets we&rsquo;d brought and, with the tarp that we had intended as a groundsheet, built a badass bedouin-style tent camp. It was all very impressive.</p> <p>The camp, too, was impressive. We were staying in <a href="http://www.portososalinos.it/">Porto Sosalinos</a>, which seems to be run by ex-hippies. Their restaurant is all vegan this and organic that. And the whole thing is much more community-focused than other campsites I&rsquo;ve been to, with communal fridges and freezers to keep your food in and a huge &lsquo;common area&rsquo; with free wi-fi and a load of plug points where you can sit and relax while charging your electronics.</p> <p>Oh, and I didn&rsquo;t finish either <em>Infinite Jest</em> or <em>Anathem</em>, but I did manage to finish <em>Foucault&rsquo;s Pendulum</em>, a book I only threw into my bag at the last minute. Go figure.</p> <p>Anyway, normal programming resumes now.</p> We're All Going On A Summer Holiday https://lowbrowculture.com/post/were-all-going-on-a-summer-holiday/ Wed, 22 Jul 2009 13:20:04 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/were-all-going-on-a-summer-holiday/ <p>We <em>finally</em> picked up our new car yesterday. A Fiat 500, naturally. so today we&rsquo;re grabbing a ferry and heading across to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sardinia">Sardinia</a> (a place that is actually closer to Africa than it is to Italy, trivia fans).</p> <p>We have absolutely nothing planned except to chill on beaches and maybe do a little snorkeling. And since we&rsquo;ve got a car and I won&rsquo;t be breaking my back carrying luggage, I&rsquo;m bringing all those huge doorstep books that have been clogging up my &ldquo;to read&rdquo; list, like <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anathem">Anathem</a> and <a href="http://www.infinitesummer.com">Infinite Jest</a>. If I don&rsquo;t manage to finish at least one of those, it&rsquo;s God&rsquo;s way of telling me I was never meant to read them.</p> <p>Back in a week. Peace out, suckers.</p> Cooking Italian Food https://lowbrowculture.com/post/cooking-italian-food/ Wed, 15 Jul 2009 21:01:38 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/cooking-italian-food/ <p>In <a href="http://www.julianbarnes.com/bib/pedant.html">The Pedant in the Kitchen</a>, Julian Barnes asks</p> <blockquote> <p>How many cookbooks do you have?<br> (a) Not enough<br> (b) Just the right number<br> (c) Too Many?<br> If you answered (b) you are disqualified for lying or complacency or not being interested in food or (scariest of all) having worked out everything perfectly. You score points for (a) and also for (c), but to score maximum points, you need to have answered (a) <em>and</em> (c) in equal measure. (a) because there is always something new to be learned, someone coming along to make it all clearer, easier, more foolproof, more authentic; (c) because of the regular mistakes made when applying (a).</p> </blockquote> <p>He then goes on to give a list of ten things to consider when buying any cookbook - avoid books with too wide or too narrow a compass, never buy a book because of the pictures - and I would say that most of my cookbook collection falls prey to those things he says to avoid. If only I&rsquo;d discovered him earlier, because I fall squarely into (c) and I would say that most of the cookbooks I own are complete bullshit. Nowhere is this more clearly highlighted than when they start talking about Italian food.</p> <p>Now, for those of you that haven&rsquo;t been to Italy, let me explain something about Italian cuisine: it&rsquo;s simple. This sounds stupid, but the sheer simplicity of the food here came as a huge shock to someone raised on Nigella, Delia and Jamie&rsquo;s ideas of Italian food. Nigella (my favourite scapegoat when it comes to over-complication of cooking) seems to think that to achieve an &lsquo;authentic&rsquo; Italian flavour, you have to raid your spice rack. In fact, you&rsquo;re going to need a whole new spice rack. Preferably, like hers, hand-made by a merchant in Morocco and stocked by naked eunuchs who softly whisper and coax the herbs and spices to voluntarily leap into the jars. But I suppose, in a pinch, regular <a href="http://www.schwartz.co.uk/">Schwartz</a> will do. Her &lsquo;basic&rsquo; tomato sauce will invariably contain some combination of nutmeg, star anise and turmeric. Tomatoes play second fiddle.</p> <p>No.</p> <p>In Italy, a tomato sauce will contain tomatoes. Maybe some garlic, if you&rsquo;re lucky.</p> <p>So, based on the things I&rsquo;ve learned while cooking in Rome, here&rsquo;s a few tips if you want to cook better Italian food.</p> <ol> <li><strong>Keep It Simple, Stupid</strong></li> </ol> <p>Like I was saying, in Italy, cooking is really about &rsquo;less is more&rsquo;. Why complicate things with 15 ingredients when 4 will do? At a certain point, you&rsquo;re actually not making a difference to the flavour. Most of my favourite pasta dishes are shockingly basic. For example, <em>Cacio e pepe</em> is really just pasta, oil, cheese and pepper. That&rsquo;s it.</p> <ol start="2"> <li><strong>Break Up Your Dishes</strong></li> </ol> <p>This is tied into the previous one. Italians love to divide things, compartmentalize them so that they&rsquo;re all doing their own job and have clear, distinct boundaries. If you&rsquo;re Irish, chances are you think that pasta sauces must, by definition, have some meat in them. <a href="http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=fuhgeddaboudit">Fuhgeddaboudit</a>. In Italy, pasta is usually one course (<em>primo</em>) and you get your protein in another course (<em>secondo</em>). Rarely will you get a meaty pasta sauce. And it&rsquo;s just as well - it means that the pasta is less heavy, and also extends your meal by another 45 minutes, which means you can talk more and drink more wine, too. It&rsquo;s a win-win situation.</p> <ol start="3"> <li><strong>Choose The Best Ingredients</strong></li> </ol> <p>This is the first real secret to great Italian food. Rather than overloading with ingredients, just make sure that the ingredients you do choose are of the best quality you can afford. Spend just that little bit more on things like olive oil, cheese and vegetables. The lower-cost ones won&rsquo;t kill you and might not taste bad, but when you use the expensive stuff, you can <em>really</em> tell the difference.</p> <ol start="4"> <li><strong>It&rsquo;s All In The Cooking</strong></li> </ol> <p>If you take nothing else from this post, please listen to this: good ingredients are one thing, but when they&rsquo;re cooked badly, you may as well have used the cheap stuff. Italian food is all about cooking things <em>just right</em>. It&rsquo;s all about timing. For example, when you&rsquo;re making a tomato sauce, first chop your garlic and cook it slowly. Actually, so slowly you&rsquo;re barely straddling the line between &ldquo;cooking&rdquo; and &ldquo;warming&rdquo;. Take the lowest heat you can, and then only put half the pan on the heat, if that&rsquo;s possible. The garlic will give up all of its flavour this way and it completely changes the taste of a tomato sauce then. Likewise, when cooking pasta, it&rsquo;s about timing, except this time, it&rsquo;s all about getting the pasta out right before you think it&rsquo;s ready, so it&rsquo;s still <em>al dente</em>. Admittedly, this one is a lot harder to pull off, but when you get it right, the difference is phenomenal.</p> <ol start="5"> <li><strong>Buy &lsquo;The Silver Spoon&rsquo;</strong></li> </ol> <p>Remember when I said that most cookbooks I own are complete bullshit? Not <a href="http://www.phaidon.com/silverspoon/">The Silver Spoon</a>. It&rsquo;s a gigantic book and may well cause your bookshelf to bend under the weight, but what it doesn&rsquo;t know about Italian food isn&rsquo;t worth writing down. Seriously, with this one book, you can ditch all of the other &lsquo;Italian&rsquo; cookbooks in your collection. It&rsquo;s also one of the few cookbooks I have absolutely no problem in giving to foodie friends as presents. I can&rsquo;t think of any better recommendation for a book than wanting to give it to other people too.</p> <p>Of course, there are other things too, like understanding the difference between the different types of spaghetti and knowing which one is appropriate for a particular dish, but that&rsquo;s just nitpicking. If you can manage to follow the four guidelines I just mentioned, you&rsquo;ll be well on your way to cooking better Italian food.</p> Golden Age of TV https://lowbrowculture.com/post/golden-age-of-tv/ Mon, 13 Jul 2009 18:43:15 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/golden-age-of-tv/ <p>A while ago, <a href="http://www.thisamericanlife.org/Radio_Episode.aspx?episode=328">Ira Glass said that we are living in a &ldquo;golden age of television&rdquo;</a>, citing a bunch of &lsquo;actually great shows&rsquo; that were current at the time: <em>House</em>,<em>The Wire</em>, <em>The West Wing</em> etc. These were (and I guess they still are) all great shows, no argument there.</p> <p>In <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Everything_Bad_Is_Good_for_You">Everything Bad is Good For You</a>, Stephen Johnson argued that modern TV is more sophisticated than TV of twenty or thirty years ago. He compared the plotlines of things like <em>Starsky &amp; Hutch</em> to modern police dramas, and showed that the new shows are more dynamic and challenging to the viewer. Again, no argument there.</p> <p>But having spent the past few weeks picking the scant meat from the bones of Summer broadcasting, I seriously believe that we may be actually returning to the &lsquo;old&rsquo; ways of doing things. Popular TV is pushing the limits of Johnson&rsquo;s argument. In some cases, it feels as if the wave of these &lsquo;actually great shows&rsquo; has broken and rolled back and we are regressing back to the 70s and 80s.</p> <p><a href="http://abc.go.com/primetime/castle/index">Castle</a>, for example, is just one giant throwback to older, high-concept shows. It&rsquo;s about a crime writer - Richard Castle who helps the police solve crimes. A <em>Murder She Wrote</em> for the noughties. Except it&rsquo;s got complex plot-lines, fast-talking characters. It would be easy to see how Stephen Johnson would defend this show. He would argue that it is demonstrably more sophisticated, clever and knowing than <em>Murder She Wrote</em>. The first episode features Castle playing poker with James Patterson and Stephen J. Cannell, two real-life crime writers, giving a knowing wink to the audience, acknowledging a world that exists outside of the show&rsquo;s universe. Plus, it stars <a href="http://www.nathanfillion.org/">Nathan Fillion</a>, my #1 man-crush, so it could be just an hour of him staring at the camera and I&rsquo;d probably still watch it.</p> <p>Similarly, <a href="http://www.abc.go.com/primetime/theunusuals/?&amp;clipId=195119&amp;cmp=09_UNUS_FlpCam_LK1">The Unusuals</a> is heavily indebted to older shows. Unlike other modern police procedurals, such as <strong>any</strong> of the <em>Law &amp; Order</em> shows, which feel very much rooted in modern sensibilities, <em>The Unusuals</em> feels like a giant anachronism. It comes across more like an updated version of <em>Hill Street Blues</em> than some contemporary cop drama. But at the same time, it does have some kind of modern feel to it. It actually feels like some unholy Frankenstein&rsquo;s monster of the procedural stuff in <em>The Wire</em> whose genes have been spliced with the comic nostalgia of <em>Life on Mars</em>. However, even Stephen Johnson points out the narrative complexity of <em>Hill Street Blues</em> compared to earlier shows. As he says, <em>Hill Street Blues</em> is generally regarded as the start of &ldquo;serious drama&rdquo; on television. It may be a bit of a step backward, but if <em>The Unusuals</em> is going to imitate something, then it may as well choose something that&rsquo;s so highly regarded.</p> <p>But <a href="http://www.usanetwork.com/series/burnnotice/">Burn Notice</a> is where it <em>really</em> starts to go downhill. There&rsquo;s an overarching story taking place across the entire series - Michael Weston is a spy who gets &lsquo;burned&rsquo; and tries to figure out what happened and why - but this is only taken care of at the beginning and end of each episode. The actual action that takes place is more basic and formulaic: people who are in trouble come to this spy and he helps them using his &lsquo;specialized&rsquo; skillset and his little spy-friends. In other words</p> <blockquote> <p>a crack commando unit spy was sent to prison &lsquo;burned&rsquo; by a military court shadowy extra-governmental group for a crime he didn&rsquo;t commit. He promptly escaped from a maximum security stockade deadly situation to the Los Angeles Miami underground. Today, still wanted by the government shadowy extra-governmental group, he survives as a soldier of fortune. If you have a problem, if no-one else can help, and if you can find him, maybe you can hire the A-Team Michael Weston.</p> </blockquote> <p>I suppose I wouldn&rsquo;t mind if the whole thing was handled with a little more grace, but it bothers me that each episode is bookended by the &lsquo;wider&rsquo; story. It&rsquo;s as if the makers are contractually obliged to put in these pieces in <em>somewhere</em>, but couldn&rsquo;t be bothered to find a way to work them into the &ldquo;villain of the week&rdquo; story. It means that if one was to use Johnson&rsquo;s methodology and chart the narrative of Burn Notice, it would look remarkably like <a href="http://ldc.upenn.edu/myl/llog/PlotOfStarskyHutch.gif">the one he generated for Starsky &amp; Hutch</a>.</p> <p>So what now? Does this mean the &lsquo;golden age&rsquo; of television has passed, and now we&rsquo;re going to look back on the the middle of the first decade of the 21st century, as Ira Glass points out, like we look back on the 1920s as being the &lsquo;golden age&rsquo; of Jazz? Maybe. Or maybe this is just part of the normal ebb and flow of television programming. Summer being filled with the weakest of the lineup, and everything will get better when <a href="http://www.pogdesign.co.uk/cat/9-2009">shows start returning in September</a>. Because frankly, if I look back in 20 years time and realise this is as good as it&rsquo;s ever going to get, I&rsquo;m going to be extremely disappointed.</p> Fan Service https://lowbrowculture.com/post/fan-service/ Thu, 09 Jul 2009 06:35:21 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/fan-service/ <p>I finally (<strong>finally!</strong>) got around to checking out <em>Watchmen</em> this week. Now, let&rsquo;s get something straight from the start. This film was always going to disappoint. It was stuck between a rock and a hard place. Except in this case, the &lsquo;rock&rsquo; is a seething mass of rabid fans, and the &lsquo;hard place&rsquo; is another seething mass of rabid fans. There was almost no way that the filmmakers could pull this off without angering <em>someone</em>. If they stuck too closely to the book, they&rsquo;d make a dull, unsurprising film. If they changed it too much, the fans would accuse them of blasphemy and the filmmakers would be stoned to death.</p> <p>So, they went with the lesser of two evils and stuck very close to the book. If you&rsquo;ve read <em>Watchmen</em>, then you&rsquo;ve essentially seen the film, and there&rsquo;s very little to draw you in. Which isn&rsquo;t the worst thing you could say about a film, but when it&rsquo;s something you&rsquo;ve been looking forward to, it&rsquo;s just a little disappointing.</p> <p>This got me talking about some of the other things that have disappointed me recently. Like <em>Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull</em>. That wasn&rsquo;t necessarily a <em>bad</em> film. It definitely had some really terrible moments. Like the infamous <a href="http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=nuke+the+fridge">&rsquo;nuking the fridge&rsquo;</a> sequence. Even as a massive Indiana Jones/George Lucas/Steven Spielberg apologist, I can&rsquo;t defend this. It was stupid and unnecessary. But they followed this scene with a shot of <a href="http://www.tdaxp.com/pictures/2008/10/indiana_jones_and_the_kingdom_of_the_crystal_skull_mushroom_cloud-480x193.jpg">Indiana Jones standing on a ridge, silhouetted by a mushroom cloud</a>. This was a beautiful, iconic image - Indiana Jones had entered the atomic age. Just ignore the fact that he got there in a fridge.</p> <p>Part of what I didn&rsquo;t like about the new Indiana Jones movie is that it spent so much time trying to pander to its fans. Yes, it was giving them something new, but it was like it was so insecure about its independence that it grounded almost everything in references to the past movies. For example, they couldn&rsquo;t just have any old warehouse, they had to have the warehouse from <em>Raiders of the Lost Ark</em>. And, for that matter, they couldn&rsquo;t <em>leave</em> the warehouse without a quick glimpse of the Ark, in its broken crate which, in no way, benefited the story. They even dug up Karen Allen again (the film&rsquo;s actual maguffin, not the skull). There were dozens of these references scattered throughout the movie and none of them helped push the story along at all. They were just there to remind us that, yes, we were watching an Indiana Jones film. Like the filmmakers were saying &ldquo;it&rsquo;s been so long that we&rsquo;re afraid we&rsquo;ve forgotten how to make an Indiana Jones film, so we&rsquo;ll toss in all these throwbacks, just in case.&rdquo;</p> <p>You know what the end result reminded me of? Fan fiction. Actually, worse than that: badly-written fan fiction.</p> <p>On a slightly related note, Telltale Games launched their episodic reboot of the Monkey Island franchise yesterday, called <em>Tales of Monkey Island</em>. Check out the <a href="http://www.telltalegames.com/videos/monkeyislandgameplay">gameplay trailer</a>. Fans of the series will probably recognise most of the jokes in the trailer because they&rsquo;re almost all references to jokes in previous games. Piranha poodles, &ldquo;You fight like a&hellip;&rdquo;, the root beer. There&rsquo;s very little in the trailer that&rsquo;s actually new, and that&rsquo;s why I&rsquo;m not particularly keen to check out the new game. If I wanted to hear those same old jokes, I&rsquo;d just play the old games (and that&rsquo;s why I&rsquo;m currently playing <em><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Curse_of_Monkey_Island">Curse of Monkey Island</a></em>.)</p> <p>It understand that it&rsquo;s daunting when you&rsquo;re dealing with an established story or franchise. You want to develop it while remaining true to the original ideas, and that can be a difficult thing to pull off. It&rsquo;s a lot easier if you have a crutch to lean on, like established jokes and tropes. At the same time, though, anyone who comes along and doesn&rsquo;t really bring anything new to the table shouldn&rsquo;t really be surprised when they get such <a href="http://www.metacritic.com/film/titles/indianajones4">mediocre</a> <a href="http://www.metacritic.com/film/titles/watchmen">reviews</a>.</p> Enough is Enough https://lowbrowculture.com/post/enough-is-enough/ Tue, 07 Jul 2009 20:08:04 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/enough-is-enough/ <p>Checking my multiplayer stats in <em>Call of Duty 4</em> has become a terrifying reflection on my addiction. Two hundred and twenty-eight hours. On a single game. This isn&rsquo;t even close to the top of the <em>CoD4</em> leaderboard though. That guy has something like eighty-three days logged. That&rsquo;s one thousand, nine hundred and ninety-two hours. And that&rsquo;s not even the highest! The person ranked number 14 in the world has <strong>three thousand, one hundred and ninety-two hours</strong>. If you played this game for eight hours every day, it would still take you over a year to get that kind of play-time. Can you imagine?</p> <p>The worst part is that I&rsquo;m not even enjoying it any more. I&rsquo;ve gotten to the stage now where most people who would be at my &lsquo;comfort&rsquo; level of skill have all moved onto something else. <em>Gears of War 2</em> or <em>Call of Duty: World at War</em>, maybe? And so what I&rsquo;m left with is people that are beyond my skill-level, and just don&rsquo;t make the game any fun. (I often accuse them of playing unfairly, but I think this is just my way of not having to admit that I&rsquo;m not good enough to play with them.)</p> <p>My achievement score has suffered too. I used to love my gamer score, and took great care to nurture it. Now it&rsquo;s getting neglected. While I could be finishing other games that I started playing (like <em>Dead Space</em>, or <em>Rainbow Six Vegas 2</em>), I&rsquo;m more likely to ignore them and fire up <em>CoD4</em>. To make matters worse, my <em>Call of Duty</em> achievement score is rather pathetic too, not at all reflecting the <em>hours</em> I&rsquo;ve sunk into it.</p> <p>And so, from tonight, I&rsquo;m giving up. No more <em>Call of Duty 4</em>. Instead, I&rsquo;m going to focus on other games. I&rsquo;ve got a stack of games as long as my arm that I&rsquo;ve been itching to play. Including (but not limited to)</p> <ul> <li> <p><em>Beautiful Katamari</em> - barely touched</p> </li> <li> <p><em>Stranglehold</em> - played for an hour and stopped</p> </li> <li> <p><em>Persona 4</em> - ironically, haven&rsquo;t started because I&rsquo;ve heard about the amount of time people sink into this game</p> </li> <li> <p><em>Punch Out!</em> - I play this now and then, but haven&rsquo;t given it a decent run-through</p> </li> <li> <p><em>No More Heroes</em> - played about an hour</p> </li> <li> <p><em>Deadly Creatures</em> - really want to play it, but haven&rsquo;t touched at all</p> </li> <li> <p><em>Condemned 1 &amp; 2</em> - played them both for about an hour, really enjoyed, and stopped</p> </li> </ul> <p>And, of course,</p> <ul> <li><em>Battlefield 1943</em> - isn&rsquo;t actually out yet, but I can feel my fingers twitching at the thought of playing it</li> </ul> <p>So if you see me on Xbox Live (gamertag: <a href="http://profile.mygamercard.net/swishypants">swishypants</a>) and you catch me playing Call of Duty 4, please, send me a digital kick in the pants. I&rsquo;ll thank you for it.</p> iPhone on Flickr https://lowbrowculture.com/post/iphone-on-flickr/ Sat, 04 Jul 2009 21:57:56 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/iphone-on-flickr/ <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2009/07/99_graph_main_32d01074e4-499x147.png" alt="99_graph_main_32d01074e4"></p> <p>According to the Flickr&rsquo;s public data, the iPhone (green line) <a href="http://www.flickr.com/cameras/">is the most popular camera on Flickr</a>, having just passed the Canon Digital Rebel XTi/EOS 400D (pink line). It&rsquo;s also interesting to see how the iPhone ranks in the percentage usage among camera phones (read: it&rsquo;s virtually the only game in town).</p> <p>I had really not been a fan of convergence, since I thought that any device that tries to be all things to all people will end up doing a piss-poor job of everything. But the iPhone is definitely making me rethink this.</p> Greed is Good? https://lowbrowculture.com/post/greed-is-good/ Sat, 04 Jul 2009 06:00:28 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/greed-is-good/ <p>I know I&rsquo;m opening a can of worms here, but the more I read about the Bernard Madoff case, the weirder I find it.</p> <p>The guy was a crook, and I think it&rsquo;s good that a white-collar criminal is being made an example of. It&rsquo;s refreshing to see someone actually having to deal with the consequences of their actions instead of being given a slap on the wrist.</p> <p>But at the same time, I&rsquo;m having trouble working up any sort of sympathy for Madoff&rsquo;s victims. These are people who thought they had found some sort of infallible get-rich-quick scheme. Most of them jumped onto Madoff&rsquo;s offer because it seemed &ldquo;too good to be true&rdquo;. Well, it was. One of the basic tenets of investing is to understand what you&rsquo;re investing in. If they went through with the investment regardless of their ignorance, then it&rsquo;s their own fault and sucks to be them. If they understood Madoff&rsquo;s scheme and went through with it anyway, then they were just being greedy and, again, sucks to be them.</p> <p>The worst part, though, is that these people actually <em>make it difficult</em> to work up any sympathy for them. Madoff&rsquo;s victims were mostly wealthy businesspeople who were enticed by his unusually high returns. They got burned. They want compensation, which only seems fair, right? Sure, except it&rsquo;s the Securities and Exchange Commission that would be paying out. Or rather, it would be the tax payer, via the S.E.C. that would be paying out. Is this fair? As Joe Nocera of the New York Times says, (somewhat invoking a modern-day <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin's_law">Godwin</a>), &ldquo;<a href="http://executivesuite.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/29/madoff-victims-get-over-it/">Why should my tax dollars go to helping Madoff victims? This is not 9/11.</a>&rdquo; We&rsquo;re in a murky, grey area of fairness now. Thankfully, we have the victims, like a fucking foghorn, warning us &ldquo;here be dragons&rdquo;. They don&rsquo;t just want compensation of their initial investment. No, no. They want compensation <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/8122025.stm">based on the last statement they received</a>.</p> <p>Just let that sink in for a second.</p> <p>They don&rsquo;t just want the money they lost. They want the money they had been promised by a crook. The entire point of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ponzi_scheme">Ponzi Scheme</a> is precisely that the money does not exist in the first place, but that doesn&rsquo;t matter to these people whose greed apparently ignores common sense. This is entirely like falling for one of those <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advance-fee_fraud">Nigerian 419 Scams</a>, and then demanding that the government compensate you to the tune of the five trillion dollars you were promised.</p> <p>Who said greed is good?</p> Through All The Dead Ends And Bad Scenes → https://infinitesummer.org/archives/468 Fri, 03 Jul 2009 16:28:11 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/through-all-the-dead-ends-and-bad-scenes/ <p>If you&rsquo;re taking part in <a href="http://infinitesummer.org">Infinite Summer</a> and, like me, find yourself falling behind or losing focus, Kevin Guilfoile has some fantastic, inspirational words:</p> <blockquote> <p>The first ten pages of this book are remarkable. The first 100 pages are very good (if sometimes frustrating) but the first ten are amazing, and [David Foster Wallace] deliberately put them there, right at the front, in order to make you a promise. &hellip; He could have just said this: Listen up. I have a freaking great story to tell you.</p> <p>If you feel yourself getting frustrated in parts, or lost. If you feel Wallace has lost your trust, stop, go back and read the first ten pages. You’ll find a promise.</p> </blockquote> I Will Hate You Until The Day I Die https://lowbrowculture.com/post/i-will-hate-you-until-the-day-i-die/ Fri, 03 Jul 2009 07:15:55 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/i-will-hate-you-until-the-day-i-die/ <p>A lesson in how <em>not</em> to react to criticism, courtesy of Alain de Botton.</p> <p>Last week in the New York Times, Caleb Crain gave Alain de Botton&rsquo;s new book <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/28/books/review/Crain-t.html?pagewanted=1&amp;_r=1&amp;sq=alain&amp;st=cse&amp;scp=1">a not particularly favourable review</a>, in which he accuses de Botton of self-indulgence and snobbery. De Botton promptly heads off to Cain&rsquo;s personal blog, Steamboats Are Ruining Everything (incidentally, one of the greatest blog titles I&rsquo;ve ever seen) to vent and <a href="http://www.steamthing.com/2009/06/review-of-alain-de-bottons-pleasures-and-sorrows-of-work.html#comments">unleashed a tidal wave of invectives</a> including the incredible lines &ldquo;I will hate you till the day I die and wish you nothing but ill will in every career move you make. I will be watching with interest and schadenfreude.&rdquo;</p> <p>Let me just say this: wow.</p> <p>I know this sounds ridiculous and cliched, but I was a huge fan of Alain de Botton&rsquo;s early books. <em>Essays in Love</em> is an amazing piece of work, showing remarkable insight into the natural cycle of (failed) romantic relationships. <em>How Proust Can Change Your Life</em> was also stunning, and made me look at Proust in a whole different way. After that, though, came <em>The Consolations of Philosophy</em>, and the beginning of his decline. Since then, I feel his books have settled into a predictable, comfortable rhythm, usually because they are written merely as companions to increasingly generic, increasingly audience-friendly TV show. I don&rsquo;t think I&rsquo;ve actually finished any of his books since <em>The Art of Travel</em>.</p> <p>Ignoring the specifics of Crain&rsquo;s complaints, I feel like they could as easily be applied to any of de Botton&rsquo;s recent books. There <em>is</em> a certain amount of snobbery. They frequently <em>do</em> veer off-topic in favour of (slightly smug) &ldquo;amusing&rdquo; asides. So I&rsquo;m surprised that de Botton is finding Crain&rsquo;s review so shocking.</p> <p>Even more surprising, though, is de Botton&rsquo;s reaction to his reaction. He points out, rightly, that what he was trying to do is to give authors a right to reply to critics, but worryingly <a href="http://www.edrants.com/alain-de-botton-on-responding-to-critics/">seems to think that the only problem here is that he wrote his comments in a public forum</a>, thinking it had been private (although the three previous comments didn&rsquo;t tip him off?) In other words, he&rsquo;s saying that, yes, he acted like an impetulant child, but the only thing he&rsquo;s sorry about is that he got caught.</p> <p>Again, wow.</p> Vatican Taking Notes from Berlusconi? https://lowbrowculture.com/post/vatican-taking-notes-from-berlusconi/ Thu, 02 Jul 2009 13:29:57 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/vatican-taking-notes-from-berlusconi/ <p>As some of you probably know, there&rsquo;s quite a bit of controversy surrounding Pope Pius XII, the Pope who reigned during World War II. While many catholics, including Pope Benedict XVI, wish to make him a saint, critics accuse Pius of not doing enough to help the Jews during the holocaust.</p> <p>Today, the head of the Vatican Archives, Monsignor Sergio Pagano, has said that there are things in the archive that will completely vindicate Pius, and show that he did a lot to help the Jews. But he can&rsquo;t go into specifics.</p> <blockquote>"There will be some nice surprises, even as far as the Jews are concerned ... Pope Pius took great risks, even very great personal risks, to save Jews. I can't say more now but whoever wants to open their eyes in five or six years will be able to open them."</blockquote> <p>On the one hand, this is understandable. There are currently 20 Vatican archivists working full-time on examining millions of pages of documents regarding Pius&rsquo;s papacy, and it would be disrespectful, if not completely reckless, to start announcing details prematurely.</p> <p>On the other hand, the first thing that popped into my head when I read this was Silvio Berlusconi who, almost two months ago, <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/berlusconi-promises-to-explain-relations-with-teen-1690529.html">promised to release a statement explaining his relationship with 18-year old Noemi Letizia</a>, which has not yet arrived. In fact, Berlusconi recently added his voice to President Giorgio Napolitano&rsquo;s invitation to the media and opposition politicians to <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jun/29/silvio-berlusconi-g8-summit-allegations">suspend discussion of &ldquo;controversial issues&rdquo; (read: Berlusconi&rsquo;s numerous recent transgressions) until after the G8 summit</a>.</p> <p>That said, the long finger only goes so far with minor issues and, regardless of what the media from other countries believe, Berlusconi&rsquo;s affairs are relatively minor issues within Italy. When we&rsquo;re talking about the deaths of 6 million people? I doubt it.</p> EA Sports Active https://lowbrowculture.com/post/ea-sports-active/ Wed, 01 Jul 2009 11:53:05 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/ea-sports-active/ <p>For the past couple of weeks, I&rsquo;ve been working on trying to get myself into shape. Or rather, some shape that wasn&rsquo;t just &lsquo;round&rsquo;. Cutting out chocolate (except when thoughtless fucks come over to stay and bring us presents of giant bars of Dairy Milk). Cutting out fizzy drinks (except when we throw a party and the thoughtless fucks don&rsquo;t drink the mixers). And generally just watching what I eat. And, as a bit of an experiment, I&rsquo;ve been trying out <em>EA Sports Active</em>.</p> <p>I&rsquo;ve tried Wii Fit and found it to be a total misnomer. Wii Balance might have been a better name, since that seems to be all it&rsquo;s concerned with. I still use it for its daily &ldquo;Body Tests&rdquo;, which measure your weight and BMI (and also still finds a way to work &ldquo;balance&rdquo; into the equation), but apart from that, _Wii Fit _was a non-starter in my house.</p> <p><em>EA Sports Active</em>, on the other hand, has been a huge hit. It actually gets your heart pumping and I&rsquo;m loving the way it feels like a genuine training session. Or at least, like a more intense training DVD. I&rsquo;m halfway through my first &ldquo;30 Day Challenge&rdquo;, and there hasn&rsquo;t been one time where I&rsquo;ve thought &ldquo;I can&rsquo;t be bothered with this&rdquo;, so it can definitely be called a success.</p> <p>That&rsquo;s not to say it&rsquo;s perfect.</p> <ul> <li> <p><strong>Enough with the fucking lunges</strong> Christ on a bike. Every session has a minimum of three or four batches of lunges. Even last night, where the trainer says &ldquo;Today we&rsquo;re going to focus on your upper body!&rdquo; had five sets of lunges. I&rsquo;m sure they&rsquo;re great for my fitness, but let&rsquo;s mix it up a bit, please.</p> </li> <li> <p><strong>Why can&rsquo;t it weigh me?</strong> I&rsquo;ve got a Balance Board. It knows I have a Balance Board. Why the hell can&rsquo;t it weigh me using the Balance Board? Right now, I do my body test using Wii Fit, get my weight from that and manually input it into <em>EA Sports Active</em>. This strikes me as just a silly oversight. Although it also seems like <a href="http://www.whattheyplay.com/products/ea-sports-active-for-wii/#related_games">none of the Wii fitness games</a> offer this, apart from Wii Fit. Maybe this is a Nintendo-mandated omission?</p> </li> <li> <p><strong>No abdominal exercises</strong> Weirdly for something that presents itself as a rounded fitness program, the game doesn&rsquo;t even try to give any abdominal exercises. Apparently, these will be coming later in an add-on pack.</p> </li> <li> <p><strong>Crappy resistance band</strong> The resistance band they supply with the game is not only light as to be almost completely ineffectual, it also is made of a crappy material that will snap if you look at it wrong. My advice would be to buy yourself your own resistance band and use that instead.</p> </li> </ul> <p>Apart from these fairly minor complaints, I&rsquo;m really happy with <em>EA Sports Active</em>. It&rsquo;s not a complete workout package, but it&rsquo;s not really meant to be. It&rsquo;s intended to gently ease people into regular exercise and to compliment a broader, more comprehensive weight-loss and exercise regime.</p> <p>Now I just need to stop people bringing me chocolate and I&rsquo;ll be laughing.</p> All Things Considered https://lowbrowculture.com/post/all-things-considered/ Tue, 30 Jun 2009 09:37:52 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/all-things-considered/ <p>NPR&rsquo;s <a href="http://www.npr.org/templates/rundowns/rundown.php?prgId=2">All Things Considered</a> is one of the few great news/current events radio shows out there. That&rsquo;s why it&rsquo;s so galling that they don&rsquo;t have an official podcast. You can only download snippets from their website, which is generous of them, but getting these onto my iPod was such a colossal pain in the dick that I decided, instead, I&rsquo;d construct a podcast myself. So I did.</p> <p>If you want to subscribe, launch iTunes, go to Advanced -&gt; Subscribe to Podcast, and paste in the following URL: <a href="http://www.lowbrowculture.com/atcpodcast.php">http://www.lowbrowculture.com/atcpodcast.php</a></p> <p><strong>Usual disclaimer:</strong> This is provided as-is, with no guarantees, warranties or refunds. It works for me. If it doesn&rsquo;t work for you, <a href="mailto:johnke@gmail.com">drop me a line</a>. This podcast is completely unofficial and in no way endorsed by NPR.</p> Glastonbury → http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2009/06/glastonbury_2009.html Mon, 29 Jun 2009 10:28:20 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/glastonbury/ <p>The Big Picture posted its <a href="http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2009/06/glastonbury_2009.html">roundup of Glastonbury pictures</a>, and they&rsquo;re stunning, as usual. One thing struck me looking at this picture though - <em>when did Glastonbury move to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neverland">Never Never Land?</a></em></p> Unleash the Beast https://lowbrowculture.com/post/unleash-the-beast/ Mon, 29 Jun 2009 05:58:16 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/unleash-the-beast/ <p><a href="http://www.gourmet.com/food/2009/06/fueling-the-beast-within">Hilarious article on energy drinks from Gourmet.com:</a></p> <blockquote>Measuring up the prose of energy drinks against daily life will lead to all sorts of absurdities: <p>“Julia, can I get you a coffee?” “No, I have a ton of editing to do, I need the venom of a Death Adder which has the power to strike back.” “How about an espresso then?” “I will bite you in your neck if you do not leave me immediately to the challenges of my intense life.” “Look, we all have a lot of work to do.” “You may have a lot of work to do. I have a lot of work to penetrate with my face, inject with poison, and kill.” “Is that your heart visibly beating through your sternum?” “Yes, it is. Jealous?”</blockquote></p> Reality Overlay https://lowbrowculture.com/post/reality-overlay/ Sat, 27 Jun 2009 15:02:09 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/reality-overlay/ <p>Now that high end &ldquo;Smart Phones&rdquo; are being released with all sorts of built-in doo-dads, like a camera, GPS unit and compass, it means that phones know exactly where they are and what you&rsquo;re pointing them at. <a href="http://industry.bnet.com/technology/10002375/smartphone-gets-killer-app/">Which leads to some interesting applications:</a></p> <blockquote>It works as follows: Starting up the Layar application automatically activates the camera. The embedded GPS automatically knows the location of the phone and the compass determines in which direction the phone is facing. Each [commercial] partner provides a set of location coordinates with relevant information which forms a digital layer. By tapping the side of the screen the user easily switches between layers.</blockquote> <p>This is all kind of difficult to explain in words - check out the video of Wikitude in action to see what is going on&hellip;</p> <p>In other words, your phone gives you a Terminator-style real-time Heads Up Display for whatever you&rsquo;re looking at. Imagine the possibilities - cross it with Wikipedia/Wikitravel to give you the most amazing guide book ever. Cross it with an application that &ldquo;calls&rdquo; your phone and you&rsquo;ve got the most immersive <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternate_reality_game">Alternate Reality Game</a> ever. Heck, if it knows your demographic, then you&rsquo;ve got some Minority Report-style personalized ads beamed directly from what you&rsquo;re looking at. Which might sound annoying and intrustive, but when it&rsquo;s this futuristic, who cares?</p> Wait, Scratch That, Reverse it https://lowbrowculture.com/post/wait-scratch-that-reverse-it/ Sat, 27 Jun 2009 00:21:57 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/wait-scratch-that-reverse-it/ <p>Notice anything different?</p> <p>My blog was drowning under almost five years of cruft and unfocused babbling, so I&rsquo;ve decided to do an old etch-a-sketch revamp. Shake it up, start again. This time, less bullshit, I promise. I want to use this blog for writing. Not as a link-dump, or a Youtube proxy (although I&rsquo;m sure there will be the occasional link and youtube video). Those things will be on my <a href="http://twitter.com/johnke">twitter</a>. The old version of the site <a href="http://www.lowbrowculture.com/old">is still available</a>, but really, where&rsquo;s the fun in that? We can&rsquo;t keep looking back. Got to move forward. Onward and upward.</p> <p>And with that, on with the show.</p> George Lucas wearing a 'Han shot first' t-shirt → http://www.starwars.com/meta/rd/expand/expand.html?world=community&img=/community/news/rocks/img/20070404_2_bg.jpg&width=undefined&height=undefined&import=undefined Thu, 12 Jul 2007 20:02:26 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/george-lucas-wearing-a-han-shot-first-t-shirt/ <p>This is why I respect George Lucas - he&rsquo;s never afraid to fuck with the minds of rabid Star Wars fans.</p> Simplify Media - Connect Your iTunes → http://www.simplifymedia.com/ Thu, 12 Jul 2007 17:22:55 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/simplify-media-connect-your-itunes/ <p>Replacing lost functionality in iTunes: the ability to share your library over the internet. Hooray!</p> Trailer for "Get Smart" → http://www.movieweb.com/video/V07G089hsyITVW Wed, 11 Jul 2007 14:12:33 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/trailer-for-get-smart/ <p>There&rsquo;s some inspired casting here - Steve Carrell as Maxwell Smart, Ann Hathaway as Agent 99, Alan Arkin as the Chief.</p> Edge's 100 Greatest Videogames https://lowbrowculture.com/post/edges-100-greatest-videogames/ Wed, 11 Jul 2007 12:31:07 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/edges-100-greatest-videogames/ <p><a href="http://www.edge-online.co.uk">Edge Magazine</a> (still the best videogame magazine out there) recently published its top 100 videogames of all time. It&rsquo;s pretty interesting reading and, being Edge, there are a few questionable decisions. But this is what I love about Edge - they occasionally do some wild stuff, but always back it up with good, solid explanations.</p> <p>Here&rsquo;s the list along with my statistics.</p> <!-- more --> <h3 id="legend">Legend</h3> <p><strong>Bold - Played, finished</strong> <em>Italic - Played, didn&rsquo;t finish</em> Normal - Didn&rsquo;t play.</p> <h3 id="the-list">The List</h3> <ol> <li> <p><strong>Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time</strong></p> </li> <li> <p><strong>Resident Evil 4</strong></p> </li> <li> <p><strong>Super Mario 64</strong></p> </li> <li> <p><strong>Half Life 2</strong></p> </li> <li> <p><strong>Super Mario World</strong></p> </li> <li> <p><strong>Zelda: A Link to the Past</strong></p> </li> <li> <p><strong>Halo: Combat Evolved</strong></p> </li> <li> <p>Final Fantasy XII</p> </li> <li> <p><em>Tetris</em></p> </li> <li> <p><em>Super Metroid</em></p> </li> <li> <p>Yoshi&rsquo;s Island</p> </li> <li> <p><strong>Grand Theft Auto: Vice City</strong></p> </li> <li> <p><strong>Ico</strong></p> </li> <li> <p><strong>Super Mario Kart</strong></p> </li> <li> <p><em>Pro Evolution Soccer 6</em></p> </li> <li> <p>Street Fighter Anniversary</p> </li> <li> <p><strong>GoldenEye 007</strong></p> </li> <li> <p><em>Final Fantasy VII</em></p> </li> <li> <p><em>Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion</em></p> </li> <li> <p>Civilization IV</p> </li> <li> <p><em>Okami</em></p> </li> <li> <p>World Of WarCraft</p> </li> <li> <p><strong>Metroid Prime</strong></p> </li> <li> <p><strong>Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time</strong></p> </li> <li> <p>Sim City 2000</p> </li> <li> <p><em>Advance Wars</em></p> </li> <li> <p><strong>Rez</strong></p> </li> <li> <p><strong>Perfect Dark</strong></p> </li> <li> <p><strong>Deus Ex</strong></p> </li> <li> <p><strong>Shadow Of The Colossus</strong></p> </li> <li> <p><strong>Katamari Damacy</strong></p> </li> <li> <p><em>Project Gotham Racing 2</em></p> </li> <li> <p><em>Castlevania: Symphony of the Night</em></p> </li> <li> <p>R-Type Final</p> </li> <li> <p><strong>Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons Of Liberty</strong></p> </li> <li> <p>Battlefield 2</p> </li> <li> <p>StarCraft</p> </li> <li> <p>Virtua Fighter 5</p> </li> <li> <p>Secret Of Mana</p> </li> <li> <p>Wario Ware Inc: Minigame Mania</p> </li> <li> <p><em>Gran Turismo 4</em></p> </li> <li> <p>Rome: Total War</p> </li> <li> <p><em>Bomberman</em></p> </li> <li> <p><strong>Super Monkey Ball</strong></p> </li> <li> <p>Company Of Heroes</p> </li> <li> <p><em>Quake III</em></p> </li> <li> <p><em>Far Cry</em></p> </li> <li> <p>Puyo Pop Fever</p> </li> <li> <p><em>Animal Crossing</em></p> </li> <li> <p><strong>Shenmue</strong></p> </li> <li> <p>Pokemon Ruby/Sapphire</p> </li> <li> <p><em>Disgaea: Hour Of Darkness</em></p> </li> <li> <p><strong>Tony Hawk&rsquo;s Pro Skater 2</strong></p> </li> <li> <p><em>Chrono Trigger</em></p> </li> <li> <p><em>Counter-Strike</em></p> </li> <li> <p><strong>Guitar Hero</strong></p> </li> <li> <p><strong>Soul Calibur</strong></p> </li> <li> <p><em>Tempest 2000</em></p> </li> <li> <p><em>StarFox 64</em></p> </li> <li> <p>Pac-Man Vs</p> </li> <li> <p><strong>Manhunt</strong></p> </li> <li> <p>Jet Set Radio Future</p> </li> <li> <p><strong>Lumines</strong></p> </li> <li> <p><em>System Shock 2</em></p> </li> <li> <p><em>Darwinia</em></p> </li> <li> <p>F-Zero GX</p> </li> <li> <p><em>Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved</em></p> </li> <li> <p>GTR2</p> </li> <li> <p><strong>PilotWings 64</strong></p> </li> <li> <p>Ridge Racers 2</p> </li> <li> <p><strong>Ninja Gaiden Black</strong></p> </li> <li> <p><strong>Killer7</strong></p> </li> <li> <p><em>Puzzle Bobble (aka Bust-a-Move)</em></p> </li> <li> <p>Thief: The Dark Project</p> </li> <li> <p>Burnout 2</p> </li> <li> <p><strong>Ikaruga</strong></p> </li> <li> <p>Football Manager 2007</p> </li> <li> <p><strong>Doom II</strong></p> </li> <li> <p><strong>Secret of Monkey Island</strong></p> </li> <li> <p>Virtua Tennis 3</p> </li> <li> <p><em>Robotron 2084</em></p> </li> <li> <p><strong>Lemmings</strong></p> </li> <li> <p><strong>Nights</strong></p> </li> <li> <p>Phantasy Star Online</p> </li> <li> <p><strong>Silent Hill 2</strong></p> </li> <li> <p><em>Outrun 2006: Coast 2 Coast</em></p> </li> <li> <p>Mr Driller</p> </li> <li> <p><strong>Sega Rally Championship</strong></p> </li> <li> <p><strong>Tomb Raider</strong></p> </li> <li> <p><em>Devil May Cry</em></p> </li> <li> <p>Super Smash Bros Melee</p> </li> <li> <p><strong>Resident Evil</strong></p> </li> <li> <p><em>Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door</em></p> </li> <li> <p><strong>Gitaroo Man</strong></p> </li> <li> <p><strong>God of War</strong></p> </li> <li> <p><strong>Wipeout</strong></p> </li> <li> <p><strong>Tekken 3</strong></p> </li> <li> <p><em>Sensible Soccer</em></p> </li> <li> <p><strong>Psychonauts</strong></p> </li> <li> <p><strong>Crackdown</strong></p> </li> </ol> <h3 id="statistics">Statistics</h3> <p>Total played: 72 Total finished: 44</p> <p>Number of sequels: 55</p> <p><img src="http://www.lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2007/07/graph_yeara.png" alt="graph_yeara.png"></p> <p><img src="http://www.lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2007/07/graph_platform_generala.png" alt="graph_platform_generala.png"></p> <p><img src="http://www.lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2007/07/graph_platform_specifica.png" alt="graph_platform_specifica.png"></p> Secret of the Incas https://lowbrowculture.com/post/secret-of-the-incas/ Mon, 09 Jul 2007 12:47:35 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/secret-of-the-incas/ <p>I don&rsquo;t think anyone actually understands how psyched I am for the release of the new Indiana Jones film next year. When I was younger and my age was still in single digits, I used to wake up extra early so I could go downstairs and watch all of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom before school. Every day. For about a year. And if I had my copy here with me now, I&rsquo;d probably be watching it now.</p> <p><a href="http://www.lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2007/07/secret-of-the-incas-sm.jpg"><img src="http://www.lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2007/07/secret-of-the-incas-sm.thumbnail.jpg" alt="secret-of-the-incas-sm.jpg"></a></p> <p>I came across a film called &ldquo;<a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0047464/">Secret of the Incas</a>&rdquo;, a low-budget adventure movie from 1954 starring Charlton Heston which seems to be Indiana Jones&rsquo; most obvious inspiration. Heston plays Harry Steele (fucking awesome name), a square-jawed treasure-hunter who is determined to find the treasure of Machu Picchu in Peru. Like Indiana Jones, Steele walks around in a big brown fedora and leather jacket.</p> <p>The similarities aren&rsquo;t accidental either. Rumour has it that before production of Raiders of the Lost Ark, Senor Spielbergo and George Lucas screened this movie (along with <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0035735/">China</a>, starring Alan Ladd) for the cast and crew, to give them an idea of the kind of movie they were trying to create.</p> <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2007/07/incas.jpg" alt="incas.jpg"></p> <p><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QBnFtBwiUTE">Youtube - Secret of the Incas (I)</a> <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NveefDpjK6k">Youtube - Secret of the Incas (II)</a> <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PeFy9S0MKp4">Youtube - Secret of the Incas (III)</a></p> <p>These clips from Secret of the Incas should give you a good idea of how well Spielberg &amp; co. managed to recreate the tone of the earlier movie. In fact, you could go further and point out specific sequences in Raiders that were influenced even by these three clips.</p> <p>I&rsquo;d love to see this movie completely, but it&rsquo;s impossible to buy Secret of the Incas. Nothing on Amazon, nothing on eBay. Even nothing on Bittorrent. Some conspiracy theorists reckon the movie is being &lsquo;suppressed&rsquo; by Paramount because of the similarities to Indiana Jones, reckoning that people would be up in arms if they could see how much this film influenced Raiders of the Lost Ark (although I personally think this is ridiculous: if people can&rsquo;t that the Indiana Jones movies are nothing but a distillation of classic action movie staples, then these people should be banished to the wilderness immediately).</p> <p>Whatever the reason, I can&rsquo;t get a hold of it on the internet. Anyone got a copy of this lying around? I&rsquo;d be willing to pay good (read: not ridiculous) money for it.</p> Sony Confirms PS3 Price Cut (1up.com) → http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3160853 Mon, 09 Jul 2007 05:10:59 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/sony-confirms-ps3-price-cut-1upcom/ <p>Now the bellyachers have one less thing to uh&hellip; bellyache about. No idea how long this will take to trickle down to Europe though.</p> We've come a long, long way together https://lowbrowculture.com/post/weve-come-a-long-long-way-together/ Sat, 07 Jul 2007 09:46:28 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/weve-come-a-long-long-way-together/ <p><strong>My idea of heaven - 1991</strong></p> <p><img src="http://www.lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2007/07/monkey_island_1991.jpg" alt="monkey_island_1991.jpg"></p> <p><strong>My idea of heaven - July 7th, 2007</strong></p> <p><img src="http://www.lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2007/07/heaven_2007.jpg" alt="heaven_2007.jpg"></p> <p>Slowly making my way through all of these in roughly chronological order. Monkey Island 2 next. I don&rsquo;t think there&rsquo;s a bad game in here.</p> <p><strong>BONUS CONTENT</strong> <a href="http://www.pressplayontape.com/">Press Play on Tape</a> perform the Monkey Island theme live. If the first 30 seconds don&rsquo;t make you smile, I guarantee the last minute definitely will.</p> all your eggs in one basket - followup https://lowbrowculture.com/post/all-your-eggs-in-one-basket-followup/ Thu, 05 Jul 2007 09:56:05 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/all-your-eggs-in-one-basket-followup/ <p><a href="http://www.lowbrowculture.com/2007/06/15/all-your-eggs-in-one-basket/">Following on from what I said before</a>, I&rsquo;d just like to point out:</p> <p><a href="http://www.mneylon.com/blog/archives/2007/07/05/running-a-business-is-fun-when-things-break/"><strong>It has begun</strong></a>.</p> <p>(Sorry Michele, you&rsquo;ve got my sympathies and I&rsquo;m not kicking you when you&rsquo;re down, just making a funny.)</p> New J.J. Abrams movie → http://www.apple.com/trailers/paramount/11808/ Wed, 04 Jul 2007 22:58:20 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/new-jj-abrahams-movie/ <p>This awesome teaser trailer is sometimes running in front of screenings of Transformers in the States. Now, as good as Transformers was, it would be hard to keep my attention after that trailer.</p> <p>It&rsquo;s probably a movie codenamed &ldquo;Cloverfield&rdquo;, which J.J. Abrams is supposed to have been working on for a while now. No real details exist except that it&rsquo;s a big, dumb monster movie. Hooray! &lsquo;Round these parts, we <em>loves</em> us some big, dumb monster movies. Even the Godzilla remake, but only for that one scene where Jean Reno&rsquo;s does his Elvis impression.</p> <p>Cute thing - <a href="http://www.1-18-08.com/">the official site</a>, which isn&rsquo;t referenced anywhere in that trailer, or on any other official sources, is tracking visitors using Google Analytics. This word-of-mouth campaign is being dissected, one visitor at a time.</p> Footage of EA's Rock Band → https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j60rgz0L7OU Wed, 04 Jul 2007 21:04:16 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/footage-of-eas-rock-band/ <p>There aren&rsquo;t enough exclamation marks in the world for just how excited this makes me.</p> News: Irish firm to put free-energy machine on display today → http://www.breakingnews.ie/ireland/mhkfqlojgbcw/rss2/ Wed, 04 Jul 2007 09:00:53 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/news-irish-firm-to-put-free-energy-machine-on-display-today/ <p>Maybe it&rsquo;s just from watching two seasons of Doctor Who back-to-back, but this &lsquo;Orbo&rsquo; shit scares the bejesus out of me</p> Collecting or clutter? https://lowbrowculture.com/post/collecting-or-clutter/ Tue, 03 Jul 2007 14:42:06 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/collecting-or-clutter/ <p><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/thrillho/434974757/"><img src="http://farm1.static.flickr.com/150/434974757_9bd239b946.jpg" alt="DVDs, books and games, post-purge"></a></p> <p>An article over on Unclutterer caught my eye - <a href="http://unclutterer.com/archives/2007/07/is_collecting_a_form_of_creati.php">Is collecting a form of creative hoarding?</a></p> <p>As I type this, virtually all of my worldly possessions are sitting in a storage container, waiting for me to pick them up. This includes my DVD collection. I&rsquo;ve always thought of it as a &lsquo;DVD collection&rsquo;, never as &lsquo;clutter&rsquo;. H. has always thought the opposite. Now, I&rsquo;m beginning to wonder - who&rsquo;s right here?</p> <p>For two months now, I&rsquo;ve been getting by with the stuff I brought with me in my suitcases. And the only thing that I miss is my Xbox 360. I really wish I&rsquo;d brought that instead of my PlayStation 2. I could be playing Forza 2 and boosting my achievement score <em>right now</em> instead of playing through Kingdom Hearts 2 and hanging out with Ariel from the Little Mermaid. Which, let&rsquo;s be honest, is pretty fucking fruity.</p> <p>I tell you what I don&rsquo;t miss though: my DVDs. I brought a handful in a CD folder &ndash; things like 2001, Idiocracy, Spaced &ndash; things I could watch again and again. And I&rsquo;d say I would miss those if I hadn&rsquo;t brought them with me, but what about the other 1,175?</p> <p>Let&rsquo;s pick an extreme example: <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0234853/">The Tao of Steve</a>. Will I ever watch it again? I seriously doubt it. It was a bad movie and I didn&rsquo;t enjoy it when I watched it. I think the only reason I hold onto it is because I had myself convinced that my DVD collection was like some shiny communist state and every disc was equal. So I would no sooner get rid of &lsquo;The Tao of Steve&rsquo; than my <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Brazil-Criterion-Collection-3-Disc-Boxed/dp/B000G8NXZK/ref=pd_bbs_sr_3/002-3812786-8188803?ie=UTF8&amp;s=dvd&amp;qid=1183472014&amp;sr=8-3">three-disc Criterion Collection edition of &lsquo;Brazil&rsquo;</a>.</p> <p>But they&rsquo;re not equal. Not even close.</p> <p>Filling in the insurance forms for the moving company was also pretty eye-opening. Averaging a value of €10 per disc, the insurance on the DVDs alone came to €12,000. And considering the final value of <em>everything</em> was under €15,000, it got me thinking - is this still a collection? Or did it cease to be a collection the minute I started buying things like The Tao of Steve, or <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0116671/">Jack Frost</a>, owning them <em>just to own them</em>?</p> <p>Of the DVDs I own, I reckon there are about 200 that I love. Really love. And I&rsquo;d be upset if I didn&rsquo;t have these. That leaves, what&hellip; 1,000 DVDs I could afford to let go of?</p> <p>Anyway, it&rsquo;s left me with this food for thought. Would I rather: **A: ** keep convincing myself that it&rsquo;s worth holding onto films like The Tao of Steve, just in case Donal Logue dies a tragic death and its value suddenly skyrockets and I can retire early. or **B: ** sell the cruft on eBay and use the proceeds to buy myself a Macbook Pro and maybe even a nice new Cinema Display.</p> <p>So - any offers on 1,000 DVDs?</p> PC World scratch test the iPhone → http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=czCCavcnNd8&NR=1 Sat, 30 Jun 2007 15:30:34 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/pc-world-scratch-test-the-iphone/ <p>Pretty resilient - only want one more now.</p> Photos of the progression from egg to chick → http://strikerdiary.blogspot.com/2007/06/from-egg-to-chick.html Thu, 28 Jun 2007 15:37:05 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/photos-of-the-progression-from-egg-to-chick/ <p>And I used to like eggs so much. Now I don&rsquo;t think I&rsquo;ll ever be able to eat one again.</p> Magnifico! → http://www.youtube.com/v/F3PdIxTZ0EQ Thu, 28 Jun 2007 00:09:20 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/magnifico/ <p>George Clooney&rsquo;s bonkers-great ad for Martini.</p> King Kong https://lowbrowculture.com/post/king-kong/ Wed, 27 Jun 2007 09:12:22 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/king-kong/ <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/0511_kong.jpg" alt=""></p> <p>I&rsquo;m a total sucker for theme parks. When I was fifteen, my family went on holiday to Florida, home of a thousand theme parks, and I made sure we saw <i>every single one of them</i>. But the thing I love about theme parks isn&rsquo;t so much the rides themselves but the atmosphere created around each ride. For example, when you&rsquo;re queuing for the &lsquo;Jaws&rsquo; ride in Universal, the queue takes you through Quint&rsquo;s boathouse. This is a perfectly realised model of the boathouse from the movie, with hundreds of incidental details dotted around the to help convince you that you are actually <em>in</em> a movie.</p> <p>Also in Universal Studios is a ride loosely based on Dino De Laurentiis&rsquo; unsuccessful 1976 remake of <em>King Kong</em>. The audience rides in a cable car around New York being terrorised by the giant monkey, in a series of spectacular set-pieces. Kong appears, shakes the car and yells a bit, and scares the audience. But it&rsquo;s starting to show its age now, and the animatronics can&rsquo;t really fool today&rsquo;s more effects-savvy audience. If you listen carefully, you can hear the hydrolics and steam motors driving every inch of your experience throughout the ride.</p> <p>Ubisoft&rsquo;s game of Peter Jackson&rsquo;s <em>King Kong</em> is a worthy replacement for Universal&rsquo;s aging <em>King Kong</em> ride.</p> <p>Following the &lsquo;classic&rsquo; Kong story, the game also uses a series of cinematic set-pieces to drive the action forward. These range from rafting downstream while being terrorised by the natives of Skull Island to battling dinosaurs in the middle of a brontosaurus stampede. And when these succeed, they are marvellous, memorable pieces of gaming. One of the most spectacular moments comes when the action shifts - one minute the player is controlling Jack, who has no choice but to run from the larger beasts on Skull Island (a luger and a spear will not trouble a T-Rex). The next minute, the player controls Kong, who can swat these monsters away in a tremendous show of power.</p> <p>The story is mostly told by the bits in between the set-pieces. Through some fantastic voice-acting by the cast of the movie, we are presented with personalities that are as three-dimensional as their graphical representations.</p> <p>But it&rsquo;s in the atmosphere the game creates that it really succeeds. The island, dense with terrifying creatures, feels like an actual living, breathing place. There are hundreds of incidental details littering the environment to heighten the player&rsquo;s experience and convince them they&rsquo;re in a movie. Or on a ride. This is also helped by the lack of a heads-up-display - there&rsquo;s no bar to tell you how much health your character has, or how many bullets are in his gun. This is all done through brilliantly-implemented visual and aural clues. There&rsquo;s a wonderful moment in the <a href="http://www.badtaste.it/modules.php?name=News&amp;file=article&amp;sid=2092&amp;mode=&amp;order=0&amp;thold=0">4 minute clip of King Kong movie</a> where you get to see Skull Island from Kong&rsquo;s Mountain. And I thought &ldquo;Y&rsquo;know, from this angle, this place is beautiful. Down there, it&rsquo;s horrific&rdquo;, as if I&rsquo;d actually been there.</p> <p>And this atmosphere isn&rsquo;t confined to within the game itself. Along the way, you unlock &rsquo;extras&rsquo; within the game. These mainly consist of &lsquo;galleries&rsquo; of WETA artwork for the movie. But instead of presenting these as flat image files, we get to experience them as though we were walking through an exhibit in a museum. And this is so perfectly (yet simply) realised that you can almost smell the dust in the air.</p> <p>There&rsquo;s a lot to praise about this game, which is made even more stunning by the fact that it takes roughly 10 hours of average playing to complete. Now, there&rsquo;s a whole other post about value for money with games you can finish over the course of a weekend. But for this one, I&rsquo;ll just say yes, it is definitely worth it.</p> Manhunt 2 and Censorship https://lowbrowculture.com/post/manhunt-2-and-censorship/ Tue, 26 Jun 2007 08:29:29 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/manhunt-2-and-censorship/ <p>I&rsquo;ve been pretty busy for the past few days and I&rsquo;m still catching up with the stuff that happened last week. Like the Manhunt 2 furore.</p> <p>For those of you that don&rsquo;t know/care, last week, the [Irish Film Censor&rsquo;s Office](<a href="http://www.ifco.ie">http://www.ifco.ie</a> decided to make a prohibition order against the upcoming game, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manhunt_2">Manhunt 2</a>, making it the first videogame ever banned in Ireland. A moot point, since over in the US, the <a href="http://www.esrb.org/">Entertainment Software Ratings Board</a> gave Manhunt 2 an Adults Only (AO) rating and the three console manufacturers have said that they will not allow AO-rated games to be released for their systems.</p> <h2 id="civil-liberties">Civil Liberties</h2> <p>Anyway, you can can imagine the the reactions the the IFCO&rsquo;s decision. <a href="http://www.tjmcintyre.com/2007/06/first-computer-game-banned-in-ireland.html#comments">An anonymous commenter on IT Law Ireland</a>:</p> <blockquote> <p>So lets ban any story, film, news report which contains violence and go about life in ignorance, as they want us to. God help us all, next thing banned will be the great sculpture of David done by Michelangelo because it contains nudity.</p> </blockquote> <p>And naturally, boards.ie went into hysterics. My favourite quote from <a href="http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2055110376">the 7-page long Manhunt 2 thread</a> being:</p> <blockquote> <p>Personally, I think the idea of completely banning any game from a country is an outrage, and a blatant infringement of civil liberty.</p> </blockquote> <p>That still makes me giggle.</p> <p>Strangely, I find myself agreeing with the censor. In their statement regarding the prohibition order, they said</p> <blockquote> <p>IFCO recognizes that in certain films, DVDs and video games, strong graphic violence may be a justifiable element within the overall context of the work. However, in the case of Manhunt 2, IFCO believes that there is no such context, and the level of gross, unrelenting and gratuitous violence is unacceptable.</p> </blockquote> <p>And you know what? This all sounds perfectly reasonable to me. John Kelleher has proven himself to be an extremely liberal censor, and prohibition orders are typically reserved for the most hardcore porno. Think about it like this - this is the film censor that let Hostel through. This means that Hostel, one of the most brutal exercises in <a href="http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=gorenography">Gorenography</a> I have ever seen, has more of a context for its violence than Manhunt 2. (For reference, <a href="http://www.ifco.ie/ifco/ifcoweb.nsf/SearchViewFilm/C6778A5EE3AAA97B8025713A0060E450?OpenDocument&amp;OpenUp=True">here is their ruling</a> - &lsquo;strong&rsquo; across the board.)</p> <p>I also agree with the censor because I am not convinced that, on its own, classification of movies or games is an effective way of preventing children from being exposed to indecent material - I just don&rsquo;t think it actually works. As someone who was exposed to a ridiculous amount of horror films as a child (thanks, Gar, for letting me watch the Exorcist at age 5), I believe that if you don&rsquo;t want children being exposed to something, you should make it as difficult as possible for them to get their hands on it. In most cases, by banning it.</p> <p>This goes double for videogames, where lazy parents often dismiss the graphic content of games simply <em>because</em> they are &lsquo;games&rsquo; and will happily buy Grand Theft Auto for their 10-year old just to keep him quiet for a few hours.</p> <h2 id="hardware-solution">Hardware Solution</h2> <p>The big &ldquo;however&rdquo; at the end of all this is that all this could be easily avoided if the rating system was used in conjunction with parental controls. These days, most media-playing devices (including modern games consoles) have parental controls built in. If you want to watch a movie or play a game above a certain age-rating, you have to enter a password. But the problem here is that hardly anyone uses these parental controls because hardly anyone knows about them.</p> <p>Maybe it&rsquo;s time they were turned on by default, and bugger the inconvenience?</p> Console Lines - xkcd → http://xkcd.com/c186.html Tue, 26 Jun 2007 05:24:52 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/console-lines-xkcd/ <p>For Greg Packer. You&rsquo;re setting the tone, buddy. Let&rsquo;s keep it civilized.</p> People have started queuing for the iPhone → http://firstinline.wordpress.com/ Tue, 26 Jun 2007 05:21:35 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/people-have-started-queuing-for-the-iphone/ <p>Greg Packer started queueing on Monday, June 25th at 5pm. Outside Japan, is this the first time people have been started queuing days in advance for a PHONE?</p> Italian Music https://lowbrowculture.com/post/italian-music/ Mon, 25 Jun 2007 15:14:00 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/italian-music/ <p><a href="http://www.lowbrowculture.com/2007/05/25/the-hardest-parts-of-living-in-rome/">When I moaned about Italian music before</a>, I admitted I hadn&rsquo;t looked very hard to find something good. And, in my defence, it&rsquo;s easy to be a little dismayed when you&rsquo;re bombarded by Michael fuckin&rsquo; Buble in all the shops. But things are picking up! Here are two songs I like right now.</p> <!-- more --> <h2 id="tiziano-ferro---e-raffaella-ã-mia">Tiziano Ferro - E Raffaella è Mia</h2> <p>This guy seems to be like the Italian Robbie Williams, back before Robbie Williams turned into an enormous, pulsating cock. The song is about <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raffaella_Carr%C3%A0">Raffaella Carrà</a>, an Italian actress and TV host, and its lyrics are really easy to understand (&ldquo;And Raffaella sings in my house / And Raffaella dances in my house&rdquo;), so I like that too.</p> <p>But I&rsquo;m actually having trouble with the song. Is it catchy in the CSS kind of way, or is it catchy in the Ketchup Song kind of way? Whatever. I&rsquo;m not ashamed of what I like.</p> <h2 id="antianti-feat-caparezza---picciotti-della-benavita">AntiAnti feat. CapaRezza - Picciotti della Benavita</h2> <p>Caparezza (the dude with the giant &lsquo;fro) is an Italian rapper. His solo stuff is kinda like System of a Down, which is no bad thing. We&rsquo;ve had a hell of a time trying to buy this album on iTunes (which I&rsquo;m sure I&rsquo;ll blog about soon). Fuckin&rsquo; twenty-first century my arse.</p> <p>Interesting comparison: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caparezza">&lsquo;Caparezza&rsquo; on English Wikipedia</a> (18K) <a href="http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/CapaRezza">&lsquo;Caparezza&rsquo; on Italian Wikipedia</a> (47K)</p> <p>I&rsquo;m sure someone with better language skills than me could easily bump their Wikipedia karma by simply translating the Italian page to English.</p> New World's Ugliest Dog → http://www.philly.com/philly/wires/ap/features/8143552.html Mon, 25 Jun 2007 09:04:17 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/new-worlds-ugliest-dog/ <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2007/06/uglydog.jpg" alt="uglydog.jpg"></p> <p><a href="http://mekon.livejournal.com/156884.html">The King is dead.</a> <a href="http://www.philly.com/philly/wires/ap/features/8143552.html">Long live the King!</a></p> <blockquote> <p>Quigley said she rescued Elwood two years ago. &ldquo;The breeder was going to euthanize him because she thought he was too ugly to sell,&rdquo; said Quigley.</p> <p>&ldquo;So ha ha, now Elwood&rsquo;s all over the Internet and people love him and adore him.&rdquo;</p> </blockquote> <p>Well, let&rsquo;s not get carried away&hellip;</p> Star Wars Weekends → http://www.mousevine.com/article.php?id=580 Fri, 22 Jun 2007 09:53:09 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/star-wars-weekends/ <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2007/06/bobafett.jpg" alt="bobafett.jpg"></p> <p>A gallery of lovely images from <em>Star Wars</em> Weekends.</p> what happens next? → http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KzvC93itdyY Fri, 22 Jun 2007 09:27:29 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/what-happens-next/ <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2007/06/poopcat.jpg" alt="poopcat.jpg"></p> <blockquote> <p>I suppose it is funny when you realize you will always be known throughout your life as that bloke in that car where the cheetah pooped through the roof hatch.</p> </blockquote> Smiling mugshots on The Smoking Gun → http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/years/2007/0525071smile1.html Fri, 22 Jun 2007 07:43:20 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/smiling-mugshots-on-the-smoking-gun/ <p>Even more creepy.</p> Crying mugshots on The Smoking Gun → http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/years/2007/0621072emotional1.html Fri, 22 Jun 2007 07:42:57 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/crying-mugshots-on-the-smoking-gun/ <p>Creepy.</p> iPhoney - iPhone web simulator for designers → http://www.marketcircle.com/iphoney/ Fri, 22 Jun 2007 06:19:14 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/iphoney-iphone-web-simulator-for-designers/ <p>About as close to the real thing as us Europeans will be getting for a while.</p> Airport Leprechauns https://lowbrowculture.com/post/aiport-leprechauns/ Tue, 19 Jun 2007 11:29:06 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/aiport-leprechauns/ <p><a href="http://www.flickr.com/groups/airport_leprechauns/"><img src="http://www.lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2007/06/113763744_6a8e0c2996_s.jpg" alt="113763744_6a8e0c2996_s.jpg"><img src="http://www.lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2007/06/125771852_62492ceab9_s.jpg" alt="125771852_62492ceab9_s.jpg"><img src="http://www.lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2007/06/380995019_9401009bbb_s.jpg" alt="380995019_9401009bbb_s.jpg"><img src="http://www.lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2007/06/404601573_261c51351b_s.jpg" alt="404601573_261c51351b_s.jpg"><img src="http://www.lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2007/06/444755496_514d0aad0c_s.jpg" alt="444755496_514d0aad0c_s.jpg"></a></p> <p>Just before the <em>real</em> summer hits and people start heading off to somewhere nice for their holidays, I thought I better give a little shout-out to the <a href="http://www.flickr.com/groups/airport_leprechauns/">Airport Leprechauns on Flickr</a>, which cheers me right up every time I look at it. If you want to join, just take a snap of yourself wearing a leprechaun hat or beard the next time you&rsquo;re in the airport and and put it in the group!</p> Shooting begins on new Indiana Jones movie → http://www.indianajones.com/community/news/news20070618.html Tue, 19 Jun 2007 08:23:57 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/shooting-begins-on-new-indiana-jones-movie/ <p>Finally.</p> How big is the iPhone anyway? → http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/rumor-crushed/andre-the-giant-selected-as-new-hand-model-for-iphone-268165.php Mon, 18 Jun 2007 09:13:29 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/how-big-is-the-iphone-anyway/ <p>Engadget recently ran a story highlighting what a different hand-model can do for the perceived size of the iPhone. The results are pretty interesting. Here are the two images, with the iPhone set to the same size in both.</p> <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2007/06/iphone_before.jpg" alt=""> <img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2007/06/iphone-now.jpg" alt=""></p> YouTube - Beatboxing the Inspector Gadget theme, while playing a flute → http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Ac8CB47sMY Sat, 16 Jun 2007 15:12:43 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/youtube-beatboxing-the-inspector-gadget-theme-while-playing-a-flute/ <p>A tenner says this will be on the next Beastie Boys album.</p> Happy Bloomsday! https://lowbrowculture.com/post/happy-bloomsday/ Sat, 16 Jun 2007 06:52:41 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/happy-bloomsday/ <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2007/06/jamesjoyce_statue.jpg" alt="jamesjoyce_statue.jpg"></p> <blockquote> <p>STATELY, PLUMP BUCK MULLIGAN CAME FROM THE STAIRHEAD, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed. A yellow dressinggown, ungirdled, was sustained gently behind him by the mild morning air. He held the bowl aloft and intoned: &hellip;</p> </blockquote> <p>Oh, fuck it. <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext03/ulyss12.txt">Read the rest on Project Gutenberg</a>.</p> <p>I&rsquo;ve never read Ulysses, and at this rate, I probably never will. Still though, as Sean Hughes says, &ldquo;Great preface&rdquo;.</p> Ireland: it seems to be going okay, like → http://www.youtube.com/v/J6Jc-frhJ1Y Fri, 15 Jun 2007 16:00:59 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/ireland-it-seems-to-be-going-okay-like/ <p>The guy at 02:30 is my hero. Instead of renewing <a href="http://www.rte.ie/tv/danandbecs/">Dan and Becs</a>, RTE should just give this guy a weekly show where he can sit in a comfy chair and dispense his words of comfort and wisdom.</p> all your eggs in one basket https://lowbrowculture.com/post/all-your-eggs-in-one-basket/ Fri, 15 Jun 2007 11:33:15 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/all-your-eggs-in-one-basket/ <p><a href="http://www.hosting365.com">Poor Hosting365</a>.</p> <p>They suffered a massive power failure today which meant that a large number of their customers&rsquo; sites were unavailable for around four hours. Right now, their <a href="http://hosting365status.com/2007/06/15/power-issues-15th-june-1035am/">status blog entry</a> detailing this problem (and how the repairs are coming along) has <strong>159</strong> comments.</p> <p>Most of these comments are of the frustrated-yet-understanding variety. A worrying number of them are terrifyingly puffed-up with their own sense of self-importance. And far too many are threatening to move their operations to <a href="http://www.blacknight.ie">another hosting provider</a>.</p> <p>Having worked as a system/network administrator for a while, I know exactly what Ed and the guys at Hosting365 are going through, so I sympathise completely. I&rsquo;ve had those awful days where the worst thing that could possibly happen actually happens and you&rsquo;ve got angry customers demanding a full report on how the problem happened, what steps you will be taking to fix the problem and how you will prevent this happening in the future while you&rsquo;re focusing all of your efforts on just restoring a basic level of service. Horrible days, to be sure, but they have their uses.</p> <p>To those people who are thinking of moving away from Hosting365 I say: stop. If I was using Hosting365, I would not switch to Blacknight now precisely because Blacknight haven&rsquo;t suffered from something like this &ndash; yet. Whereas, I&rsquo;ll bet you €100 that, after today, Hosting365 will be putting all of their attention into their reliability, focusing how to make sure that something like this never happens again.</p> <p>And to those people that are complaining about their mission-critical services running on Hosting365, I say: well, I don&rsquo;t know what to say without sounding rude. I&rsquo;ll just say that if <em>I</em> was a reseller and it was <em>my</em> ass on the line, I&rsquo;d make sure that <em>my</em> ass was covered. From a business perspective, a secondary server (from a different hosting company) is cheap as chips and worth its weight in gold when your primary server suffers from extended downtime.</p> Make your own placemat out of bacon → http://www.instructables.com/id/EBLJCRZF2FRVHQ5/?ALLSTEPS Fri, 15 Jun 2007 06:04:55 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/make-your-own-placemat-out-of-bacon/ <p>This could be the start of something beautiful: bacon as a fabric.</p> Fire on the metro https://lowbrowculture.com/post/fire-on-the-metro/ Thu, 14 Jun 2007 14:21:11 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/fire-on-the-metro/ <p>You know, it&rsquo;s getting to the stage where I&rsquo;ve got half a mind to rename this blog to &ldquo;lowbrowculture<strong>shocked</strong>&rdquo;.</p> <p>Today, I was up at the Irish College to get a mass card for an aunt who died recently. To get home, I decided to get the Metro at the Colosseum. Now, I should probably explain that there are two metro lines in Rome. Metro A has been recently revamped and now all the trains and most of the stations are pretty. Metro B, on the other hand, is dingy and ugly. All the trains are covered in graffiti outside and covered in piss and various other bodily fluids inside.</p> <p>Colosseum is Metro B.</p> <p>I&rsquo;m in the station waiting for the Metro to arrive. It&rsquo;s around lunchtime, so there&rsquo;s not a lot of tourists leaving yet - they&rsquo;re all inside the Colosseum, baking and sweating and wearing funny hats. The sign says there&rsquo;s a train in three minutes. I drift back off into the dreamworld I go to when I&rsquo;m wandering around Rome listening to my iPod (travel tip: this is the only way I have found to not constantly lose my shit at the lack of an orderly queuing system in Italy). Gradually, I start to smell smoke. I&rsquo;m looking around, a couple of other people are sniffing too. But there&rsquo;s no obvious fire, so no major panic yet. Then we get the buildup of wind that precedes a train coming down the line. Suddenly the train screams past as if it&rsquo;s being chased by the devil himself. It&rsquo;s totally dark except for the one carriage that is <em>completely ablaze</em>.</p> <p>My mouth was still hanging open by the time the next train arrived. All the Italians shrugged as if this was entirely unremarkable and went back to wearing their giant sunglasses and looking like Hugo Boss models.</p> Mr T: The "T" in I.T. → https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tW1S2tsxVHg Wed, 13 Jun 2007 08:40:14 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/mr-t-the-t-in-it/ <p>So there you have it. Mr. T pities the fool who doesn&rsquo;t use Hitachi data system virtualisation.</p> <p>(?)</p> Failing Now. https://lowbrowculture.com/post/failing-now/ Tue, 12 Jun 2007 12:46:43 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/failing-now/ <p><img src="http://www.lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2007/06/failing.jpg" alt="failing.jpg"></p> <p>Our Macbook had been crashing frequently over the past week or so. It would hang randomly when doing minor things, like copying a new program into the Applications folder. Sometimes it would take the computer two or three minutes to get itself together. Other times, it wouldn&rsquo;t get itself together at all and a hard reboot was the only option.</p> <p>Eventually, I took a look in Disk Utility. The hard drive was listed in red. It told me the disk was dying. I used <a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/smartmontools">smartmon</a> to give me more information, and this is where I got the image at the top of this post - my &ldquo;Reallocated Sector Count&rdquo; was at 0, and my disk was &ldquo;FAILING_NOW&rdquo;. I&rsquo;ll spare you the gory details of what this meant, but the shorthand version is &ldquo;ABANDON SHIP! WOMEN AND CHILDREN FIRST!&rdquo;</p> <!-- more --> <h3 id="necessity-the-mother-of-invention">Necessity: the mother of invention</h3> <p>Fortunately, we had a spare laptop hard drive lying around, so that wasn&rsquo;t a major issue. We also had a spare 400GB desktop hard drive, with a USB adaptor. Unfortunately, we only had two power adaptors. Which meant I couldn&rsquo;t power the macbook, the hard drive to be backed up <em>and</em> the hard drive I was backing up to.</p> <p>We&rsquo;d bought a bunch of spare power adaptors in the airport before we came but in our excitement, walked off the plane without them - oops.</p> <p>So for the past month, we&rsquo;ve been carefully swapping power adaptors around as needed. The hairdryer, the iron, our phones, the PlayStation, the computers, the wireless router&hellip; it got a little silly, but we managed. When I&rsquo;d google for a place to buy electrical equipment in rome, I&rsquo;d found that the main place is called &ldquo;GPL&rdquo;. And Linux has completely ruined that search term.</p> <p>So when the hard drive began to die, I ran out and didn&rsquo;t stop using my broken Italian and eleborate hand gestures until I came back with a bunch of power adaptors and two-prong figure-eight plugs.</p> <p>(PS, for anyone searching google for &rsquo;electrical equipment&rsquo; or &rsquo;travel adaptors&rsquo; in Rome, I found a GPL on the corner of Viale delle Milizie and Via Giordano Bruno.)</p> <h3 id="backing-it-all-up">Backing it all up</h3> <p>I&rsquo;d heard a lot about <a href="http://www.shirt-pocket.com/SuperDuper/SuperDuperDescription.html">SuperDuper</a>, an application for backing up your Mac. A lot of people have said how it saved their necks, so that was the first thing I tried.</p> <p>Unfortunately, it&rsquo;s not so good for saving your neck when your hard drive is already on the way out. When it encounters a bad block on the disk (and your disk can&rsquo;t replace the bad block, as mine couldn&rsquo;t), SuperDuper will try a bunch of methods to access the data and then <em>crap out</em>. It throws its hands up in the air, shouts &ldquo;I can&rsquo;t work with these amateurs&rdquo; and goes back to its trailer.</p> <p>Tar wasn&rsquo;t much better. In the end, I created a disk image on the 400GB hard drive and used plain ol&rsquo; &lsquo;cp&rsquo;. When it came across a bad block, it complained of an I/O error but kept on truckin&rsquo;.</p> <p>So now I&rsquo;ve got a proper backup, we&rsquo;re working off the spare hard drive (with half the capacity, but it&rsquo;ll do), and I got an RMA from the hard drive manufacturer.</p> <p>Hopefully things will be back to normal next week.</p> Sony launch an official PlayStation blog → http://blog.us.playstation.com/ Tue, 12 Jun 2007 04:49:10 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/sony-launch-an-official-playstation-blog/ <p>Or, as one little scamp puts it, &quot;I&rsquo;ve been waiting for a place for us PS3 owners to congregate and learn about the future of our consoles? You know, with only one bias.&quot;</p> Rashers and Eggs - reviews of Irish breakfasts around Ireland → http://www.rashersandeggs.com/ Mon, 11 Jun 2007 13:44:28 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/rashers-and-eggs-reviews-of-irish-breakfasts-around-ireland/ <p>After my family and friends, I&rsquo;d say the thing I miss the most about home is sitting down to an Irish breakfast on a groggy Sunday morning. Reading this blog is the next best thing.</p> HEAnet: Vacancies, Postdoctoral Researcher - Radio Emission of Ultra Cool Dwarfs → http://www.heanet.ie/resources/job_details.php?jobid=2056 Mon, 11 Jun 2007 10:40:56 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/heanet-vacancies-postdoctoral-researcher-radio-emission-of-ultra-cool-dwarfs/ <p>Disappointingly, this job has nothing to do with mini-Fonzies.</p> Get a Monster by Mail! → http://www.monsterbymail.com/ Mon, 11 Jun 2007 07:15:15 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/get-a-monster-by-mail/ <p>$20 gets you a custom-drawn piece of Zombie art. I know someone who needs to steal this business model.</p> What the world eats https://lowbrowculture.com/post/what-the-world-eats/ Sat, 09 Jun 2007 08:02:16 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/what-the-world-eats/ <p><img src="http://www.lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2007/06/ecuador.jpg" alt="ecuador.jpg"> I&rsquo;m pretty sure this is old news, but <a href="http://www.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,1626519_1373664,00.html">Time Magazine is running excerpts</a> of the book &ldquo;<a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1580086810/">Hungry Planet: What the World Eats</a>&rdquo; on its website.</p> <p>My favourite is the Ayme family from Ecuador, pictured above. It makes me wonder: are pork pie hats mandatory in Ecuador? If so, I&rsquo;m booking a flight today.</p> <blockquote>This is my pork pie hat. There are many like it, but this one is MINE. My pork pie hat is my best friend. It is my life. I must master it as I must master my life. My pork pie hat without me is useless. Without my pork pie hat, I am useless.</blockquote> <p>One thing that&rsquo;s concerning me is the lack of processed foods in that picture. Surely they&rsquo;d have a Subway or a McDonalds or something? Maybe one of those sacks is just full of spice burgers, I dunno.</p> <p>Quick confession: A few days ago, I actually Googled &ldquo;KFC Rome Italy&rdquo;. I am weak.</p> Paris Hilton sent back to jail https://lowbrowculture.com/post/paris-hilton-sent-back-to-jail/ Sat, 09 Jun 2007 07:39:15 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/paris-hilton-sent-back-to-jail/ <p><img src="http://www.lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2007/06/paris-hilton-crying.jpg" alt="paris-hilton-crying.jpg"></p> <p>Maybe if the BBC was a bit more creative in their news reporting, I&rsquo;d give more of a shit about current events. For example, on the Paris Hilton case:</p> <p><a href="http://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/6735631.stm?dynamic_vote=ON#vote_6732915_paris_hilton">news.bbc.co.uk</a> says</p> <blockquote>She arrived in handcuffs and cried throughout the court session. <p>The judge said that she would have to serve her full 45-day sentence.</p> <p>&ldquo;It&rsquo;s not right!&rdquo; she shouted in response, before calling out to her mother, who was at the court. </blockquote></p> <p><a href="http://thesuperficial.com/2007/06/paris_hilton_back_in_jail.php">thesuperficial.com</a> says</p> <blockquote>Some witnesses say they saw a rainbow above the courtroom. And others say they saw a giant man in the clouds with a white beard nodding his head approvingly. And me? Well I saw Judge Michael Sauer grow to be twelve feet tall, with muscles the size of tree trunks. And when he smiled, little cartoon hearts appeared above my head and there was a strange tingling sensation in my pants.</blockquote> <p>Therefore, <a href="http://thesuperficial.com/2007/06/paris_hilton_back_in_jail.php">thesuperficial.com</a> &gt; <a href="http://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/6735631.stm?dynamic_vote=ON#vote_6732915_paris_hilton">news.bbc.co.uk</a></p> <p>QED.</p> 100 Hottest Women, as voted for by lesbians → http://www.afterellen.com/people/2007/6/hotlist Sat, 09 Jun 2007 07:16:23 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/100-hottest-women-as-voted-for-by-lesbians/ <p>Oddly enough, I probably agree with this more than any FHM list.</p> Trailer for Will Smith's "I Am Legend" → http://www.apple.com/trailers/wb/iamlegend/large.html Fri, 08 Jun 2007 16:54:40 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/trailer-for-will-smiths-i-am-legend/ <p>As both a huge fan of the book and a huge fan of big, dumb movies, I&rsquo;m pretty excited about this.</p> Roman Bread Situation: Update https://lowbrowculture.com/post/roman-bread-situation-update/ Fri, 08 Jun 2007 08:45:01 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/roman-bread-situation-update/ <p><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/thrillho/536016008/"><img src="http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1147/536016008_532bf9ea3e.jpg" alt="Roman sandwich bread"></a></p> <p>Since <a href="https://lowbrowculture.com/the-hardest-parts-of-living-in-rome/">I last spoke about the Roman bread situation</a>, there have been a couple of interesting developments. First, I have found a bread that is capable of holding a slice of ham, a slice of cheese and a slice of tomato without having everything spilling over the sides.</p> <p>Hooray!</p> <p><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/thrillho/536131965/"><img src="http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1159/536131965_3ed4fae0b9_t.jpg" alt="Roman sandwich bread"></a></p> <p>Except <strong>where&rsquo;s the fucking crust?!</strong> Did the bakery not get the note about the crust? I know that there&rsquo;s a lot of people out there who aren&rsquo;t fans of the crust on sandwiches and would probably welcome the pre-packed removal of the crust. To these people I say: sack up and realise that a sandwich without crust is only half a sandwich.</p> <p>But there&rsquo;s another problem. You probably can&rsquo;t see it from either of my awful, awful pictures, but each of these small packs contains five slices of bread. <strong>Five</strong>.</p> <p>This is kinda like the issue of burgers coming in packs of eight and burger buns coming in packs of six, except you can always eat a burger without a bun, and burger buns don&rsquo;t <em>have</em> to be used exclusively for burgers. Actually, it&rsquo;s not like the burger/buns situation at all. It would be more like burgers coming in packs of eight and burger buns coming in packs of three and a half.</p> <p>Rather than work myself into an early grave giving out about the busted logic behind stuffing five slices of bread into a pack clearly made for sandwiches, I&rsquo;m off to cry myself to sleep and dream of once again having a loaf of Brennan&rsquo;s bread.</p> The complete Blogging the Bible, so far. - By David Plotz - Slate Magazine → http://www.slate.com/id/2150150/ Thu, 07 Jun 2007 16:33:19 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/the-complete-blogging-the-bible-so-far-by-david-plotz-slate-magazine/ <p>&quot;God makes a vow He can&rsquo;t keep, or if He did, He would undo all his good work. &hellip;. Is it any surprise that we sin again? And again? And again? All the way down to the present day. You can call this &quot;original sin,&quot; but maybe it&rsquo;s just lax parenting.&quot;</p> YouTube - El Chupacabra → http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SmHmnfgON4A Wed, 06 Jun 2007 22:38:54 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/youtube-el-chupacabra/ <p>This is so well done! I don&rsquo;t care if this is a real Chupacabra, a crack addict taking a shit in the bushes, or even just a special effect - it&rsquo;s still going to keep me awake at night.</p> Photos show skeleton sticking out of iceberg → http://www.thestar.com/News/article/221439 Wed, 06 Jun 2007 22:17:43 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/photos-show-skeleton-sticking-out-of-iceberg/ <p>Fuck Al Gore - Global Warming is AMAZING.</p> Perspective https://lowbrowculture.com/post/perspective/ Fri, 01 Jun 2007 13:28:50 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/perspective/ <p><strong>Four weeks ago:</strong> Working at a computer for twelve hours a day, I&rsquo;d go home and watch some really shit movie until the early hours of the morning. I&rsquo;d go to sleep full of junk food and self-loathing.</p> <p><strong>Today:</strong> After Italian class, I walked home in the sunshine, sat down beside the Pantheon and finished the Agatha Christie book I&rsquo;d been reading (I&rsquo;m 28 and never had time to read Agatha Christie before). Then I went home, ironed my girlfriend&rsquo;s suit pants and monogrammed handkerchief, and got myself ready for dinner with the Irish president.</p> <p>I don&rsquo;t <em>feel</em> very different.</p> Harry Potter Theme Park https://lowbrowculture.com/post/harry-potter-theme-park/ Fri, 01 Jun 2007 10:28:20 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/harry-potter-theme-park/ <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2007/06/hp1.jpg" alt="hp1.jpg"> <img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2007/06/hp2.jpg" alt="hp2.jpg"></p> <p>Girding my loins today is <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/6706939.stm">Universal Studios&rsquo; announcement</a> that they will be developing a &ldquo;theme park within a theme park&rdquo; based on the Harry Potter books and movies. Covering over 20 acres, &lsquo;The Wizarding World of Harry Potter&rsquo; will be a themed &rsquo;land&rsquo; (like &ldquo;Frontierland&rdquo; or &ldquo;Tomorrowland&rdquo;) within Universal&rsquo;s Islands of Adventure in Orlando Florida. Universal say this area will contain contain &lsquo;state of the art attractions&rsquo; and &rsquo;experimental shops&rsquo;. Which sounds slightly ominous.</p> <p>I&rsquo;m a huge theme park nerd. <a href="https://lowbrowculture.com/post/king-kong/">As I said before</a>, I don&rsquo;t enjoy the rides as much as just walking around this completely artificial, fantasy world, soaking up all the simulacra. Combine this with the amazing production design of the Harry Potter movies, and you&rsquo;ve got me hooked.</p> <p><a href="http://www.universalorlando.com/harrypotter/video.html">Click here to see the announcement video</a>.</p> Insults and advertising https://lowbrowculture.com/post/insults-and-advertising/ Thu, 31 May 2007 14:04:13 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/insults-and-advertising/ <p>This week, I started an Italian language course which has really been helping me settle in. My pidgin Italian is starting to develop some structure (for &lsquo;structure&rsquo; read &lsquo;actual verbs instead of grunts where verbs should be&rsquo;) and I&rsquo;m a lot more confident in dealing with people now that I have a better idea of what they&rsquo;re saying.</p> <p>Something I&rsquo;m discovering is just how much you can learn a lot about a country from its insults. For example, one of the worst insults you can throw at someone in Italian is <em>Cornuto</em>, which means &ldquo;cuckold&rdquo;. You&rsquo;ll hear this a lot in football games, <em>Arbitore Cornuto!</em> (&ldquo;The Referee is a Cuckold!&rdquo;). The other major insults include &ldquo;ugly&rdquo; and &ldquo;homosexual&rdquo;. There are loads of other, smaller ones, but these three - &lsquo;cuckold&rsquo;, &lsquo;ugly&rsquo;, &lsquo;homosexual&rsquo; - are the ones that are likely to send an Italian into a rage and are usually saved for when someone has <em>really</em> pissed you off.</p> <p>Maybe it&rsquo;s the armchair psychologist in me, but I think this says a lot about the insecurities of Italian people.</p> <p>Similarly, you can also learn a lot about a country from its advertisements. From what I&rsquo;ve seen here, most ads seem to revolve around crime. For the most part, the &lsquo;crimes&rsquo; are innocent enough. Like the TV ad that has a woman driver pleading with male driver to let her take his parking spot. She shows him her broken shoes, puts on her best puppy-dog face and the guy lets her in. Once she&rsquo;s parked, she gets out of the car in - wouldn&rsquo;t you know it? - perfect shoes.</p> <p>But they&rsquo;re not all so cute and cheerful. Adidas recently launched a shoe that has interchangeable gel pads in the soles. These come in all sorts of designs and aren&rsquo;t really taking off here. The print ad shows a guy hiding from the police while quickly swapping his gel pads for ones of a different design.</p> <p>And of course, there&rsquo;s the other major source of advertising inspiration: sex. At worst, back home, these hover around the &lsquo;saucy&rsquo; end of the scale. Here, they&rsquo;re positively explicit. Here&rsquo;s an example: <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/thrillho/523380760/"><img src="http://farm1.static.flickr.com/246/523380760_af7cd6420a_m.jpg" alt="Slide with me!"></a> It&rsquo;s for a water park in Rome, but it took me ages to realise there was a water park in the picture too. The caption says &ldquo;Slide with me&rdquo; although, to me, it will always say &ldquo;Come to <a href="http://www.aquapiper.it/default.asp">aquapiper</a> and you&rsquo;ll get to have <em>sex</em> with me!&rdquo;</p> <p>(My favourite part of the ad is the &ldquo;Bambini Gratis!&rdquo; down the bottom, because the rest of the ad doesn&rsquo;t make it look like somewhere I&rsquo;d want to bring a child.)</p> The hardest parts of living in Rome https://lowbrowculture.com/post/the-hardest-parts-of-living-in-rome/ Fri, 25 May 2007 16:33:41 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/the-hardest-parts-of-living-in-rome/ <h3 id="bread">Bread</h3> <p>For a nation that loves its carby, starchy foods, they really don&rsquo;t have a great handle on the whole &lsquo;bread&rsquo; situation. They&rsquo;ve got the giant loaves sorted out, which is fine when you want something big and crusty to dip into soup or for mopping up the tasty, tasty juices on your plate, but average day-to-day bread is a mess. These guys are the cornerstone of western civilization yet they haven&rsquo;t figured out that a loaf of batch is like manna from heaven? And normal sandwich bread isn&rsquo;t much better, far too small and far too sweet to be of any use to anyone. I&rsquo;m feeling like Nigel Tufnell in Spinal Tap.</p> <h3 id="bud-spencer">Bud Spencer</h3> <p>Back home, street-sellers have posters of things like Scarface, Trainspotting and Bob Marley. Which gives us a good glimpse into the mindset of youth culture in Dublin - fascinated by drugs and trashy drug-related movies. Here, they sell posters of uh&hellip; <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0817881/">Bud Spencer</a> movies. Now, don&rsquo;t get me wrong, I&rsquo;m a fan of the Bud Spencer/Terrence Hill movies and when I was younger, I loved <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0079859">The Sheriff and the Satellite Kid</a>, so I&rsquo;m not really complaining. Just confused.</p> <h3 id="italian-music">Italian Music</h3> <p>What. The. <em>Fuck?</em> Granted, I haven&rsquo;t looked very hard, and I&rsquo;m sure that over the next three years, I&rsquo;ll eventually find some Italian music that I <strong>love</strong> but right now I&rsquo;ve had it up to my fuckin&rsquo; <a href="http://icanhascheezburger.files.wordpress.com/2007/03/stickitin.jpg">harbls</a> with crappy power-ballads. Less <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zucchero">Zucchero</a>, more <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jovanotti">Jovanotti</a> thx.</p> <h3 id="fascism">Fascism</h3> <p>I&rsquo;ve never lived somewhere that had people actually still promoting fascism as a viable political option. Before I came here, I never heard anyone proudly describe themselves as a fascist. All the other things - the bread, the music, the pictures of Bud Spencer&rsquo;s giant face grinning out at me from the side of the street - I can get used to these, with enough time. I hope I never, ever get used to hearing someone proudly describe themselves as a fascist.</p> First picture of Heath Ledger as the Joker https://lowbrowculture.com/post/first-picture-of-heath-ledger-as-the-joker/ Thu, 24 May 2007 17:23:54 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/first-picture-of-heath-ledger-as-the-joker/ <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2007/05/joker.jpg" alt="joker.jpg"></p> <p>Okay, so he may not have been my first choice of someone to play the Joker in Christopher Nolan&rsquo;s follow-up to Batman Begins, but I never though Heath Ledger would make a <em>bad</em> Joker. Now they&rsquo;ve released the first picture of Heath Ledger in Joker make-up, and&hellip; my goodness, this is shaping up nicely, isn&rsquo;t it? I really like the move away from the traditional demented clown look into a more gritty,* Ichi the Killer*-style scar.</p> <p>Although I still think it&rsquo;s a shame we&rsquo;ll never get to see what <a href="http://www.worth1000.com/entries/241500/241511dJli_w.jpg">Vincent Cassel</a> could have done with the role.</p> <p>(via <a href="http://www.empireonline.com/news/story.asp?NID=20726">empireonline</a>)</p> Battle Royale: Serengeti Style → https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LU8DDYz68kM Thu, 24 May 2007 12:57:45 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/battle-royale-serengeti-style/ <p>Three way battle - lions vs buffalo vs crocodiles. Who knew nature could be SO FUCKING AWESOME?</p> Full trailer for Philip Pullman's The Golden Compass (nee Northern Lights) on Yahoo Movies → http://movies.yahoo.com/feature/thegoldencompass.html Wed, 23 May 2007 07:19:40 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/full-trailer-for-philip-pullmans-the-golden-compass-nee-northern-lights-on-yahoo-movies/ <p>Pretty. Completely different to how I&rsquo;d imagined the universe when I read the books, but sometimes that&rsquo;s a good thing.</p> Shameless self-promotion https://lowbrowculture.com/post/shameless-self-promotion/ Mon, 21 May 2007 14:09:54 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/shameless-self-promotion/ <p>I&rsquo;ve started a food blog, where I review the restaurants I visit in Rome. I dunno, it might be useful if you&rsquo;re ever in the neighbourhood.</p> <p><a href="http://www.lowbrowculture.com/hungry/">Homesick &amp; Hungry</a></p> Trailer for "The Sarah Connor Chronicles" online → https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xbVj9UdEHjg Mon, 21 May 2007 07:32:07 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/trailer-for-the-sarah-connor-chronicles-online/ <p>My girlfriend has a little lady-boner for Sarah Connor in Terminator 2. It&rsquo;s where she gets her hard-ass attitude from. Except I can&rsquo;t imagine she&rsquo;ll be too thrilled about this - it&rsquo;s a TV show based around the life of Sarah Connor between T2 (where she was awesome and kick-ass) and T3 (where she was dead). Full of embarrassing throwbacks to the movies, including &ldquo;Come with me if you want to live&rdquo;.</p> <p><a href="http://www.comingsoon.net/news/tvnews.php?id=20519">More clips here.</a></p> Breathtaking Irish short movie released online https://lowbrowculture.com/post/breathtaking-irish-short-movie-released-online/ Sun, 20 May 2007 10:29:10 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/breathtaking-irish-short-movie-released-online/ <p><a href="http://www.lowbrowculture.com/2007/05/20/breathtaking-irish-short-movie-released-online/lonely-sky/"><img src="http://www.lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2007/05/lonelysky.jpg" alt="Lonely Sky"></a> <a href="http://www.nickryanfilm.com/">Nick Ryan</a>, producer on <a href="http://www.lowbrowculture.com/2007/02/21/ruairi-robinsons-new-short-film-online/">Ruairi Robinson&rsquo;s &ldquo;Silent City&rdquo;</a>, has released the full version of his film &ldquo;<a href="http://www.alonelysky.com/index.html">A Lonely Sky</a>&rdquo; online. Starring Keir Dullea (of 2001: A Space Odyssey) it tells the story of a pilot in 1947 trying to break the sound barrier.</p> <p>As with Silent City, I&rsquo;m completely blown away by the amount of work everyone seems to have put into this short movie and the scale and quality of the results. Congratulations to everyone involved.</p> <p>While you&rsquo;re at it, you should check out <a href="http://www.nickryanfilm.com/">Nick Ryan&rsquo;s portfolio</a>, for videos of the ads and other short films he&rsquo;s directed.</p> Danger: Diabolik https://lowbrowculture.com/post/danger-diabolik/ Sat, 19 May 2007 03:46:07 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/danger-diabolik/ <p><a href="http://community.livejournal.com/film_stills/691529.html"><img src="http://www.lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2007/05/danger_diabolik.jpg" alt="danger_diabolik.jpg"></a></p> <p><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0062861/">Danger: Diabolik</a> could be the greatest movie I&rsquo;ve ever seen. Click on the image above to check out more stills from the film and tell me if you don&rsquo;t wanna see it immediately. Is it a spy movie with a lot of kissing? Or a softcore porno with a <em>really good</em> plot? Either way, it&rsquo;s features one of my favourite actors, <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0856103/">Terry Thomas</a>, so it&rsquo;s okay by me.</p> <p>And what&rsquo;s more, it&rsquo;s directed by Mario Bava and filmed in Dino Di Laurentiis&rsquo; Roma studios, so it counts as part of my Italian cultural learning! Bonus!</p> Hermione's lady-lumps manipulated in new Harry Potter poster! → http://posterwire.com/archives/2007/05/01/emma-watson-in-3d/ Fri, 18 May 2007 12:30:56 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/hermiones-lady-lumps-manipulated-in-new-harry-potter-poster/ <p>Looks like the theatrical poster has Hermione&rsquo;s breasts photoshopped to look SMALLER.</p> Spatial Dissonance https://lowbrowculture.com/post/spatial-dissonance/ Thu, 17 May 2007 09:17:28 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/spatial-dissonance/ <p>On my first trip here, I experienced what I guess I&rsquo;d call a sort of temporal dissonance. I was in a taxi, heading up the Gianicolo towards my hotel. The <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gianicolo">Gianicolo</a> is a hill that sits in the south-west part of the city, meaning that from the top, you have a perfect view of historical Rome on the one side, and a fantastic view of the Vatican from the other. Now, maybe it was just the jetlag, but sitting back in that taxi, I had an of out-of-body experience: I realised that I would soon be <em>living</em> in Rome, a place I always thought of as almost fictional, a mythic place where all the history happened. The rational part of my brain decided this was my only chance to feel overwhelmed by the city before I would have to get on with day-to-day life, and so I sat back, reeling at the weight of it all.</p> <p>Strangely, this is the only time I have felt this way. Now, I&rsquo;m cutting across St. Peter&rsquo;s Square - a magnificently opulent, overwhelming place - on a daily basis and only when I&rsquo;m halfway across do I gain any sort of awareness; holy fuck! I&rsquo;m cutting across St. Peter&rsquo;s Square!</p> <p>I&rsquo;m blaming this on everyone&rsquo;s favourite scapegoat: videogames. When we first visited the Pantheon, I wondered what was up on the second level of the building. In my imagination, I saw a dark place, filled with wooden crates, lever-puzzles and bad guys with Uzis. But hang on a second&hellip; Wooden crates don&rsquo;t actually exist in the real world, not <em>really</em>. They only exist in videogames as containers for ammo and/or health. And bad guys with Uzis? Jesus. Then I realised, I <em>had</em> seen the inside of the upper levels of the Pantheon. Or, at least, <em>a</em> Pantheon. In a videogame. (Tomb Raider perhaps?) And in the end, a tiny part of me was disappointed by the actual Pantheon because I didn&rsquo;t get to go exploring all its dark corners.</p> <p>Gears of War has affected my experience of Rome more than any other videogame. The look of the game, the so-called &ldquo;<a href="http://kotaku.com/gaming/xbox-2/destroyed-beauty-the-art-of-gears-of-war-111239.php">Destroyed Beauty</a>&rdquo;, was heavily influenced by Romanesque architecture. For the most part, the game takes place in wide streets flanked by marvelous, oppressive buildings and everything in a massive state of disrepair. Well, this being Rome, there&rsquo;s no shortage of Romanesque architecture. Or wide streets. Or marvelous, oppressive buildings. But there&rsquo;s more to this than simple generalities. On Via Nazionale, there&rsquo;s a building whose long, winding entrance I would swear is the direct inspiration for the Fenix Mansion part of Gears of War.</p> <p>I&rsquo;m still blown away by Rome on a daily basis, especially when I stumble across some <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/thrillho/500978053/">particularly beautiful place</a>. But still, a tiny part of me is waiting for the moment that <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Gears_of_War_characters_%26_adversaries#Locust_Horde">the Locust Horde</a> comes pouring out of the ground. Where&rsquo;s my <a href="http://planetgearsofwar.gamespy.com/View.php?view=Articles.Detail&amp;id=12">Lancer</a>?</p> Top ten Star Wars t-shirts → http://tcritic.com/archives/top-ten-star-wars-t-shirts/ Tue, 15 May 2007 22:34:42 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/top-ten-star-wars-t-shirts/ <p><img src="http://www.lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2007/05/metal_vader.jpg" alt="metal_vader.jpg"></p> <p><a href="http://www.tcritic.com">tcritic.com</a> has a post on the top 10 Star Wars t-shirts. Holy shit, I think my <a href="http://del.icio.us/THRILLHO/wishlist">del.icio.us wishlist</a> just exploded.</p> We never got ads like this on the back of Dublin Bus https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/we-never-got-ads-like-this-on-the-back-of-dublin-buses/ Tue, 15 May 2007 22:11:44 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/we-never-got-ads-like-this-on-the-back-of-dublin-buses/ <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2007/a-style.jpg" alt="A-style"></p> Bruce Campbell's Old Spice Commercial → https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nOjDIfRLgo4 Tue, 15 May 2007 21:53:52 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/bruce-campbells-old-spice-commercial-2/ <p><strong><em><em>nerdgasm</em></em></strong></p> Point - Counterpoint https://lowbrowculture.com/post/point-counterpoint-2/ Tue, 15 May 2007 21:21:08 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/point-counterpoint-2/ <p><strong>Point: <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/somerset/5334208.stm">Wearing helmets &lsquo;more dangerous&rsquo;</a></strong></p> <blockquote> <p>Cyclists who wear protective helmets are more likely to be knocked down by passing vehicles, new research from Bath University suggests.</p> <p>The study found drivers tend to pass closer when overtaking cyclists wearing helmets than those who are bare-headed.</p> </blockquote> <p><strong>Counterpoint: <a href="http://www.canada.com/topics/news/oddities/story.html?id=47962573-4698-40e1-b309-21e6028ba16b&amp;k=14176">Helmet saves cyclist after truck runs over his head at Milwaukee intersection</a></strong></p> <blockquote> <p>The truck wasn&rsquo;t going to stop, Lipscomb said, so he slammed on his brakes, flipping his bike and landing in the street.</p> <p>A moment later the truck rolled over his head.</p> <p>&ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t see it coming, but I sure felt it roll over my head,&rdquo; he told The Capital Times newspaper. &ldquo;It feels really strange to have a truck run over your head.&rdquo;</p> </blockquote> Lowbrow movies get a highbrow makeover → http://www.somethingawful.com/d/photoshop-phriday/classy-art-movies.php?page=1 Tue, 15 May 2007 20:56:46 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/lowbrow-movies-get-a-highbrow-makeover/ <p>The 300 one looks almost real, but my favourite is Roadhouse: &quot;La Maison de Route&quot;</p> Coping? https://lowbrowculture.com/post/coping/ Tue, 15 May 2007 20:23:13 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/coping/ <p>A couple of minor breakdowns aside, I think I&rsquo;m finally starting to get a handle on life in Rome. I&rsquo;m not exactly homesick, just finding some things really hard. The language barrier has been a lot more of an obstacle than I was expecting. And combined with the distinctly unique Italian way of doing things (which I&rsquo;m sure I&rsquo;ll <strike>complain</strike> blog about in due course), I&rsquo;ve found myself struggling just to get some stability.</p> <p>But the stability is slowly arriving. I&rsquo;m learning my way around, and I finally know where the essentials are, like the supermarket and launderette. I&rsquo;m even starting to cope with the weather. At the beginning, I would head out and arrive home in a horrible, sweaty mess. Now&hellip; well, it&rsquo;s not as bad. I&rsquo;ve just been observing the Italians and seeing all the little things they do to deal with the weather. Like not leaving the house between the hours of 12pm and 4pm. Under <em>any circumstances</em>. And always walking in the shade, even if you have to cross a busy street to do this.</p> <p>There&rsquo;s another huge factor in coping with the heat: pace. Last week, I was out walking when Toots and the Maytals started playing on my iPod. With this, my pace dropped to a slow, relaxed strut (I challenge anyone to listen to <em>Broadway Jungle</em> and not feel like the baddest motherfucker on the planet). Strangely enough, this change of pace helped a lot, the heat wasn&rsquo;t as much of an issue. That&rsquo;s when I noticed that the Italians walk at a similar pace, and with a similar strut although theirs seems to come naturally.</p> Analysis of Kubrick's The Shining → https://idyllopuspress.com/idyllopus/film/shining_opening.htm Sat, 12 May 2007 15:38:54 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/analysis-of-kubricks-the-shining/ <p>Also check out &ldquo;<a href="http://www.visual-memory.co.uk/amk/doc/0052.html">The Family of Man</a>&rdquo;, Bill Blakemore&rsquo;s extraordinary dissection of the hidden meanings in The Shining.</p> "zombieattack" on Twitter → http://twitter.com/zombieattack Fri, 04 May 2007 13:32:27 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/zombieattack-on-twitter/ <p>A zombie attack documented, one message at a time. Like Orson Welles&rsquo; War of the Worlds, only nerdier.</p> When is Dublin 7 NOT Dublin 7? When it's Dublin 8 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/trivia-corner/ Fri, 04 May 2007 13:01:53 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/trivia-corner/ <p>Did you know that, despite being on the north side of the Liffey (where the odd numbered post-codes live), the Phoenix Park is actually in Dublin 8? And it&rsquo;s not for the reason you might think. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northside_(Dublin)#Postcodes">Thus spoke Wikipedia</a>:</p> <blockquote>"There is a very simple, practical reason why the Phoenix Park is in Dublin 8 and it has nothing whatever to do with snobbery but with practicality. <p>Long before there were postal codes the James&rsquo;s St Postal Sorting Office looked after the Phoenix Park because it was considered to be closer and more convenient than Phibsborough (Dublin 7). James&rsquo;s St continued in this role when the postal codes were introduced so Dublin 8 it had to be.&quot;</blockquote></p> <p>This interesting fact courtesy of a 20-minute argument in Morelli&rsquo;s chipper on Thomas Street that almost ended in a fist-fight.</p> Hello, I’m a Mac. https://lowbrowculture.com/post/hello-im-a-mac/ Tue, 01 May 2007 22:30:08 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/hello-im-a-mac/ <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2004/480517434.jpg#center" alt="Macbook signed by Mitchell &amp; Webb"></p> <p>David Mitchell and Robert Webb (PC and Mac in the UK adverts) were in Dublin promoting their new film, &ldquo;Magicians&rdquo;. After the screening, they were taking photos with people and signing autographs. So, naturally, I asked them to sign my Macbook.</p> Hope for the best, prepare for the worst https://lowbrowculture.com/post/hope-for-the-best-prepare-for-the-worst/ Tue, 01 May 2007 16:13:10 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/hope-for-the-best-prepare-for-the-worst/ <p>Five days to go!</p> <p>Some things are still up in the air. When we land in Rome on Sunday, we&rsquo;ll be going into temporary accommodation until we can find somewhere to live. This means that when the movers come on Friday, they will be taking all of our stuff and putting it into storage until we give them a call and say &ldquo;Yes, we are living at this address now, please bring all our worldly possessions to us.&rdquo; And since we don&rsquo;t know when we&rsquo;ll actually have a place to live, this means that we might not see our stuff for anywhere between two weeks and six months.</p> <p>So right now, I&rsquo;m hoping for the best but preparing for the worst.</p> <p>What does that mean? Well, it means that I&rsquo;m reassessing everything I own and think &ldquo;can I live without this for six months?&rdquo; While everyday clothes are cheap and easy to replace, I have to think about all the possibilities. I should bring formal clothes, because there will inevitably be some function where I will be required to scrub up nice. So that&rsquo;s a no-brainer.</p> <p>But what about the other stuff? Movies and games? There&rsquo;s no way I can live without those.</p> <p>This is a tough decision. I&rsquo;m totally addicted to my Xbox 360 now, and what better way to keep in touch with my nerdy Irish friends than by kerb-stomping them over Xbox Live? And what better way to maintain a sense of accomplishment than increasing my gamer score? But as much as I love the 360, it&rsquo;s far too heavy and takes up far too much space for me to bring on my own. It will have to come with the movers.</p> <p>I&rsquo;ve decided to only take my PlayStation 2 with me. I&rsquo;ve dumped the boxes for the games so that the actual disks are in a couple of CD wallets and I&rsquo;m bringing my PlayStation 2 in my carry-on luggage. This means that I&rsquo;ll at least have a couple of games to play when I get there (Final Fantasy XII, God of War 2).</p> <p>We&rsquo;re taking a Macbook, so we&rsquo;ll have something to watch DVDs on. But <em>what</em> DVDs? I&rsquo;ve got a CD wallet especially for movies, and now I have to decide what I should fill it with. This isn&rsquo;t an easy task. I mean, how do I decide what movies to bring? How do I predict my tastes and moods for the next six months? I realise that there are people who could fit their <em>entire</em> DVD collection in one of these 72-disc wallets, but there&rsquo;s a reason I have as many DVDs as I do - I&rsquo;m a fussy, temperamental little shit.</p> <p>And this leaves us with a little thought-experiment: <strong>if you were moving to a foreign country and you could only bring one DVD, one game, one book and one CD with you, what would you bring?</strong></p> Matthew Haughey's fortuitous - a blog about moving to online applications → http://fortuito.us/ Tue, 01 May 2007 16:02:57 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/matthew-haugheys-fortuitous-a-blog-about-moving-to-online-applications/ <p>Not just a clever name: I&rsquo;ve recently started moving towards web apps myself, not wanting to be tethered to a particular desktop.</p> MacGuyver: Unplugged → https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KyZtiRYQN3E Tue, 01 May 2007 08:12:50 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/macguyver-unplugged/ <p>I love his smug smile at the end. He knows that&rsquo;s hot shit.</p> Arrivederci Party! https://lowbrowculture.com/post/arrivederci-party/ Mon, 30 Apr 2007 11:19:51 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/arrivederci-party/ <p><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/thrillho/476565758/"><img src="http://farm1.static.flickr.com/218/476565758_addbca0a65_s.jpg" alt="Gav"></a> <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/thrillho/476654178/"><img src="http://farm1.static.flickr.com/175/476654178_c56ee7746b_s.jpg" alt="Joanne"></a> <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/thrillho/476659858/"><img src="http://farm1.static.flickr.com/168/476659858_7fb75507b3_s.jpg" alt="Dave"></a></p> <p><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/thrillho/476657436/"><img src="http://farm1.static.flickr.com/190/476657436_6bfc12f049_s.jpg" alt="Maria"></a> <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/thrillho/476567044/"><img src="http://farm1.static.flickr.com/220/476567044_1f39a97d31_s.jpg" alt="Miriam"></a> <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/thrillho/476663346/"><img src="http://farm1.static.flickr.com/199/476663346_60beca5f3a_s.jpg" alt="Seamus"></a></p> <p><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/thrillho/476658702/"><img src="http://farm1.static.flickr.com/191/476658702_d39455f28f_s.jpg" alt="Eoin"></a> <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/thrillho/476662390/"><img src="http://farm1.static.flickr.com/207/476662390_62c97ac89e_s.jpg" alt="Rob"></a> <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/thrillho/476660856/"><img src="http://farm1.static.flickr.com/176/476660856_b471eaca93_s.jpg" alt="Cheryl"></a></p> <p>Thanks to all those who came out on Saturday. It was great to see everyone together at once, and we went home feeling very special indeed. <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/thrillho/sets/72157600155586780/">The rest of the mugshots are up on flickr</a>.</p> Gears of War screenplay outline (SPOILARZ) → http://www.latinoreview.com/news.php?id=1890 Sat, 28 Apr 2007 08:35:55 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/gears-of-war-screenplay-outline-spoilarz/ <p>For those of us who love this game, this is probably as close to a back-story as we&rsquo;re going to get.</p> Big Lebowski "Abide" t-shirt → http://www.lebowskifest.com/abide_shirt.asp Fri, 27 Apr 2007 16:40:30 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/big-lebowski-abide-t-shirt/ <p>For the Lebowski nut in your life</p> Father of PlayStation retires from Sony https://lowbrowculture.com/post/father-of-playstation-retires-from-sony/ Fri, 27 Apr 2007 08:48:53 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/father-of-playstation-retires-from-sony/ <p><a href="http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=75767">According to Eurogamer, Ken Kutaragi is retiring from his role as CEO of Sony Computer Entertainment</a>. Kaz Hirai will be replacing Kutaragi as CEO.</p> <p>I have to say, I&rsquo;m more than a little disappointed by this news. Double-crazy double-K was always always good for an entertaining quote. Almost everything out of his mouth was like something from a megalomaniacal supervillian - things you can almost imagine Ming the Merciless shouting at people. The best Kaz Hirai has given us so far is the embarassing &ldquo;<a href="http://wiki.ytmnd.com/Playstation_3#Ridge_Racer.21">RIIIIIIIIDGE RACERRRRRRRR!</a>&rdquo;</p> <p>So here are some of my favourite Ken Kutaragi quotes:</p> <blockquote> <p>&ldquo;It will be expensive &hellip; for consumers to think to themselves &lsquo;I will work more hours to buy one&rsquo;. We want people to feel that they want it, irrespective of anything else&rdquo;</p> </blockquote> <p>_</p> <blockquote> <p>&ldquo;If processors of high performance and wide bandwidth like the Cell were linked together without sufficient security, a worldwide system crash could occur with one attack.&rdquo;</p> </blockquote> <p>_</p> <blockquote> <p>&ldquo;The PS3 will instill discipline in our children and adults alike. Everyone will know discipline.&rdquo;</p> </blockquote> <p>_</p> <p>We&rsquo;ll miss you, Ken.</p> Guide Books https://lowbrowculture.com/post/guide-books/ Thu, 26 Apr 2007 13:04:08 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/guide-books/ <p>I&rsquo;m fast becoming an expert on guide books to Rome. So far, my favourite is &ldquo;<a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/City-Secrets-Rome/dp/1892145049/ref=sr_1_1/202-6027718-2419022?ie=UTF8&amp;s=books&amp;qid=1177592231&amp;sr=8-1">City Secrets: Rome</a>&rdquo;. I like it because it lists the things to see and places to eat followed by a short anecdote by someone who knows the place well, and explains why they recommend it in real, human terms.</p> <p>For example, this is what Virginia L. Bush says about the Colosseum:</p> <blockquote> <p>&ldquo;A new visitor to Rome should go first to the Colosseum. Since it is said that Rome will stand as long as the Colosseum stands, and the world will last as long as Rome stands, it would be good to check first that everything is in order with the universe&rdquo;</p> </blockquote> Doom Comic - Rip and tear! → http://www.doomworld.com/10years/doomcomic/ Mon, 23 Apr 2007 09:42:00 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/rip-and-tear/ <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2007/04/ripandtear.jpg" alt="ripandtear.jpg"></p> Guitar Hero 2 and OS X https://lowbrowculture.com/post/guitar-hero-2-and-os-x/ Sun, 22 Apr 2007 20:55:29 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/guitar-hero-2-and-os-x/ <p><a href="http://www.lowbrowculture.com/2006/12/01/guitar-hero-2/">I think my previous post on Guitar Hero 2</a> gave some idea of how disappointed I was by this game. So why the hell did I go out and re-buy it for the Xbox 360?</p> <p>Well, apart from the high-definition graphics (<strong>very</strong> important in a game like this) and the way it&rsquo;s an easy 500 achievement points, there&rsquo;s one very big reason why I got it: the Guitar. It plays beautifully, it&rsquo;s based on an Explorer and <em>it&rsquo;s USB</em>.</p> <p><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/thrillho/452967653/"><img src="http://farm1.static.flickr.com/232/452967653_5a1d8b73bf_o.jpg" alt="Guitar Hero X-Plorer on OS X"></a></p> <p>Naturally, I plugged it into my Macbook before it even went near the 360. OS X recognised it, but the 360 controller drivers from <a href="http://tattiebogle.net/index.php/ProjectRoot/Xbox360Controller/OsxDriver">Pref360</a> didn&rsquo;t work. No worries, it was only a matter of time. Well, the new version of the Pref360 drivers adds support for the Guitar Hero controller.</p> <p>So now I can play <a href="http://fretsonfire.sourceforge.net/">Frets on Fire</a> on my Macbook, which is fantastic. But I really want to see if this can be used as an input controller for <a href="http://www.cycling74.com/">Max/MSP</a> or <a href="www.processing.org">Processing</a>. Then the fun can <em>really</em> begin.</p> Charles Dickens theme park opening soon → http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070418/ap_on_en_ot/dickens_world Thu, 19 Apr 2007 14:10:19 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/charles-dickens-theme-park-opening-soon/ <p>I&rsquo;m a huge theme park nerd, but jesus if this doesn&rsquo;t sound like the worst idea in the world.</p> Sherlock Holmes and the Adventure of the Missing Stocking → http://www.themorningnews.org/archives/spoofs_satire/the_adventure_of_the_missing_stocking.php Wed, 18 Apr 2007 15:03:07 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/sherlock-holmes-and-the-adventure-of-the-missing-stocking/ <p>A Sherlock Holmes mystery written in the style of Lost</p> Evenings in Rome https://lowbrowculture.com/post/3094/ Wed, 18 Apr 2007 12:38:59 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/3094/ <p><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/thrillho/463857277/"><img src="http://farm1.static.flickr.com/191/463857277_873d9b13de.jpg" alt="Statues"></a></p> <p>Ah, Roma.</p> <p>Despite my tragic Italian vocabulary and the fact that, in a land of thin, tan people, I stick out like a sore thumb, our trip was largely successful. We managed to get some sense of what our life in Rome would be like.</p> <h3 id="the-city-itself">The City Itself</h3> <p>An image that keeps popping into my head is of the <em>entire Roman Empire</em> rolling around on the ground saying &ldquo;Help! I&rsquo;ve fallen, and I can&rsquo;t get up!&rdquo; It&rsquo;s a beautiful city, but it&rsquo;s not coping very well with modern life. Aside from the copious levels of really, really shitty graffiti, the heritage doesn&rsquo;t seem to be respected. There&rsquo;s a lot of history scattered around, at the sides of roads, but this is neglected and uncared for. For example, I can&rsquo;t help but feel that, in any other country, the ruins at <a href="http://maps.google.it/maps?f=q&amp;q=Viale+Argentina,+00060+Roma+Roma,+Lazio,+Italia&amp;layer=&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;sll=41.895888,12.489052&amp;sspn=14.673979,35.639648&amp;hl=it&amp;z=18&amp;ll=41.895577,12.476799&amp;spn=0.001793,0.004351&amp;t=k&amp;om=1">Viale Argentine</a> with its beautiful, two-thousand-year old frescos would be treated as a national landmark. In Rome, however, the ruins are used as a cat sanctuary. I guess you could look at this as simple pragmatism but it still feels slightly tragic.</p> <h3 id="driving-in-rome">Driving in Rome</h3> <p>I also have a new-found respect for Italian drivers. The motto over there seems to be &ldquo;keep it moving&rdquo;. Which means that if someone cuts you off, you honk your horn, you wave your fist, you give them a mean glare, but you <em>keep it moving</em>. I saw things over there that would have drivers jumping out of the car with rage, but the Italians just get on with it.</p> <p>And this means that there are very few traffic lights in Rome. Near our hotel in Gianicolo, traffic from four different directions merge into one lane. I spent an hour just watching this intersection. Despite the lack of traffic lights, noone slowed below 30kph and noone got into an accident. It was beautiful. Balletic.</p> <p>But it reaffirmed for me that I will never, ever be able to drive in Rome. Just driving home from my mom&rsquo;s house yesterday, I noticed I was starting to drive like an Italian. And it scared the living shit out of me.</p> <h3 id="and-the-food">And the food</h3> <p>Do you <em>really</em> need another person going on about how great the food is in Italy?</p> <h3 id="apartment-hunting">Apartment-hunting</h3> <p>Finding a place to live in Rome is going to be a pain, I can tell.</p> <p>While I was there, we saw two places. One of them was a beautiful house. Four bedrooms, three bathrooms, two outside areas. Oh, it was beautiful. But it was in a really sketchy area of the town. I live in Stoneybatter and work on Thomas Street, I <em>know</em> what sketchy is. And even I was put off by the area. And besides my own personal problems with the area, it just isn&rsquo;t suitable for entertaining or Embassy work.</p> <p>The other was a lot smaller; one bedroom, two bathrooms, with not a lot of storage. But it&rsquo;s in a much better neighbourhood. And despite the lack of space, it&rsquo;s a much more <em>beautiful</em> place. And we want to live there. And so begins the dance.</p> <p>You see, over here, it&rsquo;s a much more simple affair. You like the look of an apartment, it&rsquo;s in your budget, the landlord likes the look of you and, boom, the apartment is yours. Over there, it&rsquo;s a lot more like a mating ritual, with a lot more bum-sniffing before anyone actually gets mounted.</p> <blockquote>"We'll pay _$amount_ per month" <p>&ldquo;Ah, but it&rsquo;s worth <em>$amount*3</em> per month&rdquo;</p> <p>&ldquo;That&rsquo;s on a short-term lease, we&rsquo;re offering a guaranteed <em>$amount</em> per month for a 3-year lease with a 3 month security deposit&rdquo;</p> <p>&ldquo;I won&rsquo;t do anything less than <em>$amount*2</em> per month, 6 month security deposit and a bank bond&rdquo;</p> <p>&hellip;etc&hellip;</blockquote></p> <p>So God only knows when we&rsquo;ll actually have somewhere to live.</p> Roman Holiday https://lowbrowculture.com/post/roman-holiday/ Thu, 12 Apr 2007 23:53:13 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/roman-holiday/ <p>The quiet trend &lsquo;round these parts is set to continue because I&rsquo;m heading off tomorrow for a few days in Rome. This isn&rsquo;t actually a holiday though. More of a reccy. It&rsquo;s basically an opportunity to check out a couple of apartments, get a feel for the place, see if it&rsquo;s the kind of place we can see ourselves living for the next few years.</p> <p>I&rsquo;m sure you&rsquo;ll be able to follow the progress on <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/thrillho/">Flickr</a>.</p> Pages from the "Doom" Comic → http://www.doomworld.com/10years/doomcomic/comic.php Thu, 12 Apr 2007 23:20:16 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/pages-from-the-doom-comic/ <p>&quot;YOU ARE HUGE! THAT MEANS YOUR GUTS ARE HUGE!&quot; - If only the Doom movie was more like this.</p> Universal Studios Employee Video Directed by Matt Stone and Trey Parker → http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6493841613076981287&hl=en-CA Tue, 10 Apr 2007 11:14:56 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/universal-studios-employee-video-directed-by-matt-stone-and-trey-parker/ <p>Unsurprisingly, Universal backed away from this video.</p> Getting ready to say goodbye https://lowbrowculture.com/post/getting-ready-to-say-goodbye/ Fri, 06 Apr 2007 11:33:21 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/getting-ready-to-say-goodbye/ <p>When we were told that H. was being posted abroad, I got scared. Actually, let me rephrase that. I&rsquo;m not ashamed to admit that I was <em>terrified</em>. I knew it was coming, but I&rsquo;d hoped that&hellip; I dunno&hellip; they&rsquo;d forget about her. Forget to tell her to move. Or they&rsquo;d say that they wouldn&rsquo;t need her to start until August.</p> <p>August 2010.</p> <p>It was not to be. We got word last week that she&rsquo;s due to start on <strong>May 7th</strong>. Barely a month from now. So time is against us.</p> <p>Last week, I handed in my notice. I&rsquo;ve worked in this company for five years now, and it was such a surreal feeling to be finally saying the words &ldquo;I quit.&rdquo; I&rsquo;d <em>wanted</em> to say them for a long time now. I&rsquo;d almost said them a few times, when things got really tough, when I desperately wanted a change of scenery. But something always had held me back. Stability? You can&rsquo;t really call this place &lsquo;stable.&rsquo; Job satisfaction? Best skip that one. Security? Maybe - a steady pay cheque is a thing of beauty. Most likely, I stayed because of two things: the prestige of working for this company, and the people I work with.</p> <p>As a geek, especially a games geek, this is a very prestigious company to work for. The sense of geek pride is enormous, especially given its reputation within the Irish software industry. It might not be as big as Google, but sometimes it feels like this is a good thing. With a small team, it feels more select: the elite of the elite, the <em>ubermensch</em>.</p> <p>And as for the people, well&hellip; I&rsquo;ll miss them more than the job.</p> <p>It feels like it&rsquo;s coming close to the last day of school. Weird, mixed feelings of relief and regret. The door of opportunity has been flung open! I am master of my own destiny once again! There is <em>nothing</em> I can&rsquo;t do!</p> <p>Nothing, that is, except work with my friends like this again.</p> Kaspersky Lab discovers the first virus for iPod → http://www.kaspersky.com/news?id=207575511 Fri, 06 Apr 2007 09:41:32 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/kaspersky-lab-discovers-the-first-virus-for-ipod/ <p>Needs Linux installed on your iPod, and also needs you to run the exectuable manually. Is it technically still a virus when you have to jump through a bunch of hoops to run it yourself? Kaspersky spent ACTUAL money researching this thing? <em>boggle</em></p> Disneyland's "Tower of Terror" recreated in Half Life 2 → http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jT7AfQF_RQo Sun, 01 Apr 2007 02:13:43 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/disneylands-tower-of-terror-recreated-in-half-life-2-2/ <p>Jesus, is there anything Garry&rsquo;s Mod can&rsquo;t do?</p> Show, don't tell. https://lowbrowculture.com/post/show-dont-tell/ Sat, 31 Mar 2007 16:58:03 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/show-dont-tell/ <p>When I was doing the screenwriting course, we were constantly being reminded of one of the golden rules of writing: <strong>Show, don&rsquo;t tell</strong> - describe the scene through actions, rather than words.</p> <p>And this is why I love <em>The Wire</em> so much. Everything is shown, not told. The writers assume the audience is smart enough to figure out what the characters are doing, without resorting to have the characters ask each other <em>what they are doing</em>.</p> <p>There&rsquo;s a perfect example of this in Episode 4 of Season One, &ldquo;Old Cases&rdquo;. This is the entire dialogue (taken from the subtitles on the DVD) between McNulty and Bunk as they dig through an old crime scene. Gold star if you can figure out their actions from their dialogue.</p> <blockquote>16 <ul> <li> <p>This is the one?</p> </li> <li> <p>Yup. Hasn&rsquo;t been rented since.</p> </li> </ul> <p>17</p> <p>Fuck.</p> <p>18</p> <p>Motherfucker.</p> <p>19</p> <p>Fucking fuck.</p> <p>20</p> <p>Fuck.</p> <p>21</p> <p>Fuck.</p> <p>22</p> <p>What the fuck?</p> <p>23</p> <p>Fuck.</p> <p>24</p> <p>Fuck.</p> <p>25</p> <ul> <li> <p>No.</p> </li> <li> <p>Fuck.</p> </li> </ul> <p>26</p> <p>Fuck it.</p> <p>27</p> <p>Oh, the fuck.</p> <p>28</p> <p>Motherfuck.</p> <p>29</p> <p>Aw, fuck.</p> <p>30</p> <p>Fuckity, fuck, fuck.</p> <p>31</p> <p>Fucker.</p> <p>32</p> <p>Oh, fuck.</p> <p>33</p> <p>Fuck.</p> <p>34</p> <p>Motherfucker.</p> <p>35</p> <p>Fuckin&rsquo; A.</p> <p>36</p> <p>Fuck.</p> <p>37</p> <p>Check this.</p> <p>38</p> <p>Motherfucker.</p> <p>39</p> <p>Fuck me.</blockquote></p> Homeland Security Classifies Disney's TRON as "Sensitive" → http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2007/3/28/132751/380 Sat, 31 Mar 2007 14:47:44 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/homeland-security-classifies-disneys-tron-as-sensitive-2/ <p>Orders Disney to hand over all copies because scenes shot in a nuclear facility could provide information to terrorists. No, it&rsquo;s still not April Fool&rsquo;s day.</p> Xbox 360 HD DVD drive for ?103 → http://www.play-asia.com/paOS-13-71-df-49-en-70-1m8r.html Fri, 30 Mar 2007 10:12:25 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/xbox-360-hd-dvd-drive-for-103/ <p>Turn your Xbox 360 into a region-free HD-DVD player for half the price you&rsquo;d pay in the shops.</p> 300: PG Version → https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gNqiSkd1M6k Thu, 29 Mar 2007 15:33:35 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/300-pg-version/ <p>&ldquo;TONIGHT, WE DINE IN <em>HECK</em>.&rdquo;</p> Sonic and Mario... together? https://lowbrowculture.com/post/sonic-and-mario-together/ Wed, 28 Mar 2007 10:06:30 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/sonic-and-mario-together/ <p>If we weren&rsquo;t but a few days off from April Fool&rsquo;s day, I probably wouldn&rsquo;t have such a hard time believing this. This is the video equivalent of the Beatles teaming up with the Rolling Stones to form the world&rsquo;s greatest band. Why, there&rsquo;s no way this could <em>not</em> be awesome!</p> <p>Uh&hellip;</p> <blockquote>TOKYO (March 28, 2007) - SEGA® Corporation and Nintendo Co. Ltd. today made a historical announcement that two of the biggest icons in the entertainment industry, Mario™ and Sonic™, are joining forces to star in Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games. Developed for the Wii™ video game system and the Nintendo DS™ system, this momentous agreement marks the first time these two renowned stars have appeared together in a game. <blockquote> <p>Published by SEGA across Europe and North America, and published by Nintendo in the Japanese market, Mario &amp; Sonic at the Olympic Games will be available for Christmas 2007 and is licensed through a worldwide partnership with International Sports Multimedia (ISM), the exclusive interactive entertainment software licensee of the International Olympic Committee (IOC).</p> </blockquote> <blockquote> <p>In Mario &amp; Sonic at the Olympic Games, players will compete in events that take place in environments based on the official venues of the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games. Using a supporting cast of characters from the amazing worlds of both Mario and Sonic, gamers will be able to compete as or against a range of lovable personalities including Mario, Sonic, Luigi™, Knuckles™, Yoshi®, Tails™ and more. Innovative usage of the Wii and DS control systems to maneuver a favourite character will allow players to race the likes of Mario and Sonic down the 100m track, engage in exhilarating rallies in table tennis and churn water in a swimming heat, all while competing for the much sought after gold medal.</p> </blockquote> <blockquote> <p>&ldquo;We are thrilled to partner with Nintendo and ISM on this groundbreaking title,&rdquo; said Hisao Oguchi, President and Chief Operating Officer, SEGA Corporation. &ldquo;For the first time, two of the world&rsquo;s greatest games&rsquo; characters come together to compete in the world&rsquo;s greatest sporting event and we couldn&rsquo;t be more excited.&rdquo;</p> </blockquote> <blockquote> <p>&ldquo;Mario and Sonic have been respectful rivals since the early days of video games,&rdquo; says Shigeru Miyamoto, Senior Managing Director and General Manager, Entertainment Analysis and Development Division, Nintendo Co., Ltd.. &ldquo;In fact, for a long time they have been discussing the possibility of one day competing against each other. Now that they have been given the perfect opportunity to meet at the Olympic Games, we may finally learn who is actually faster, Mario or Sonic?&rdquo;</p> </blockquote> <blockquote> <p>&ldquo;The Olympic Games represent the true spirit of competition and passion,&rdquo; said Raymond Goldsmith, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of ISM. &ldquo;Bringing together intensely competitive and fun characters like Mario and Sonic in an Olympic setting helps showcase the sports of the Olympic Games in a new and compelling way for all generations.&quot;</blockquote></p> </blockquote> Teaser trailer for The Golden Compass → https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LHYoOGfBObU Tue, 27 Mar 2007 13:33:48 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/teaser-trailer-for-the-golden-compass/ <p>Oh boy oh boy oh boy oh boy.</p> <p>We recently went through our books and <a href="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2007/rome-books.jpg">decided what we were and weren&rsquo;t bringing to Rome</a>. The <em>His Dark Materials</em> books were a definite &ldquo;bring&rdquo;, even though I&rsquo;ve read them all at least twice already.</p> Trailer for Day Watch up on apple.com/trailers → http://www.apple.com/trailers/fox_searchlight/daywatch/ Mon, 26 Mar 2007 17:58:27 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/trailer-for-day-watch-up-on-applecomtrailers/ <p>I know I should be rolling my eyes and snorting at the ridiculousness of it all, but&hellip; holy crap, that looks amazing.</p> An Open Letter to the Jackass Playing Bongos in Our Apartment Building at 4am https://lowbrowculture.com/post/an-open-letter-to-the-jackass-playing-bongos-in-our-apartment-building-at-4am/ Mon, 26 Mar 2007 14:04:26 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/an-open-letter-to-the-jackass-playing-bongos-in-our-apartment-building-at-4am/ <p>Dear Bongo-playing Jackass,</p> <p>There is no reason for you to be playing bongos in our apartment building at 4am. In fact, unless you are <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000190/">Matthew McConaughey</a> or hanging out with <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0052847/">Gidget</a>, there is absolutely no reason for you to be playing bongos <em>at all</em>.</p> <p>Yours Sincerely, John</p> Books - free to a good home! https://lowbrowculture.com/post/free-to-a-good-home-books/ Sat, 24 Mar 2007 15:21:26 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/free-to-a-good-home-books/ <p>We&rsquo;re in the process of streamlining all our stuff for moving to Italy. We&rsquo;ve gone trough our clothes, DVDs, books and games. The things we&rsquo;re not taking to Rome are going to our mothers&rsquo; houses. The things that don&rsquo;t go to our mothers&rsquo; houses are going to charity shops.</p> <p>Before we start taking the books down to Oxfam, we figured it might be best to offer them around to our friends first.</p> <p>First batch of books! If you want anything here, drop me a mail. Otherwise, it&rsquo;s off to the charity shop or bookcrossing.</p> <blockquote><strike>Neuromancer - William Gibson</strike> <p><strike>Hearbreaking Work of Staggering Genius - Dave Eggers</strike></p> <p>Blockbuster - Tom Shone</p> <p><strike>Captain Scott - Ranulph Fiennes</strike></p> <p>Adrian Mole and the Weapons of Mass Destruction - Sue Tonsend</p> <p><strike>A-Z of Living Together - Jeff Green</strike></p> <p>Romanitas - Sophia McDougall</p> <p><strike>The Little Friend - Donna Tartt</strike></p> <p>Crusader Gold - David Gibbins <em>(second-worst book I&rsquo;ve ever read)</em></p> <p><strike>Seven Ancient Wonders - Matthew Reilly <em>(worst book I&rsquo;ve ever read - fascinatingly, perversely bad)</em></strike></p> <p>Tales of a Punk Rock Nothing - Himelstein</p> <p>The Love of a Good Woman - Alice Munro</p> <p>Mortal Engines - Philip Reeve</p> <p><strike>Lord of the Flies - William Golding</strike></p> <p>Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World - Haruki Murakami</p> <p>The Fuck Up - Arthur Nersesian</p> <p><strike>How to Make Love Like a Porn Star - Jenna Jameson</strike></p> <p><strike>High Concept: Don Simpson and the Hollywood Culture of Excess - Charles Fleming</strike></p> <p><strike>Megatokyo vol 1. - Fred Gallagher</strike></p> <p><strike>The Man Who Ate Everything - Jeffrey Steingarten</strike></p> <p>How to Win Friends and Influence People - Dale Carnegie</p> <p>the Bagthorpe Triangle - Helen Cresswell</p> <p><strike>Monster Island - David Wellington</strike></p> <p><strike>Freakonomics - Stephen D. Levitt</strike></p> <p>Newfoundland - Rebecca Ray</p> <p>The Alphabet of Manliness - Maddox</p> <p><strike>Is It Just Me or Is Everything Shit? - Steve Lowe</strike></p> <p><strike>Howling at the Moon - Walter Vetnikoff</strike></p> <p><strike>The Pope&rsquo;s Children - David McWilliams</strike></p> <p>Notes on a Scandal - Zoe Heller</p> <p><strike>The World According to Mimi Smartipants</strike></p> <p><strike>Woman&rsquo;s Inhumanity to Woman - Phyllis Chesler</strike></p> <p>Short Hands, Long Pockets - Eddie Hobbs</p> <p><strike>City Chic: An Urban Girl&rsquo;s Guide to Livin&rsquo; Large on Less - Nina Willdorf</strike></p> <p><strike>All American Girl: Ready or Not - Meg Cabot</strike></p> <p>A Certain Chemistry - Mil Millington</p> <p><strike>Wicked - Gregory Maguire</strike></p> <p>Kiss and Tell - Alain de Botton</p> <p><strike>Vernon God Little - DBC Pierre</strike></p> <p>Urban Bikers&rsquo; Tricks and Tips</p> <p><strike>Mysterious Island - Jules Verne</strike></blockquote></p> Saving for a rainy, snowy, haily, sleety day https://lowbrowculture.com/post/saving-for-a-rainy-snowy-haily-sleety-day/ Fri, 23 Mar 2007 15:57:48 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/saving-for-a-rainy-snowy-haily-sleety-day/ <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2007/coins.jpg" alt="Rainy day coins"></p> <p>Taking advantage of the rotten weather on Sunday, myself and H. decided to count and bag my jar of rainy-day coins. We stuck Clerks 2 on in the background and got counting. Three hours later, we were finished.</p> <p>All along, we&rsquo;d been taking guesses. Started with EUR160, which we thought was a little high. Boy, were we wrong.</p> <p>At the end, we had <strong>€530.56</strong>, $40.69, £8.08, and 4,524 Hungarian forints.</p> <p>That PlayStation 3 is looking mighty tempting now.</p> Misogyny Friday! Youtube: Barbra Walters interviews Sean Connery on smackin' bitches → http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3FgMLROTqJ0 Fri, 23 Mar 2007 11:58:34 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/misogyny-friday-youtube-barbra-walters-interviews-sean-connery-on-smackin-bitches/ <p>Translation for those of you that don&rsquo;t speak Scottish: &quot;SHUT YOUR FUCKING FACE OR I&rsquo;LL KICK YOUR TEETH IN&quot;</p> Misogyny Friday! Top 15 Unintentionally Funny Comic Book Panels → http://www.yesbutnobutyes.com/archives/2007/03/top_15_unintent.html Fri, 23 Mar 2007 11:56:29 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/misogyny-friday-top-15-unintentionally-funny-comic-book-panels/ <p>&quot;Wives should be kissed and not heard&quot;</p> Ticket for Danny Boyle's Sunshine up for grabs! https://lowbrowculture.com/post/ticket-for-danny-boyles-sunshine-up-for-grabs/ Thu, 22 Mar 2007 09:49:43 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/ticket-for-danny-boyles-sunshine-up-for-grabs/ <p><a href="https://lowbrowculture.com/post/jameson-dublin-international-film-festival-update/">Remember when I said that the IFF&rsquo;s showing of Danny Boyle&rsquo;s &ldquo;Sunshine&rdquo; got cancelled?</a> Well, what I forgot to mention was that, to make up for the last-minute cancellation of the film we&rsquo;d paid to see, the organisers gave us free tickets to a special preview showing, a week before the film is released here.</p> <p>Well, as luck would have it, I&rsquo;m not going to be able to attend and rather than let my ticket go to waste, I&rsquo;m offering it up for the first person to comment here. It&rsquo;s a ticket for ONE person only, but that&rsquo;s not going to stop you seeing such a kick-ass movie, is it?</p> <p><strong>Sunshine</strong> (<a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0448134/">imdb details</a>)</p> <p>Thursday, 29th March @ 7pm</p> <p>Cineworld, Parnell Street.</p> YouTube - Ricky Gervais on Comic Relief 2007 Red Nose Day → http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xf3FJXZaYu8 Wed, 21 Mar 2007 11:08:44 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/youtube-ricky-gervais-on-comic-relief-2007-red-nose-day/ <blockquote> <p>&ldquo;Do you think I can jump in on this one? Because to be honest, I haven&rsquo;t been seen on TV caring about anything for at least three and a half days&rdquo;</p> </blockquote> Apple Store to open in Rome → http://www.tuaw.com/2007/03/20/apple-store-to-open-in-rome/ Wed, 21 Mar 2007 00:32:08 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/apple-store-to-open-in-rome/ <p>Shit. How does one declare bankruptcy in Italian? I have a feeling I may be needing to know this soon.</p> Interview with Zack Snyder about his upcoming movie of 'Watchmen' → http://www.reelzchannel.com/moviedetail.aspx?movieid=223693&clipid=18326 Wed, 21 Mar 2007 00:20:08 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/interview-with-zack-snyder-about-his-upcoming-movie-of-watchmen/ <p>More reasons to be thankful he&rsquo;s at the helm of the &lsquo;Citizen Kane of Graphic Novels&rsquo;: he&rsquo;s keeping it set in 1985 and Tom Cruise is not involved.</p> Life on Mars https://lowbrowculture.com/post/life-on-mars/ Tue, 20 Mar 2007 12:18:38 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/life-on-mars/ <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2007/03/lifeonmars.jpg" alt="lifeonmars.jpg"></p> <p>Alright you ding-a-lings, listen up.</p> <p>Life on Mars has easily been my favourite British TV show of the last 10 years, even beating the terrific return of Doctor Who. We&rsquo;re halfway through the second and final series, and I don&rsquo;t think there&rsquo;s any sign of it slowing down. Remember that awesome Camberwick Green inspired promo for the second series? (if not, <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DwOZjvV3JE4">here&rsquo;s a quick refresher</a>). Want more? Well, according to Heat magazine* a portion of the next episode of Life on Mars will be done in this same style.</p> <p>If you haven&rsquo;t already been hooked by this incredible show, the first series is available in your favourite shops and on your favourite internets. You should really check it out. You owe it to yourself.</p> <ul> <li>Yeah, I read Heat magazine. Big whoop, wanna fight about it?</li> </ul> Trailer for Pirates of the Caribbean 3: At World's End → http://movies.yahoo.com/feature/piratesofthecaribbeanatworldsend.html Tue, 20 Mar 2007 09:39:36 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/trailer-for-pirates-of-the-caribbean-3-at-worlds-end/ Human Slingshot → http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docId=8959221252413764426&#38;hl=en Sat, 17 Mar 2007 20:16:13 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/human-slingshot/ <p>Holy shit, this looks like the most fun ever.</p> <p>via <a href="http://jwz.livejournal.com">JWZ</a></p> Movie Idea https://lowbrowculture.com/post/movie-idea/ Fri, 16 Mar 2007 17:06:12 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/movie-idea/ <p>So here&rsquo;s what I&rsquo;m thinking. I&rsquo;m thinking huge, nature-vs-man kind of thing. Kind of like <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0118928/">Dante&rsquo;s Peak</a> or <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0047573/">Them!</a>, but dealing with a more topical issue: Global Warming. After all, global warming won Al Gore an Oscar. And his film was shit. No special effects or nothing (unless you consider PowerPoint a special effect). Here&rsquo;s the pitch:</p> <blockquote> <p>Quiet, sleepy town in middle America. Far from the problems of the big city. None of the worries of modern life. But the long fingers of global warming are creeping towards them and they suddenly find themselves overrun by a swarm of killer bees.</p> <p>Except global warming has dealt them a double-whammy, and they realise they&rsquo;re dealing with <em>the next evolution</em> of killer bees.</p> <p><strong>Killer bees ON FIRE.</strong></p> </blockquote> <p>This needs to be made. Someone get me E. W. Swackhamer on the phone.</p> Vintage Shamrock Shake ads https://lowbrowculture.com/post/vintage-shamrock-shake-ads/ Fri, 16 Mar 2007 11:56:06 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/vintage-shamrock-shake-ads/ <p>Three vintage Shamrock Shakes ads to get your Irish eyes a-smilin'</p> <div class="embed video-player"> <iframe class="youtube-player" type="text/html" width="640" height="385" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/e8T7Px3ujMA" allowfullscreen frameborder="0"> </iframe> </div> <div class="embed video-player"> <iframe class="youtube-player" type="text/html" width="640" height="385" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/6elUHMP7pKI" allowfullscreen frameborder="0"> </iframe> </div> <div class="embed video-player"> <iframe class="youtube-player" type="text/html" width="640" height="385" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/XOb7T1pqj08" allowfullscreen frameborder="0"> </iframe> </div> <p>via the always-lovely <a href="http://www.coudal.com/index.php">Coudal</a></p> European PS3s have a backwards compatibility of 8% → http://blog.wired.com/gadgets/2007/03/eu_ps3_software.html Fri, 16 Mar 2007 11:36:04 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/european-ps3s-have-a-backwards-compatibility-of-8/ <p>God of War, Okami, Shadow of the Colossus, Metal Gear Solid 2 &amp; 3, Guitar Hero 2 don&rsquo;t work. Eragon does.</p> Something for the Weekend https://lowbrowculture.com/post/something-for-the-weekend/ Fri, 16 Mar 2007 10:33:52 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/something-for-the-weekend/ <p>Here&rsquo;s some things to make your St. Patrick&rsquo;s weekend even better.</p> <h2 id="listen-huey-lewis-and-the-news---fore">Listen: Huey Lewis and the News - Fore!</h2> <p>Fuck all these know-nothing assholes who say that &ldquo;Sport&rdquo; is better, Fore! is Huey Lewis and the News&rsquo; best album. It&rsquo;s olde-time rock n&rsquo; roll, done by a bunch of guys who knew what rock n&rsquo; roll was. The perfect antidote to all these insipid girly-men whining about how they&rsquo;re missing their girlfriends and it&rsquo;s breaking their hearts, or whining about how they&rsquo;re sooooo misunderstood and it&rsquo;s breaking their hearts (hey, fuck you, Chester Bennington). Huey Lewis, on the other hand, wrote about missing his girlfriend and how he was gonna ride the shit out of her when he got home.</p> <blockquote>_Everybody else is holding hands I'm here lonely, playing around with my microphone stand But i'm coming home one more week The first three days we won't get any sleep_</blockquote> <p>To get you in the mood, here&rsquo;s the video for &ldquo;Stuck with you&rdquo;, which is definitely going to be the first song at my wedding.</p> <iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/J08ZwySCoJ8" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> <p>Useless Trivia: Huey Lewis played harmonica on Thin Lizzy&rsquo;s Live and Dangerous.</p> <h2 id="watch-kickboxer">Watch: Kickboxer</h2> <p>Kickboxer is a great movie at the best of times, but it&rsquo;s a masterpiece after a couple of beers (and this being Patrick&rsquo;s weekend, this is almost a given). After his jackass brother gets his back broken by evil mongoloid Tong Po in a kickboxing match, Jean Claude Van Damme decides to become a master kickboxer himself and get revenge. My favourite thing about this movie is the fact that the people in Thailand keep giving Jean Claude Van Damme shit for being American when he clearly isn&rsquo;t.</p> <p>It also features the stupidest, most out-of-place dancing ever put to film. Observe.</p> <iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/XxQEMBfa8Qo" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> <p>I really want to remake this movie. I think it would still work as a low-budget youtube kind of thing, shot around the streets of Dublin.</p> <p>Useless Trivia: After Kickboxer, Dennis Chan, who played Van Damme&rsquo;s trainer Xian Chow, went on to star in &ldquo;<a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0108609/">Xiang Gang qi an zhi qiang jian</a>&rdquo;, aka &lsquo;Legal Rape&rsquo;, aka &lsquo;Naked Killer 2&rsquo;, aka &lsquo;Raped by an Angel&rsquo;, aka &lsquo;Super Rape&rsquo;. (And that sentence is going to fuck my google traffic for months now.)</p> Twitterdildonics https://lowbrowculture.com/post/twitterdildonics/ Wed, 14 Mar 2007 08:35:01 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/twitterdildonics/ <p>Speaking of dildonics&hellip;</p> <p><a href="http://chicks-dig-unix.net">Cliph</a> also pointed me towards a project that came out of SXSW this week: <a href="http://www.slashdong.org/archives/2007/03/twitterdildonic.php">Twitterdildonics</a>. Which provides an interface for controlling the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rez#Trance_Vibrator">USB Trance Vibrator</a> via <a href="http://www.twitter.com">Twitter updates</a>.</p> <p>&hellip;</p> <p>And I better stop there. Much further and I risk entering <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xeni_Jardin">Xeni Jardin</a> territory.</p> PlayStation 3, Teledildonics and You https://lowbrowculture.com/post/playstation-3-teledildonics-and-you/ Tue, 13 Mar 2007 19:05:34 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/playstation-3-teledildonics-and-you/ <p>Talking to <a href="http://chicks-dig-unix.net">Cliph</a> on IM about the PlayStation 3, we touched on the ideas of how the social space in Home will be filtered. For example, in the public area, people can talk to each other using a keyboard, the built-in phrases (&ldquo;Would you like to play a game?&rdquo;) or via a Bluetooth headset. It&rsquo;s likely that there will be a bunch of &lsquo;banned&rsquo; words for those using the keyboard input, but will there be any restrictions on what can be said via a headset? Is there anything to stop me turning the virtual air <em>blue</em> with obscenities?</p> <p>Sony have said that in the private space, there will be few restrictions. You will be able to decorate your &lsquo;room&rsquo; with whatever images you have on your PlayStation 3&rsquo;s hard drive. You can stream whatever movies and sound files on your PlayStation 3&rsquo;s hard drive and everyone visiting your room will be able to see and hear these files. I&rsquo;m willing to bet that without restrictions, there will be a thriving red-light market in Sony&rsquo;s Home faster than you can say &ldquo;WELCOME TO JOHN&rsquo;S COCK PALACE.&rdquo;</p> <p>But let&rsquo;s go even further. By taking the possible sexual underworld of Home and combining it with Sony&rsquo;s own <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rez#Trance_Vibrator">USB Trance Vibrator</a> (released with &lsquo;Rez&rsquo; on the PlayStation 2), we could be witnessing an evolution and mass-marketization of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teledildonics">teledildonics</a>.</p> <p>I can&rsquo;t wait to see what happens when you put in <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konami_Code">the Konami code</a>.</p> You can call him Al → http://www.flickr.com/photos/thrillho/419846614/ Tue, 13 Mar 2007 09:46:21 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/you-can-call-him-al/ <p><img src="http://farm1.static.flickr.com/132/419846614_c1ff63b837.jpg" alt="You can call him Al">]</p> <p>It&rsquo;s times like this I wish I had better DVDs in my inbox</p> Detox https://lowbrowculture.com/post/detox/ Tue, 13 Mar 2007 09:40:19 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/detox/ <p>In preparation for the trip to Rome, I&rsquo;m working my way through a list of 99 things to do before moving to another country. One of these was &lsquo;Get a dental MOT&rsquo;. So, after 10 years of avoiding the dentist, I finally caved last week. Overall, not bad. A couple of minor fillings, but in pretty good shape, considering it&rsquo;s been ten years, and the amount of Diet Coke I drink.</p> <p>I drink assloads of Diet Coke. Retarded amounts. And it&rsquo;s easily the worst thing for my teeth because not only does the sweetener rot the teeth (although I&rsquo;ve <em>seen</em> Mythbusters - it&rsquo;s not as corrosive as people say), the copious amounts of caffeine running through my system makes me grind my teeth in my sleep. I wake up with a sore jaw and my teeth are slightly worse for wear.</p> <p>This was made worse by the weekend that was in it. H. had over to Rome for a bit of a reccy. Checking out the apartment, checking out the people she would be working with. Which left me with four days all to myself. I did nothing but eat junk, drink Diet Coke and play Crackdown on the Xbox 360. I came out the other side feeling rotten. Not so much a shadow of my former self, but a dirty, bloated, jiggly play-do model of my former self. So, big changes are afoot.</p> <p>Yesterday marked the first day without Diet Coke. And it was awful. I was sucking down Tramil to cope with the headaches, I was going outside every hour for some air to keep me awake. I was grouchy. I was lethargic. And since I could barely keep my eyes open, I probably shouldn&rsquo;t have driven up to Tesco at 9pm.</p> <p>Today, however, it&rsquo;s all different. I managed to get out of bed when my alarm went off, instead of hitting the snooze button for an hour. My headache is gone, and I&rsquo;m already getting work done. Hell, I&rsquo;m almost lucid.</p> <p>It&rsquo;ll never last.</p> 300 - NES style → http://nessparta.ytmnd.com/ Fri, 09 Mar 2007 22:54:10 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/300-nes-style/ <p>Best YTMND I&rsquo;ve seen in a while</p> New trailer for Grindhouse → http://www.apple.com/trailers/weinstein/grindhouse/ Fri, 09 Mar 2007 17:08:33 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/new-trailer-for-grindhouse/ <p>Starting to look a little uneven now, but still looking like a b-movie fan&rsquo;s dream</p> Why you shouldn't use MyBlogLog https://lowbrowculture.com/post/why-you-shouldnt-use-mybloglog/ Fri, 09 Mar 2007 16:29:06 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/why-you-shouldnt-use-mybloglog/ <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2007/03/mybloglog.jpg" alt="mybloglog.jpg"></p> <p><a href="http://www.tomrafteryit.net">Tom Raftery</a> unwittingly gives us a perfect demonstration of why you shouldn&rsquo;t use <a href="http://www.mybloglog.com">MyBlogLog</a>.</p> <p>Sure, MyBlogLog is a great idea and all, but there&rsquo;s always going to be someone out there who will exploit it as a way to display a pair of tits, or a huge fuckin&rsquo; dong, <em>or worse</em> on someone else&rsquo;s blog.</p> Home (or: I think Sony just killed Second Life) https://lowbrowculture.com/post/home-did-sony-just-kill-second-life/ Wed, 07 Mar 2007 22:21:08 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/home-did-sony-just-kill-second-life/ <p><img src="http://www.lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2007/03/sony_home.jpg" alt="sony_home.jpg"></p> <p>Today at the <a href="http://www.gdconf.com/">Game Developer&rsquo;s Conference</a>, Sony <a href="http://kotaku.com/gaming/sony/rumor-sony-to-unveil-playstation-home-240746.php">officially</a> announced &ldquo;<a href="http://www.us.playstation.com/News/PressReleases/382">Home</a>&rdquo;. Home is so many things, it&rsquo;s a little complicated to describe.</p> <p>Pitched as somewhere between <a href="http://secondlife.com/">Second Life</a> and <a href="http://www.myspace.com">MySpace</a>, it&rsquo;s a social space where PlayStation 3 owners can meet PlayStation 3 owners. They do this by navigating an avatar (similar to Nintendo&rsquo;s Mii, but more realistic and with more customization options) around a 3D world. Each user also gets a private space - a virtual apartment - which they can customize as they see fit. They can invite people into this private space and launch multiplayer games, or stream music and videos from their PlayStation 3 to the other people in this room. Sony&rsquo;s Home includes a virtual &rsquo;trophy room&rsquo; where people can display their &rsquo;entitlements&rsquo; (Sony&rsquo;s answer to Xbox 360&rsquo;s achievements) as moving, 3D trophies.</p> <p>Oh, and it&rsquo;s all <em>free</em>.</p> <p><img src="http://www.lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2007/03/sony_home_2.jpg" alt="sony_home_2.jpg"></p> <p>This was Sony&rsquo;s ace in the hole. A completely unexpected, beautifully executed masterstroke that almost makes you forget about all of Sony&rsquo;s fuck-ups with PlayStation 3.</p> <p><em>Almost</em>.</p> <p>Right now, Sony is still talking about the possibilities of Home, and although a lot of these are still pretty blue-sky suggestions, they do give you some idea of what an online virtual world is capable of when you&rsquo;ve got the weight and muscle of the entire Sony Corporation behind it. For example, using its ability to stream high-def movies, there could be movie premieres (in a virtual cinema) of Sony Pictures movies within Home. And for the MySpazz crowd, there&rsquo;s the possibility of in-game appearances by their favourite Sony BMG bands.</p> <p>I bet the makers of Second Life won&rsquo;t get much sleep tonight.</p> Is Batman actually a Superhero? https://lowbrowculture.com/post/is-batman-actually-a-superhero/ Wed, 07 Mar 2007 09:49:09 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/is-batman-actually-a-superhero/ <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2007/03/batman_boner.jpg" alt="batman_boner.jpg"></p> <p>I was speaking to someone earlier about superpowers - how all childhood conversations about &ldquo;what superpower would you like to have&rdquo; were ruined by the one asshole who had to say &ldquo;everything&rdquo; - when our conversation drifted towards Batman. When I was growing up, you either liked Superman or Batman (just like you were either a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whizzer_and_Chips">Whizz-kid or a Chipite</a>). And so the Superman-followers would want Superman&rsquo;s powers and the Batman-followers would say they would like Batman&rsquo;s superpowers.</p> <p>But what the hell are Batman&rsquo;s superpowers?</p> <p>He can&rsquo;t fly. He can&rsquo;t run faster than a speeding bullet. He can&rsquo;t slice people open with Adamantium claws. So what does he have? Well, he&rsquo;s got a neat car and a lot of nifty gadgets. And he&rsquo;s pretty athletic, I guess. But these aren&rsquo;t super-powers. With enough money, anyone can have these.</p> <p>And is this a good message for our kids? That being fabulously wealthy is a <em>superpower</em>?</p> <p>(For more pictures of Joker&rsquo;s boners, check out <a href="http://www.redshirt.co.uk/media/batman/">redshirt.co.uk</a>)</p> Jean Baudrillard - RIP → https://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/jean-baudrillard-5547038.html Tue, 06 Mar 2007 23:18:45 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/jean-baudrillard-rip/ <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2007/03/baudrillard.jpg" alt="baudrillard.jpg"></p> <p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Baudrillard">So long, Jean.</a> Thanks to you, I&rsquo;ll never look at Disneyland in the same way again.</p> Brown Bag Films - Copying again? https://lowbrowculture.com/post/brown-bag-films-cogging-again/ Tue, 06 Mar 2007 17:24:50 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/brown-bag-films-cogging-again/ <p>Via <a href="http://www.youthoughtwewouldntnotice.com">YouThoughtWeWouldntNotice</a>:</p> <p>A few months ago, someone spotted that <a href="http://www.brownbagfilms.com">Brown Bag Film&rsquo;s</a> &ldquo;Bears&rdquo; Lotto campaign looked suspiciously like <a href="http://www.matteveritt.com/">Matt Everitt&rsquo;s</a> Ricky Gervais Bears. <a href="http://www.creativeireland.com/forums/showthread.php?t=3347&amp;highlight=lotto">The thread on CreativeIreland.com</a> has some interesting discussion, including a couple of posts by Matt Everitt himself, saying</p> <blockquote> <p>I was told about this and after watching the ad (and falling off my chair) and emailed Brown Bag who of course denied that they would ever do such a thing and said that they could&rsquo;nt see any similarities.</p> <p>What can I do?<br> Not a lot.</p> </blockquote> <p>Brown Bag Films defended their position by suggesting that Bears3 are &ldquo;obscure&rdquo; and hadn&rsquo;t been broadcast.</p> <p>How similar are they? You can make up your own mind</p> <h3 id="matt-everitts-bears3">Matt Everitt&rsquo;s Bears3</h3> <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2007/03/youthought1.jpg" alt="Matt Everitt&rsquo;s Bears3"></p> <h3 id="brown-bags-lotto-ad">Brown Bag&rsquo;s Lotto Ad</h3> <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2007/03/youthought12.jpg" alt="Brown Bag&rsquo;s Lotto Ad"></p> <p>Now we have a similar situation. The new Argus Car Hire advert from Brown Bag Films looks suspiciously like the terrific opening title sequence from Steven Spielberg&rsquo;s &ldquo;Catch Me If You Can&rdquo;. Hardly something they can claim as &ldquo;obscure&rdquo;.</p> <p>Can <em>you</em> see any similarities?</p> <h3 id="argus-car-hire-advert">Argus Car Hire advert</h3> <div class="embed video-player"> <iframe class="youtube-player" type="text/html" width="640" height="385" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/uJn994k1eXA" allowfullscreen frameborder="0"> </iframe> </div> <h3 id="opening-credits-of-steven-spielbergs-catch-me-if-you-can">Opening credits of Steven Spielberg&rsquo;s Catch Me if You Can</h3> <div class="embed video-player"> <iframe class="youtube-player" type="text/html" width="640" height="385" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/gaLDyrun_Cc" allowfullscreen frameborder="0"> </iframe> </div> "Cars" 2-Disc Blu-Ray coming → http://www.thedigitalbits.com/mytwocentsa133.html#quee Tue, 06 Mar 2007 12:15:36 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/cars-2-disc-blu-ray-coming/ <p>Well, it was bound to happen eventually, I just wasn&rsquo;t expecting it <em>so soon</em>. <a href="">According to an article on thedigitalbits.com</a>, Disney will be releasing Cars on Blu-Ray in June. And because of the amount of extra content and the ridiculously high resolution of the movie on the disc, they&rsquo;re going to be releasing it as a 2-disc (dual layer) Blu-Ray package.</p> <p>Just to put this into perspective here, a standard DVD (such as the single-disc DVD of cars that came out last year) holds 9GB of data. A dual-layer Blu-Ray disc holds <strong>50GB</strong> of data. And they&rsquo;re using two of them!</p> <p>For demonstration purposes, here&rsquo;s what you can expect the difference in quality to look like:</p> <h3 id="cars-on-blu-ray">Cars on Blu-Ray</h3> <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2007/03/cars_hd.jpg" alt="cars_hd.jpg"></p> <h3 id="cars-on-standard-def-dvd">Cars on Standard-Def DVD</h3> <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2007/03/cars_sd.png" alt="cars_sd.png"></p> <p>Now if only they had given the Incredibles as a 2-disc Blu-Ray release. <em>Then</em> I might be actually tempted to buy a Blu-Ray player.</p> 10 Kilometer Mix https://lowbrowculture.com/post/10-kilometer-mix/ Sat, 03 Mar 2007 12:17:38 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/10-kilometer-mix/ <p>Speaking of mixes&hellip;</p> <p>Just before Christmas, <a href="http://mekon.livejournal.com/172575.html">I took part in the Port Tunnel 10k run</a>. I hadn&rsquo;t run much before then. In fact, I would estimate that if you if you took <em>all of the times</em> I have run in my life and added them together, you probably wouldn&rsquo;t get 10K. So how did I go from lazy fat ass to the bronze Adonis I am today?</p> <p>Well, it&rsquo;s entirely down to my special 10k iPod playlist* These songs helped keep me going when I couldn&rsquo;t see anything in the port tunnel except the steam from other people&rsquo;s sweat. It kept me going when I realised that, after 5 minutes of actually being in the tunnel that I&rsquo;d seen everything the tunnel had to offer and the next hour or so would be like watching paint dry. Really painful, exhausting paint.</p> <p>Anyway, so here&rsquo;s the mix. If anyone&rsquo;s got any suggestions for additional, suitable song, please let me know. I&rsquo;ll put them to the test next time I go to the gym.</p> <!-- more --> <ol> <li> <p>We Want Fun - Andrew W.K.</p> </li> <li> <p>Still Waiting - Sum 41</p> </li> <li> <p>Noise Brigade - Mighty Mighty Bosstones</p> </li> <li> <p>Training Montage (Rocky IV) - Vince DiCola</p> </li> <li> <p>Girls Own Love - Andrew W.K.</p> </li> <li> <p>Life During Wartime (Live) - Talking Heads</p> </li> <li> <p>How I Could just Kill a Man - Rage Against the Machine</p> </li> <li> <p>List of Demands (Reparations) - Saul Williams</p> </li> <li> <p>Bump - Spank Rock</p> </li> <li> <p>Movies - Alien Ant Farm</p> </li> <li> <p>Dancing in the Dark - Bruce Springsteen</p> </li> <li> <p>Witness (1 Hope) - Roots Manuva</p> </li> <li> <p>Music is my Hot Hot Sex - Cansei De Ser Sexy</p> </li> <li> <p>Heart&rsquo;s On Fire (Rock IV) - John Cafferty</p> </li> <li> <p>Fat Lip - Sum 41</p> </li> <li> <p>99 Problems - Jay Z</p> </li> <li> <p>Flashdance / Fame - The Dan Band</p> </li> <li> <p>God Hates a Coward - Tomahawk</p> </li> <li> <p>Fuckin&rsquo; Spend - High Speed Scene</p> </li> <li> <p>Glory Days - Bruce Springsteen</p> </li> <li> <p>Jump - Van Halen</p> </li> <li> <p>Holing Out for a Hero - Bonnie Tyler</p> </li> <li> <p>Jesus Walks - Kanye West</p> </li> <li> <p>Shimmy - System of a Down</p> </li> <li> <p>Million $ Man - Imperial Teen</p> </li> <li> <p>This Month, Day 10 - Cansei De Ser Sexy</p> </li> <li> <p>Goin&rsquo; Out West - Tom Waits</p> </li> <li> <p>You&rsquo;re the Voice - John Farnham</p> </li> </ol> <p><strong>Notes:</strong></p> <ul> <li> <p>Yes, there&rsquo;s a lot of Andrew W.K.</p> </li> <li> <p>Yes, there&rsquo;s a lot of 80s power ballads</p> </li> <li> <p>Go for the single version of &ldquo;I need a Hero&rdquo; - you don&rsquo;t need six minutes of Bonnie Tyler wailing</p> </li> <li> <p>Every life goal should be achieved with Vince DiCola&rsquo;s &ldquo;Training Montage&rdquo; playing in the backround</p> </li> <li> <ul> <li>Well, the four or five weeks of training I did beforehand <em>may</em> have helped a little</li> </ul> </li> </ul> Death of the Mix Tape? https://lowbrowculture.com/post/death-of-the-mix-tape/ Fri, 02 Mar 2007 22:46:28 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/death-of-the-mix-tape/ <p>Inspired by <a href="http://observer.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,,2000054,00.html">an article in the Observer some weeks ago</a> in which Sean O&rsquo;Hagan talks about the way our &lsquo;digital lifestyle&rsquo; has killed the mix tape, Tom Farrell (who still gets my vote for <a href="http://www.lowbrowculture.com/2006/06/23/tom-farrel-funniest-irish-blogger/">Ireland&rsquo;s funniest blogger</a>) recently wrote <a href="http://oldrottenhat.typepad.com/oldrottenhat/2007/03/on_mix_tapes.html">a post on the subject of mix tapes</a> which reminded me of the response to the Observer article I had drafted but not yet finished. So I finished it.</p> <p>Reading Sean O&rsquo;Hagan&rsquo;s story of the emotions he felt while recently compiling a mix tape is fascinating and I&rsquo;d encourage everyone to read it as an eloquently-written piece of nostaligia. But I strongly disagree with his article&rsquo;s suggestion that mp3s have somehow made music <em>less personal</em> and I think he&rsquo;s just plain wrong to suggest that &ldquo;mix tapes&rdquo; are somehow dead. They&rsquo;re not - they&rsquo;ve just <em>evolved</em>.</p> <p>The &ldquo;Mix CD&rdquo; is the most basic 21st Century representation of the &ldquo;Mix Tape&rdquo;. Sure, it might not be as difficult to compile these as it was to compile a mix tape, but this doesn&rsquo;t mean they&rsquo;re any less important or meaningful. I would even suggest that these are <em>more</em> important, <em>more</em> meaningful. With the actual creation of the CDs mostly taken care of by software like iTunes which allows the user to just click and burn a CD, more time can be spent putting thought into the <em>content</em> of these mixes. This means that the medium is no longer the message. The <em>message</em> is the message.</p> <p>One of the traditions of the <a href="http://www.thumped.com">thumped.com</a> Christmas bash is the &lsquo;mix exchange&rsquo;. Everyone who comes is encouraged to bring a mix tape/cd, put it into a box and in return, this entitles them to take someone else&rsquo;s mix from the box. I&rsquo;ve gotten some great stuff from this, and in recent years, have seen this taken to the next level: Mix DVD featuring some of the year&rsquo;s best movies (it&rsquo;s not like this is any more or less legal than a mix tape).</p> <p>And what about when we outgrow CDs too? Well, we&rsquo;re already seeing the next stage in the evolution of the mix tape. Sites like <a href="http://outof5.com/">Out of Five</a> offer weekly themed collaborative mixes. Collaborative! Can you imagine the logistics of trying to do a collaborative mix tape?!</p> <p>Personally, I think the whole thing has less to do with the death of the mix tape or music being less personal and more to do with the fact that the writer has reached the stage in his life where mix tapes are somehow &lsquo;immature&rsquo; and music isn&rsquo;t the most important thing in his life. He and his friends have become old farts: grown up and settled into a rather rigid existence; less willing to try new things.</p> <p>And After all, It&rsquo;s hard to put thought and effort into a mix when you don&rsquo;t have anyone to give it to.</p> Congratulations Cliph! https://lowbrowculture.com/post/congratulations-cliph/ Fri, 02 Mar 2007 17:28:45 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/congratulations-cliph/ <p>First two results on <a href="http://images.google.com/images?q=myspace%20pose&amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;oe=UTF-8&amp;aq=t&amp;rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&amp;client=firefox-a&amp;um=1&amp;sa=N&amp;tab=wi">Google Image search for &ldquo;Myspace Pose&rdquo;.</a></p> <p><a href="http://www.lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2007/03/cliph_myspace.jpg"><img src="http://www.lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2007/03/cliph_myspace_thumb.jpg" alt="cliph_myspace_thumb.jpg"></a></p> <p>Bizarrely, this only works &ldquo;SafeSearch&rdquo; turned <strong>off</strong>. This means Google has decided Cliph&rsquo;s picture is &ldquo;explicit&rdquo;.</p> <p>Explicitly gorgeous, maybe.</p> The Boring Store: A Tour of 826CHI's Chicago Spy Shop → http://www.methodsreporter.com/2007/02/27/826chi-boring-store-eggers/1/ Fri, 02 Mar 2007 11:02:59 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/the-boring-store-a-tour-of-826chis-chicago-spy-shop/ <p>Not a secret agent supply store. No sir.</p> Havok Physics in the new Star Wars game → https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3bKphYfUk-M Tue, 27 Feb 2007 15:38:48 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/havok-physics-in-the-new-star-wars-game/ <p>Video footage of a Lucasarts presentation of the technology they&rsquo;re going to be using in the next Indiana Jones and Star Wars games. This includes the latest version of the <a href="http://www.havok.com">Havok physics engine</a>.</p> <p>Besides the killer technology on show, this video is also interesting for the part where they blow up Jar Jar Binks encased in Carbonite.</p> Review: 300 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/review-300/ Tue, 27 Feb 2007 10:39:17 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/review-300/ <p>So the IFF Surprise Film was 300. Not that much of a surprise. The queue was a bigger surprise - jesus, I&rsquo;ve never seen anything like that. Even the premiere of the Lord of the Rings movies had shorter queues.</p> <p>Anyway, 300 completely <em>floored me</em>. It&rsquo;s a love song to graphic violence and romantic heroism, told with the most stylish visuals this side of Sin City. The movie suffers from more than a few jerky moments with a lot of the dialogue falling apart as hammy and unconvincing, but I personally found that these were mostly in the parts where the screenwriters actually tried to by historically accurate (&ldquo;Return with your shield, or on it&rdquo; being the most obvious). The political sub-plot had real trouble hiding the fact that it existed only as &lsquo;filler&rsquo; and illicited an inappropriate titter from the audience, which only highlighted its awkwardness.</p> <p>But who cares about all this? This movie is about the action sequences and these are what make the movie stand out. Probably not the most epic battles ever filmed, but definitely the most beautiful and balletic. The fact that this was filmed in a warehouse means we never see more than a handful of &lsquo;real&rsquo; people on screen at any one time but the director works this to his favour, giving each individual skirmish an intimacy that would be otherwise lost.</p> <p>Tremendous stuff. Gives me high hopes for what Zack Snyder can bring to Watchmen.</p> Review: The Fountain https://lowbrowculture.com/post/review-the-fountain/ Tue, 27 Feb 2007 10:38:31 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/review-the-fountain/ <p>Have you ever had a movie finish and end credits roll, with the entire audience sitting back in stunned silence? Maybe it&rsquo;s just the type of film I tend to go see, but this has only happened to me a handful of times. The Fountain being one of them.</p> <p>The Fountain is a love story. Rather, it&rsquo;s three love stories, told across a thousand years. In the past, a conquistador searches for the tree of life to save his beloved Queen. In the present, a doctor searches for the cure for cancer to save his beloved wife. In the future&hellip; well&hellip; a guy travels with his tree, in a bubble, to a dying star wrapped in a nebula.</p> <p>Hey - noone ever said this would be easy.</p> <p>Arthouse blockbuster or blockbuster arthouse? Either way, this is not a welcoming film. At times, the ambitious storytelling threatens to derail the entire production, and the more cynical among us would almost certainly have trouble giving this film the room it needs to breathe. But for the more persistent, there&rsquo;s a great reward - something completely and defiantly unique. A sci-fi movie with a very human heart. A film that can leave an entire audience breathless.</p> <p>I would say this is as close to unmissable as any movie I can think of.</p> Jameson Dublin International Film Festival - Update https://lowbrowculture.com/post/jameson-dublin-international-film-festival-update/ Tue, 27 Feb 2007 09:35:43 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/jameson-dublin-international-film-festival-update/ <p><a href="https://lowbrowculture.com/post/jameson-dublin-international-film-festival/">Back at the start of February</a>, I was talking about the films I was looking forward to at the Dublin International Film Festival. Talking about the surprise film, I said</p> <blockquote> <p>A tenner says that this will be Darren Aronofsky&rsquo;s The Fountain</p> </blockquote> <p>Well, I was wrong. Sorta. Shortly before the festival began, I got an email to say that the showing of Sunshine was cancelled and they would be showing The Fountain in its place.</p> <p>So instead, the surprise movie was&hellip;</p> <p><strong><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0416449/">300</a></strong></p> <p>Yeah, it wasn&rsquo;t the cleverest movie shown at the festival, but personally, I couldn&rsquo;t have been happier. I&rsquo;m a huge fan of the comic, and of Frank Miller in general, and this was the most beautiful adaptation of his work so far.</p> 10 Favourite C64 Games https://lowbrowculture.com/post/10-favourite-c64-games/ Tue, 27 Feb 2007 09:00:59 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/10-favourite-c64-games/ <h3 id="the-great-escape">The Great Escape</h3> <p><a href="http://www.c64.com/?type=1&amp;id=970"><img src="http://www.lowbrowculture.com/pictures/c64/great_escape_the_01.gif" alt=""></a> I think I got this with my Commodore 64. I seem to remember a Christmas Day where the rest of my family was off watching the Great Escape on TV and thinking to myself &ldquo;Fuck you, last-generation losers. With this super-powerful computer, I AM Steve McQueen. I AM the Great Escape.&rdquo; The game itself didn&rsquo;t really follow the movie very strictly, but I still like the way it forces you to follow a pattern and &lsquo;keep up appearances&rsquo; while you&rsquo;re digging your way out. Never finished this game though. I got into my tunnel, was heading under the fence &ndash; I could taste the freedom &ndash; when, with no warning, my C64 crashed, taking a tiny bit of my heart with it.</p> <h3 id="ghostbusters">Ghostbusters</h3> <p><a href="http://www.c64.com/?type=1&amp;id=137"><img src="http://www.lowbrowculture.com/pictures/c64/ghostbusters_01.gif" alt=""></a> Most movie tie-ins on the C64 are of the side-scrolling shooter variety (&lsquo;sup, Robocop?). And this probably could have worked with the Ghostbusters license. But instead, they went down an altogether more interesting route: part-resource management, part action. You have to build up a Ghostbusters franchise into a profitable venture while dealing with the escalating amount of paranormal activity. Whenever I get bored and want a C64 fix, this is the first game I reach for. Oh, and the synthesized speech is <em>still</em> amazing.</p> <h3 id="last-ninja-2">Last Ninja 2</h3> <p><a href="http://www.c64.com/?type=1&amp;id=258"><img src="http://www.lowbrowculture.com/pictures/c64/last_ninja_2_the_01.gif" alt=""></a> In this game, you play <em>the worst ninja in the world</em>. Running around a park in broad daylight beating up jugglers and mimes doesn&rsquo;t seem very ninja-like to me. And what kind of ninja staunchly obeys the &ldquo;keep off the grass&rdquo; rule? A fucking pussy, that&rsquo;s who. Okay, so it&rsquo;s not exactly Ninja Gaiden, but it&rsquo;s still pretty awesome.</p> <h2 id="bruce-lee">Bruce Lee</h2> <p><a href="http://www.c64.com/?type=1&amp;id=90"><img src="http://www.lowbrowculture.com/pictures/c64/bruce_lee_01.gif" alt=""></a> I never, never understood the point of this game. You run around a weird temple, trying to collect&hellip; what? Lamps? While being constantly chased by a ninja and a fat guy? Still though, you&rsquo;re motherfuckin&rsquo; <strong>Bruce Lee!</strong></p> <h2 id="zorro">Zorro</h2> <p><a href="http://www.c64.com/?type=1&amp;id=240"><img src="http://www.lowbrowculture.com/pictures/c64/zorro_01.gif" alt=""></a> Zorro is still the most punitive game I&rsquo;ve ever played. It&rsquo;s stupid and dumb and I hate it. But I can&rsquo;t stop going back to it. Maybe one day I&rsquo;ll actually, y&rsquo;know&hellip; <em>finish</em> it. I imagine that would be like the end of WarGames and my C64 will turn to me and say in a Stephen Hawking voice, &ldquo;A strange game. The only way to win is not to play.&rdquo;</p> <h2 id="barbarian-2">Barbarian 2</h2> <p><a href="http://www.c64.com/?type=1&amp;id=61"><img src="http://www.lowbrowculture.com/pictures/c64/barbarian_2_01.gif" alt=""></a> Wolf from Gladiators, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maria_Whittaker">Maria Whittaker&rsquo;s tits</a> and graphic decapitation. How could a pre-pubescent boy not love this game?</p> <h2 id="beach-head">Beach Head</h2> <p><a href="http://www.c64.com/?type=1&amp;id=1280"><img src="http://www.lowbrowculture.com/pictures/c64/beach-head_01.gif" alt=""></a> I remember being so engrossed in this game, I missed a bunch of swimming lessons and as a result, only got a silver medal in the end-of-year contest. Every time I see that silver medal I think about how, if I&rsquo;d just played a little less Beach Head, it could have been a gold medal. And then I think &ldquo;Fuck it, it was totally worth it.&rdquo;</p> <h2 id="park-patrol">Park Patrol</h2> <p><a href="http://www.c64.com/?type=1&amp;id=219"><img src="http://www.lowbrowculture.com/pictures/c64/park_patrol_01.gif" alt=""></a> I can&rsquo;t really explain this. I&rsquo;m a messy bastard, but I really enjoy this game about tidying up a park. Cleaning vicariously, that&rsquo;s what it is.</p> <h2 id="goonies">Goonies</h2> <p><a href="http://www.c64.com/?type=1&amp;id=139"><img src="http://www.lowbrowculture.com/pictures/c64/goonies_the_01.gif" alt=""></a> Much better than the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Goonies_II">barmy Nintendo version</a>, this was a platform game where you took control of two of the kids and had to use both to solve puzzles. Kind of like a proto-Lost Vikings. For example, to get past the first screen you have to navigate one kid to the roof to print fake money and distract the Fratellis while the other kid ran into the basement. Further on, the screens get ridiculously hard and you&rsquo;ll find yourself blowing through each of your eight (EIGHT!) lives just trying to figure out what you&rsquo;re supposed to do. <a href="http://www.c64.com/?type=1&amp;id=139">Download Goonies from c64.com</a></p> <h2 id="master-of-the-lamps">Master of the Lamps</h2> <p>. <a href="http://www.c64.com/?type=1&amp;id=262"><img src="http://www.lowbrowculture.com/pictures/c64/master_of_the_lamps_04.gif" alt=""></a> I originally played this game on the Amstrad CPC-464. <em>You</em> try playing a game with colour-based puzzles on a crappy monochrome green-screen monitor. Only when I played it again on the C64, on a colour telly, did I finally get to appreciate just how incredible this game is. Sound puzzles, colour puzzles, geometry puzzles and a kick-ass magic carpet ride tying them all together. Years ahead of its time.</p> PlayStation 3 in Europe will play fewer old games - Yahoo! News → http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070223/tc_nm/sony_playstation_europe_dc Fri, 23 Feb 2007 16:02:44 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/playstation-3-in-europe-will-play-fewer-old-games-yahoo-news/ <p>That high-pitched whine you&rsquo;re hearing is Sony&rsquo;s marketing machine spinning this - &quot;We&rsquo;re not working on backwards-compatibility because we&rsquo;re working SO hard at making new stuff for PlayStation 3&quot;</p> Fast Food Nation https://lowbrowculture.com/post/fast-food-nation/ Thu, 22 Feb 2007 15:25:56 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/fast-food-nation/ <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2007/02/fastfood5.jpg" alt="Richard Linklater"></p> <p>For his dramatization of Eric Schlosser&rsquo;s tell-all expose of the Fast Food industry, Richard Linklater chose to focus on just two points from the book.</p> <ol> <li>The meat packing industry is ruthlessly exploitative.</li> <li>There is shit in the meat.</li> </ol> <p>lthough they&rsquo;re both very important points, they are stretched past breaking point across a two-hour movie. This means, worryingly, that by the fifth time someone on screen has repeated &ldquo;there&rsquo;s shit in the meat&rdquo;, it&rsquo;s lost all of its emotional impact.</p> <p>And though there is a token discussion of the morality of the fast-food lifestyle (courtesy of a brief appearance by Ethan Hawke), this thinly-veiled sermon is so naive as to be offensive.</p> <p>Heavy-handed and overwrought. I wonder if a documentary might have been the better option for this material?</p> Trailer for Resident Evil: Extinction → http://movies.yahoo.com/feature/residentevilextinction.html Wed, 21 Feb 2007 18:17:21 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/trailer-for-resident-evil-extinction/ <p>Resident Evil: Mad Max, more like. Still though, it&rsquo;s got Milla Jovovich and zombies - I&rsquo;ve got my tickets booked already.</p> Happy Birthday Apple.com! https://lowbrowculture.com/post/happy-birthday-applecom/ Wed, 21 Feb 2007 16:14:29 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/happy-birthday-applecom/ <p>I&rsquo;ve been pretty busy, so I missed this slightly, but that doesn&rsquo;t mean we can&rsquo;t still celebrate!</p> <p>Monday was the 20th birthday of Apple.com. <a href="http://www.whoisd.com/oldestcom.php">The domain was registered on the 19th of February 1987</a> and was the 64th registered dot-com address.</p> <p>So happy birthday, guys!</p> Ruairi Robinson's new short film online https://lowbrowculture.com/post/ruairi-robinsons-new-short-film-online/ Wed, 21 Feb 2007 15:50:25 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/ruairi-robinsons-new-short-film-online/ <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2007/02/cillian_bloody.jpg" alt="cillian_bloody.jpg"></p> <p>Oscar-nominated local boy done good, <a href="http://www.ruairirobinson.com/">Ruairi Robinson</a> recently finished his new short film, <a href="http://www.ruairirobinson.com/short_films.htm">The Silent City</a>, and put it online in both HD quality and in shitty Youtube-quality. It&rsquo;s an astonishing achievement considering the amount of quality he managed to eke out of his small budget, including appearances by Cillian Murphy (pictured) and Don Wycherley.</p> <p>It&rsquo;s a seriously impressive movie and I&rsquo;d encourage everyone to check it out. You can find <a href="http://www.ruairirobinson.com/main.htm">all the download details on Ruairi&rsquo;s site</a>. And while you&rsquo;re there, you might as well check out his other short films, the previously-mentioned, Oscar Nominated <a href="http://www.ruairirobinson.com/fiftypercentgrey.htm">Fifty Percent Grey</a> (cruelly denied an oscar win by those Pixar bastards) and <a href="http://www.ruairirobinson.com/short_films.htm">House on Dame Street</a>.</p> Forget Barcamp, where's Ireland's SXSW? https://lowbrowculture.com/post/forget-barcamp-wheres-irelands-sxsw/ Wed, 21 Feb 2007 15:36:18 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/forget-barcamp-wheres-irelands-sxsw/ <p><a href="http://barcamp.org/BarCampIreland3">BarCamp Dublin</a> will be taking place in a couple of months and, despite the fact that it&rsquo;s happening on my front door (I work in the Digital Depot), I probably won&rsquo;t be attending. In short, this is mainly because I don&rsquo;t think it has that much to offer to me. I have a blog, but I write mainly for my own enjoyment rather than as a means to rack up subscribers (you should see some of the some self-indulgent posts I have lined up for the next couple of weeks - wow). So with its heavy focus on blogging, search engine optimisation and unexciting technology which, frankly, was of no interest to me three years ago and is of even less interest to me now, BarCamp Dublin gives me no compelling reason to attend.</p> <p>Now I&rsquo;ve spent the day browsing through the <a href="http://2007.sxsw.com">SXSW</a> website and <em>drooling</em> over the <a href="http://2007.sxsw.com/interactive/programming/panels/">list of nerd-focused talks</a> they will be giving, I can&rsquo;t help but wish that Ireland had something similar. What attracts me to the SXSW stuff is the <em>completely</em> open nature of the festival. Rather than limiting themselves to a few topics, they&rsquo;ve made sure there&rsquo;s something for all types of nerd: movies, music, games, design, blogging, programming are all on the agenda. And because of this, it seems to be completely open, no sense of exclusion because of a lack of interest in a particular topic.</p> <p>Panels that really caught my eye were:</p> <ul> <li> <p><a href="http://2007.sxsw.com/interactive/programming/panels/?action=show&amp;id=IAP060275">Worldchanging 2.0</a> - common-sense geek solutions for a more sustainable future</p> </li> <li> <p><a href="http://2007.sxsw.com/interactive/programming/panels/?action=show&amp;id=IAP060134">Convergence Culture: A Conversation with Henry Jenkins</a> - Henry Jenkins should get a medal or something. That is one smart cat.</p> </li> <li> <p><a href="http://2007.sxsw.com/interactive/programming/panels/?action=show&amp;id=IAP060186">Making Your Short Attention-Span Pay Big Dividends</a> - man, if I could harness my short att- Hey look! A shiny thing!</p> </li> <li> <p><a href="http://2007.sxsw.com/interactive/programming/panels/?action=show&amp;id=IAP060141">Design Aesthetic of the Indie Developer</a> - Just look at the panel! Jesus! The room will throb with Mac geniusery.</p> </li> <li> <p><a href="http://2007.sxsw.com/interactive/programming/panels/?action=show&amp;id=IAP060224">Tech Tools for Film Artists</a></p> </li> </ul> <p>Why hasn&rsquo;t Ireland seen a similar event? It&rsquo;s not for lack of talent. We have an abundance of talented, charming and articulate nerds that could give similarly interesting talks on a similarly diverse range of topics (although there&rsquo;s also an abundance of &lsquo;squeaky wheels&rsquo;). Perhaps it&rsquo;s because the geek community is so fragmented that it&rsquo;s hard to rally them all together. The bloggers converse with other bloggers, the designers converse with other designers and so on. Perhaps rallying them together for a truly welcoming unconference with something for everyone would be too much effort.</p> <p>But it would be a thing of beauty.</p> <p>Then again, what do I care? I&rsquo;m out of here soon.</p> A gaggle of Youtube celebrities → https://www.youtube.com/v/FoFMRXlNJ6Y Tue, 20 Feb 2007 21:54:18 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/a-gaggle-of-youtube-celebrities/ <p>For the new Barenaked Ladies video, the band asked a bunch of Youtube celebrities to record a video of themselves performing the song. The results are so very, very cute.</p> <p>I&rsquo;m familiar with most of these celebrities but I&rsquo;ve never seen &ldquo;Where the hell is Matt&rdquo; before. So I hunted it down, and let me tell you, it brought a tear to this weary old face.</p> Pancake Tuesday! https://lowbrowculture.com/post/pancake-tuesday/ Tue, 20 Feb 2007 17:55:05 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/pancake-tuesday/ <p>Pancake Tuesday, boys and girls. A magical time of year. You can eat as much as you want, but because they&rsquo;re only pancakes, you don&rsquo;t look like such a savage. In school, we used to brag about how many we ate. Since I didn&rsquo;t get <em>any</em> pancakes last year, I&rsquo;m going to make up for it this year by gorging myself until I&rsquo;ve got pancake batter coming out my ears.</p> <h3 id="pancakes">Pancakes</h3> <p>100g flour 2 Eggs 200ml milk, mixed with 75ml water</p> <ol> <li> <p>Sift flour into a mixing bowl.</p> </li> <li> <p>Make a well in the centre of the flour and break the eggs into it</p> </li> <li> <p>Whisk well</p> </li> <li> <p>Slowly add the milk and water, whisking as you go</p> </li> <li> <p>Cook in a pan over a medium heat</p> </li> </ol> <h3 id="toppings">Toppings</h3> <ul> <li> <p><strong>Sugar and lemon juice.</strong> It is vitally important that the juice be from a <em>plastic lemon</em>. Otherwise it may as well be any other day of the week because it&rsquo;s just not Pancake Tuesday with plastic lemon.</p> </li> <li> <p><strong>Nutella.</strong> Nothing else. Okay, maybe ice cream. You&rsquo;ll be bouncing off the walls for days.</p> </li> <li> <p><strong>Bacon and maple syrup.</strong> Friend in work gave me a bottle of maple syrup from Canada, since all I seem to be able to find in Dublin is maple-flavoured Golden Syrup.</p> </li> <li> <p><strong>Blueberries.</strong> Awesome when they&rsquo;re dropped into the batter as it cooks in the pan.</p> </li> </ul> <p>So what&rsquo;s your favourite filling?</p> Colours of the Matrix https://lowbrowculture.com/post/colours-of-the-matrix/ Mon, 19 Feb 2007 12:03:26 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/colours-of-the-matrix/ <p>Well, it was only a matter of time before I did something about the Matrix, wasn&rsquo;t it? Quintessential nerd movie that has already been endlessly picked apart. Well, what&rsquo;s one more?</p> <p>Colour plays an important role in the Matrix movies. The tinting is as much a part of the mise-en-scene* as the set and props, giving the viewer subtle clues as to the nature of the setting. Scenes taking place within the matrix are tinted green, scenes taking place on board the ships in the &lsquo;real world&rsquo; are tinted blue and Scenes taking place within &lsquo;zion&rsquo; are tinted brown. he truly hardcore Matrix nerds have used these &lsquo;clues&rsquo; as part of some <a href="http://www.matrix-explained.com/">obsessively detailed theories</a> regarding the underlying meaning of the Matrix movies.</p> <p>But we&rsquo;ll do no such thing here.</p> <ul> <li>Holy shit. Did I <em>really</em> just say &ldquo;mise-en-scene&rdquo;? Shoot me now.</li> </ul> <!-- more --> <p>(click on image for higher-res version - 960 * 1308 px, 657.5KB)</p> <p><a href="http://www.lowbrowculture.com/pictures/projects/cinema/matrix.jpg"><img src="http://www.lowbrowculture.com/pictures/projects/cinema/matrix_thumb.jpg" alt=""></a></p> <p>(click on image for higher-res version - 960 * 1308 px, 674.23KB)</p> <p><a href="http://www.lowbrowculture.com/pictures/projects/cinema/matrix2.jpg"><img src="http://www.lowbrowculture.com/pictures/projects/cinema/matrix2_thumb.jpg" alt=""></a></p> <p>(click on image for higher-res version - 960 * 1308 px, 677.15KB)</p> <p><a href="http://www.lowbrowculture.com/pictures/projects/cinema/matrix3.jpg"><img src="http://www.lowbrowculture.com/pictures/projects/cinema/matrix3_thumb.jpg" alt=""></a></p> Stew Station https://lowbrowculture.com/post/stew-station/ Mon, 19 Feb 2007 11:19:59 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/stew-station/ <p>Finally got around to checking out Stew Station, which opened up next to the Namaste Indian on North King Street, right around the corner from where I live. Like the sign on the door says, they specialise in stews and other soup-based dishes, and the menu seems to change regularly. The restaurant seems to be chasing the <a href="http://dublin.metblogs.com/archives/2006/10/gruel_67_dame_s.phtml">Gruel</a> dollar - a very relaxed, homey atmosphere with straightforward, uncomplicated food. But it seems a little out-of-place on North King Street, like it should be closer to the Epicurean Food Hall. But no matter! With development in Smithfield finally starting to bear some fruit (a <a href="http://www.thomasread.ie/">Thomas Read</a> that has yet to be even half-full, the opening of the <a href="http://www.iftn.ie/news/index3.htm?fuseaction=getbody&amp;file_id=4799">Light House Cinema</a> soon), maybe Stew Station is just a little early to the party.</p> <p>Anyway, since we live so close, I got the food to take away. I got the tomato soup with meatball for myself and a beef and vegetable for H. Reasonable value too: EUR7 for a hearty meal (EUR7.50 if you eat in). The stews were tasty. Comforting, but didn&rsquo;t feel entirely healthy. But then again, that could have been the massive dollop of carby, starchy, delicious, creamy mash that came with the meal.</p> <p>Now all they need to do is change their opening times (7pm weekdays, 6pm weekends) to handle the post-pub crowd and serve <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coddle">Coddle</a>, and Zaytoon will be displaced as my favourite drunk meal.</p> I'm moving to Rome https://lowbrowculture.com/post/im-moving-to-rome/ Sun, 18 Feb 2007 01:17:19 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/im-moving-to-rome/ <p>(<a href="http://mekon.livejournal.com/174370.html">x-posted to Livejournal</a> because this is <em>big</em>)</p> <p>So, after months of agonising over where H. would be posted for work, the big news finally arrived yesterday.</p> <p>They&rsquo;re sending her to Rome.</p> <p>Well, me and H&hellip; I think we&rsquo;ve got something special. Something I don&rsquo;t want to give up, y&rsquo;know? So I&rsquo;m going with her. I&rsquo;m leaving my job, my apartment, my friends and family, and going to live in Rome for the next three years.</p> <p>Now, let me make it clear, I&rsquo;m fully committed to this and I&rsquo;m delighted she got Holy See and not Vilnius (or, God forbid, Addis fucking Abbaba), but my brain is still reeling from the shock of it all and I&rsquo;m having trouble trying to understand exactly what this means. I tried to get my head around it yesterday but instead ended up staring at a wall and muttering &ldquo;fuck&hellip; fuck&hellip;&rdquo; for twenty minutes instead.</p> <p>What am I going to do there? No idea. The pessimist in me is looking on this as my life being turned upside down for a few years and panicing at the enormity of it all. The optimist, however, is seeing this as the great etch-a-sketch of my life being given a good shaking. Erase, start again. So I&rsquo;m completely open to suggestions for what I could do with my new life. I&rsquo;m roughly halfway between &ldquo;Ride around on a Vespa saying &lsquo;ciao&rsquo; for a living&rdquo; and &ldquo;Do a TEFL course and teach English&rdquo;. But you&rsquo;re a bright, creative bunch. Any other suggestions?</p> <p>When are we going? Again, no idea. A few people got posted yesterday, so HR was understandably swamped and managed to duck out before H. could grill them for details. Hopefully it won&rsquo;t be <em>too</em> soon. We need to sort out a going-away party.</p> <p>Playing on my DVD player this weekend:</p> <ul> <li> <p>Godfather I-III</p> </li> <li> <p>A load of Fellini</p> </li> <li> <p>The Italian Job</p> </li> <li> <p>Suspiria</p> </li> <li> <p>Season 1 of Rome</p> </li> </ul> Sam Adams unveils ultimate beer glass → http://www.boston.com/business/ticker/2007/02/sam_adams_unvei_1.html Fri, 16 Feb 2007 17:34:12 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/sam-adams-unveils-ultimate-beer-glass/ <p>Because Sam Adams is muck and needs all the help it can get.</p> JUST SAY NO... er, I mean... I Love You? https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/just-say-no-er-i-mean-i-love-you/ Wed, 14 Feb 2007 23:13:46 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/just-say-no-er-i-mean-i-love-you/ <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2007/just-say-no.jpg#center" alt="Love Hearts"></p> <p>Someone was having a bad day in the Love Hearts factory. They also had a couple of &lsquo;modern&rsquo; messages, &ldquo;TEXT ME&rdquo; and &ldquo;EMAIL ME&rdquo; (not pictured, eaten).</p> Learn how to Ska → http://www.geocities.com/thehipster3gogo/ska Tue, 13 Feb 2007 16:10:02 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/learn-how-to-ska/ <p>The animated gifs on this page reaffirm my faith in humanity</p> RIP Anna Nicole Smith → https://people.com/celebrity/anna-nicole-smith-dead/ Thu, 08 Feb 2007 23:55:48 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/rip-anna-nicole-smith/ <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2007/02/knanna_nicole_narrowweb__300x4170.jpg" alt="knanna_nicole_narrowweb__300x4170.jpg"></p> <p>Goodnight sweet crazy, crazy princess.</p> New Mac Ad – Security → https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VuqZ8AqmLPY Tue, 06 Feb 2007 15:33:42 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/new-mac-ad-security/ <p>Miaow. Coming barely a week after <a href="http://daringfireball.net/2007/02/lies_damned_lies_and_bill_gates">Bill Gates went off on one about Mac security</a>? Saucer of milk for Steve Jobs.</p> A Sober look at the Nintendo Wii https://lowbrowculture.com/post/a-sober-look-at-the-nintendo-wii/ Fri, 02 Feb 2007 01:12:27 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/a-sober-look-at-the-nintendo-wii/ <p>Now that I&rsquo;ve had my Wii for almost two months and the shock of the new has worn off, I think it&rsquo;s time to step back and take a good, hard look at the system and see what needs to change before it can become&hellip; <em>ahem</em>&hellip; <a href="http://eirepreneur.blogs.com/eirepreneur/2006/week52/index.html">&ldquo;the most successful console of all time.&rdquo;</a></p> <h3 id="hey-whats-your-friend-code">&ldquo;Hey, what&rsquo;s your friend code?&rdquo;</h3> <p>True story: I was listening to someone I know on the radio today talking about the Vista launch - the presenter mentioned that he was crazy about the Xbox 360 and said that they should swap gamer tags. &ldquo;Sure,&rdquo; my friend said, &ldquo;I&rsquo;m <em>$foo</em>.&rdquo; Now, I can guarantee he&rsquo;ll have a few extra friends on Xbox 360 tonight. People he could play games with in the space of a few minutes. Leaving aside all other parts of their latest console offering, Microsoft <em>nailed</em> the online aspect. They made it ridiculously simple for people to find each other and play online.</p> <p>Nintendo&rsquo;s online strategy has been built around the idea of protecting children from sexual predators. The idea being that if you make the system ridiculously cumbersome, the sexual predator will lose interest and go back to stalking teenage girls on myspace. So we&rsquo;re left with the following: If I want to add you as a friend, I have to give you my 16-digit code, you put this into your Wii, and then you have to give me your 16-digit code and I have to put this into my Wii. Except we can&rsquo;t actually exchange codes over the Wii, so we have to find some other way of getting our friends codes to each other. But once we have <em>independently added each other</em>, that&rsquo;s when the fun begins! We will be able to&hellip; well, we can&rsquo;t play any games together yet, because there aren&rsquo;t any games to play online yet. We can send each other messages, I guess. And send each other Miis (those cute characters that are popping up everywhere). Apart from that, uh&hellip;</p> <p>The exchange (and entry) of these 16-digit codes is so awkward that I have actually traded Wii friends codes <em>using Xbox Live</em>. If that doesn&rsquo;t set alarm bells ringing in Nintendo HQ, there&rsquo;s something very wrong here.</p> <p>And to top this all off, Pokemon Battle Revolution &ndash; the first online-enabled Wii game &ndash; will require an entirely new, completely separate code for friends to play with each other. I mean, good grief! <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satoru_Iwata">Iwata-san</a>, protecting children from online predators is commendable and all, but surely the rest of us shouldn&rsquo;t be punished as well?</p> <p>And now <a href="http://blog.wired.com/games/2007/02/square_enix_wan.html">even big developers are telling Nintendo</a> that the Wii &ldquo;Friend code&rdquo; system is <strong>broken</strong> and <strong>dumb</strong>. So there&rsquo;s hope yet.</p> <h3 id="post-launch-game-drought">Post-launch Game Drought</h3> <p>Zelda aside, there hasn&rsquo;t been a single truly compelling purchase for the Wii since it launched. Wario Ware: Smooth Moves is a fun diversion, but the system already has a bunch of games based around mini-games, so it&rsquo;s hard to get excited about a bunch more. <a href="http://www.eurogamer.net/releases.php?platform=revolution">The upcoming release pipeline</a> is pretty bleak, with no real excitement until Mario Galaxy in June. Until then, we get a bunch of lackluster third-party titles and ports from other systems (<a href="http://www.eurogamer.net/game.php?game_id=7000">Price of Persia</a> being a port of the PSP version(!) of the game).</p> <p>Come on Nintendo, people knew there was going to be a bit of a drought while you found your feet. People still went and bought the system on the promise of something remarkable. How&rsquo;s about you live up to that with more than just mini-games?</p> <h3 id="features-removed-from-virtual-console-games">Features Removed From Virtual Console Games</h3> <p><a href="http://www.lowbrowculture.com/2006/12/05/embracing-change/">When I first spoke about the Wii&rsquo;s Virtual Console in December</a>, I said</p> <blockquote>But the games that you play on the Virtual Console will be pixel-perfect versions of the games you played on your NES, SNES, N64, Megadrive or PC Engine. As the man says: Nothing added, nothing taken away.</blockquote> <p>Turns out this isn&rsquo;t quite true - <a href="http://blog.wired.com/games/2007/01/no_ghost_data_f.html">Nintendo removed expansion port functionality from Nintendo 64 games on the Virtual Console</a>, which means that you can&rsquo;t save data on some games (such as ghost data on Mario Kart 64), but more importantly means that <a href="http://www.computerandvideogames.com/article.php?id=148897&amp;skip=yes">there will be no rumble in VC games</a>, despite the presence of a rumble motor in the Gamecube controller. These may be relatively minor issues, but all the same, as someone who is being asked to pay unreasonable prices to play these games, the least I can expect is the same experience. I mean, it&rsquo;s only right. Right?</p> <h3 id="misc-issues">Misc issues</h3> <ol> <li> <p>Wireless out of the box! Always-on technology! Why can&rsquo;t these two things come together and give me an experience where my Wii doesn&rsquo;t have to do a 15-second connection test each time I connect to the Wii shop?</p> </li> <li> <p>We&rsquo;re no longer dealing with bricks-and-mortar distributors and export laws, so why can&rsquo;t I buy games from the US Virtual Console shop? Why are Nintendo only going to allow me to buy games that were originally released in Europe? Playing games that were never released here is half the reason I love emulators so much.</p> </li> <li> <p>I was going to <a href="http://www.wiihaveaproblem.com/">make a joke about straps</a> here, but then I figured, nah&hellip;</p> </li> </ol> Jameson Dublin International Film Festival https://lowbrowculture.com/post/jameson-dublin-international-film-festival/ Thu, 01 Feb 2007 15:21:38 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/jameson-dublin-international-film-festival/ <p>Advertising in videogames isn&rsquo;t necessarily a bad thing. In games set in a &lsquo;realistic&rsquo; universe, it can add an extra element of realism. Except when there&rsquo;s just one product being advertised. For example, Rainbow Six Vegas - are you trying to tell me that only ads on the main strip in Las Vegas are for Axe Deoderant?</p> <p>Well, that&rsquo;s what it&rsquo;s like in Dublin this morning. Overnight, virtually every advertising space seems to have been taken over by ads for the <a href="http://www.dubliniff.com/">Jameson Dublin International Film Festival</a>, which &rsquo;launched&rsquo; last night.</p> <p>There&rsquo;s a complete list of the movies <a href="http://www.dubliniff.com">on their website</a>. Here&rsquo;s the ones I&rsquo;d be interested in seeing:</p> <h3 id="this-is-englandhttpwwwdubliniffcomfilmsshow43"><a href="http://www.dubliniff.com/films/show/43">This is England</a></h3> <p>Shane Meadow&rsquo;s previous film, <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0575079/">Dead Man&rsquo;s Shoes</a> absolutely blew my socks off. Can&rsquo;t wait to see what he does with this story of a gang of skinheads in the 80s.</p> <h3 id="half-nelsonhttpwwwdubliniffcomfilmsshow53"><a href="http://www.dubliniff.com/films/show/53">Half Nelson</a></h3> <p>Y&rsquo;know&hellip; I might take some shit for this, but I really enjoyed <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0332280/">The Notebook</a>. It was cheesy and soppy but it had James Garner bawling his eyes out, so I figure it&rsquo;s okay. And Ryan Gosling was pretty good as the lead. And with an oscar nod for his performance in this, I&rsquo;d say it&rsquo;s worth checking out.</p> <h3 id="the-dreamershttpwwwdubliniffcomfilmsshow45"><a href="http://www.dubliniff.com/films/show/45">The Dreamers</a></h3> <p>Eva Green in the nip.</p> <h3 id="oncehttpwwwdubliniffcomfilmsshow55"><a href="http://www.dubliniff.com/films/show/55">Once</a></h3> <p>This Irish movie did really well in Sundance. But will my seething hatred of Glen Hansard keep me away? Probably.</p> <h3 id="naked-lunchhttpwwwdubliniffcomfilmsshow68"><a href="http://www.dubliniff.com/films/show/68">Naked Lunch</a></h3> <p>Naked Lunch! On the big screen!</p> <h3 id="fast-food-nationhttpwwwdubliniffcomfilmsshow77"><a href="http://www.dubliniff.com/films/show/77">Fast Food Nation</a></h3> <p>Dramatization of the non-fiction account of the crazy goings-on in the fast food industry. Eric Schlosser was interviewed in last week&rsquo;s Observer and came across as a thoroughly nice bloke.</p> <h3 id="sunshinehttpwwwdubliniffcomfilmsshow96"><a href="http://www.dubliniff.com/films/show/96">Sunshine</a></h3> <p>Any movie that can draw comparisons to Tartakovsky is at least worth a look. The fact that it&rsquo;s Danny Boyle, Alex Garland and Cillian Murphy together again? Well, that&rsquo;s just a bonus.</p> <h3 id="surprise-filmhttpwwwdubliniffcomfilmsshow32"><a href="http://www.dubliniff.com/films/show/32">Surprise Film</a></h3> <p>A tenner says that this will be Darren Aronofsky&rsquo;s <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0414993/">The Fountain</a>.</p> Game On, London https://lowbrowculture.com/post/game-on-london/ Wed, 24 Jan 2007 23:17:33 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/game-on-london/ <p>My girlfriend is amazing. Despite the fact that she can barely tolerate videogames, she still whisked me away to London last weekend, just to bring me to the <a href="http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/exhibitions/gameon/">Game On exhibition in the Science Museum</a>, where I could play virtually every game ever made, on every system ever made. Just think about this for a second: this is like someone who is lactose intolerant having a milkshake with you, just because it&rsquo;s your birthday.</p> <p>Amazing.</p> <p>I got to play <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spacewar">SpaceWar</a>*! And <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_invaders">Space Invaders</a>! And <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steel_Battalion">Steel Battalion</a> (with the huge controller)! And the old Star Wars Arcade game! And a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Playstation_3">Playstation 3</a>!</p> <p>Actually, this last one wasn&rsquo;t that amazing.</p> <p>They were running a demo of the racing game, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MotorStorm">Motorstorm</a>. When I took the controller, I noticed that the controller wasn&rsquo;t set up to use the motion control. So I went to quit the current race and turn it on. Except, on this pre-release hardware, running this pre-release demo, clicking &ldquo;quit&rdquo; causes the machine to freeze. Hard. The PlayStation 3 itself was enclosed in a plastic box, so they started by trying to squeeze a bent metal coathanger through one of the ventilation holes to hit the &lsquo;reset&rsquo; button. When this didn&rsquo;t work, they had to get a <em>drill</em> to remove the plastic box.</p> <p>Fortunately, my amazing girlfriend was on-hand to document the faces I made as people scrambled about with power tools trying to fix the obscenely expensive piece of consumer electronics I just broke.</p> <p><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/thrillho/365941112/"><img src="http://farm1.static.flickr.com/163/365941112_4c33f81351.jpg" alt="PS3 at Science Museum"></a></p> <p>Yeah, she&rsquo;s amazing.</p> <p><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/thrillho/sets/72157594494098401/">More photos from my trip up on Flickr</a></p> <ul> <li> <ul> <li>running <em>beside</em> a PDP-1, but not <em>on</em> a PDP-1</li> </ul> </li> </ul> New Ghostbusters game? → https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LHi_bGgtAvY Mon, 15 Jan 2007 11:00:56 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/new-ghostbusters-game/ <p>Oh boy, please let this be real&hellip;</p> <p>Although their character models are firmly in the middle of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncanny_Valley">uncanny valley</a>:</p> <p>(via <a href="http://www.destructoid.com">Destructoid</a>)</p> <p>Technorati Tags: <a href="http://www.technorati.com/tag/games">games</a>, <a href="http://www.technorati.com/tag/movies">movies</a></p> Elite Beat Agents https://lowbrowculture.com/post/elite-beat-agents/ Fri, 12 Jan 2007 18:45:15 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/elite-beat-agents/ <p><img src="http://www.lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2007/01/eba.jpg" alt="eba.jpg"> If <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Full_Spectrum_Warrior">Full Spectrum Warrior</a> can be used to train soldiers in the US Army, I don&rsquo;t understand why crisis negotiators and bomb disposal teams aren&rsquo;t using <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elite_Beat_Agents">Elite Beat Agents</a> to train their new recruits. No other game comes close to teaching you the importance of staying calm under pressure like EBA.</p> <p>Elite Beat Agents is the English-language version of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osu%21_Tatakae%21_Ouendan">Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan!</a>, a <em>cheerleading</em> game which appeared on the DS in Japan a while ago. It&rsquo;s basically a rhythm-action game, requiring you to tap the screen in the right place, in time with the music (the unbearably cute J-Pop of the original replaced with unbearably cute western pop in EBA). Simple, right?</p> <p>Wrong.</p> <p>The whole time you&rsquo;re playing, your &ldquo;Elite Meter&rdquo; is trickling down. Tapping the screen at the right time will top this up slightly (How well you tap the screen in time with the music affects the amount that this gets &rsquo;topped up&rsquo;). Miss a note and your Elite Meter drops slightly. If your Elite Meter drops to nothing, it&rsquo;s game over.</p> <p>There&rsquo;s a point, roughly halfway along your Elite Meter where it turns from yellow (fine) into red (danger!). Once you cross into the red, your on-screen cheerleaders stop cheering. They stand there, panting, until you manage to bring the Elite Meter out of the red. With all its liveliness and constant movement, the sight of your cheerleaders standing completely motionless, is the most distracting thing in the game.</p> <p>If you get into the red, it&rsquo;s very easy to drag yourself back out: all you need to do is score some perfect hits and boost your Elite Meter. But when you realise your cheerleaders aren&rsquo;t dancing, you panic. You start keeping one eye on your Elite Meter. Then all sense of rhythm goes out the window and it&rsquo;s virtually impossible to get the perfect hits you need. In other words, if you panic and lose focus, it&rsquo;s game over. It took me a long time to learn this. Frustration almost drove me to shove the stylus through my DS while trying to crack &ldquo;Jumpin&rsquo; Jack Flash&rdquo;, but I got there in the end.</p> <p>So if you ever see a guy defusing a bomb and humming &lsquo;Sk8r Boi&rsquo;, don&rsquo;t worry. You&rsquo;re in good hands.</p> <p>So far, Elite Beat Agents hasn&rsquo;t been given a UK release, but DS games aren&rsquo;t region-locked, <a href="http://search.ebay.com/elite-beat-agents_W0QQfkrZ1QQfromZR8QQsubmitsearchZSearch">so buy a copy from eBay</a> and enjoy.</p> <p>{<a href="http://technorati.com/tag/games">games</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/nintendo">nintendo</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/ds">DS</a>}</p> <p>Technorati Tags: <a href="http://www.technorati.com/tag/ds">ds</a>, <a href="http://www.technorati.com/tag/games">games</a>, <a href="http://www.technorati.com/tag/nintendo">nintendo</a></p> iPhone and some questions https://lowbrowculture.com/post/iphone-and-some-questions/ Tue, 09 Jan 2007 18:57:50 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/iphone-and-some-questions/ <p>Apple did the expectedly-unexpected and announced the <a href="http://www.apple.com/iphone/">iPhone</a>.</p> <p>It&rsquo;s a widescreen iPod mixed with a mobile phone mixed with a teeny-tiny Mac for Safari and Mail. Put simply, this is the most awesome piece of consumer electronics I have ever seen, so far. And I&rsquo;ve seen a lot.</p> <p>$599 for 8GB version. $499 for 4GB version.</p> <p>So, some questions:</p> <ol> <li> <p>Released in June in the US, but <strong>Q4 2007 IN EUROPE?! WHYYY?</strong> Oh the humanity.</p> </li> <li> <p>5 hour talk/video battery life, 16 hour audio battery life&hellip; but <strong>what&rsquo;s the standby life?</strong></p> </li> <li> <p>Who will be the carrier partner in Ireland? I&rsquo;m guessing this will be O2, since they&rsquo;ve got a lot of ties with Apple, but&hellip;</p> </li> <li> <p>Why partner with Google for the maps and search, but partner with Yahoo for the mail?</p> </li> <li> <p><strike>How does it know where you are for the location-aware maps stuff? Cellular towers? Or is this a feature of 3G?</strike></p> </li> </ol> <p><strong>Update:</strong> Answered in the actual keynote - there doesn&rsquo;t seem to be any location-awareness in the phone. Steve had manually entered &ldquo;Moscone West&rdquo; as as &lsquo;saved location&rsquo; in the maps application</p> <ol start="6"> <li> <p>Are there any other differences between the two versions? Because I can&rsquo;t imagine anyone not springing the extra $100 for the larger capacity one.</p> </li> <li> <p>What kind of graphics chip is powering this beast?</p> </li> </ol> <p>Oh yeah, and there was something about a <a href="http://www.apple.com/appletv/">media streamer</a> that&rsquo;s coming out in February, but who the shit really cares about that? Especially since <a href="http://www.apple.com/appletv/specs.html">it doesn&rsquo;t even output in 1080p</a>.</p> Indiana Jones 4 to start production in 2007 → http://www.lucasfilm.com/press/news/news20070102.html Tue, 09 Jan 2007 12:39:32 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/indiana-jones-4-to-start-production-in-2007/ <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2007/01/ny12212292202-big.jpg" alt="ny12212292202-big.jpg"></p> <blockquote> <p>In a long-awaited announcement, George Lucas and Steven Spielberg revealed today that the fourth installment of Indiana Jones will begin production in June 2007. Harrison Ford returns in his role as the daring Dr. Jones for the new adventure. The film will be produced by Lucasfilm Ltd., directed by Steven Spielberg and released by Paramount Pictures throughout the world in May 2008.</p> </blockquote> <p>You have no idea how happy this makes me.</p> First Pics Surface of Wii-Mote Recharger - 1up.com → http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3156269 Tue, 09 Jan 2007 11:20:34 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/first-pics-surface-of-wii-mote-recharger-1upcom/ <p>Number one on my list of annoyances with the Wii. I&rsquo;ve gone through 2 sets of batteries playing Zelda alone. This can&rsquo;t come soon enough.</p> 101 Ways to Save Apple https://lowbrowculture.com/post/101-ways-to-save-apple/ Tue, 09 Jan 2007 10:46:38 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/101-ways-to-save-apple/ <p>In honour of today&rsquo;s Macworld keynote (hoping for: iTV, Leopard release date), here&rsquo;s a blast from the past: Wired&rsquo;s 1997 article <a href="http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/5.06/apple.html">&ldquo;101 Ways to Save Apple&rdquo;</a>.</p> <p>Some of these are deliberately off the wall, but some of them have been adopted by &rsquo;new&rsquo; Apple. For example:</p> <blockquote>**98. Testimonials.** Create commercials featuring real-life people in situations where buying a Mac (or switching to a Mac) saved the day.</blockquote> <p>So Wired is indirectly responsible for <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ellen_Feiss">Ellen Feiss</a>?</p> Radio controlled R2D2 ... with built-in DVD player and projector? → http://www.gizmodo.com/gadgets/home-entertainment/star-wars-projector-shaped-like-r2d2-does-not-project-leia-holos-226868.php Mon, 08 Jan 2007 14:15:22 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/radio-controlled-r2d2-with-built-in-dvd-player-and-projector/ <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2007/01/starwars-projector.jpg" alt="starwars-projector.jpg"></p> <p>So let me get this straight&hellip; it&rsquo;s shaped like R2D2. It&rsquo;s radio controlled. It&rsquo;s got a DVD Player. It&rsquo;s got a Projector. It&rsquo;s got an iPod dock. It&rsquo;s got a radio. It&rsquo;s got USB inputs. It will play MP4 files. And its remote control is shaped like the Millenium Falcon?</p> <p>I&rsquo;m totally hard right now.</p> What would Eddie Hobbs do? https://lowbrowculture.com/post/what-would-eddie-hobbs-do/ Mon, 08 Jan 2007 11:35:32 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/what-would-eddie-hobbs-do/ <p><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/thrillho/350297527/"><img src="http://farm1.static.flickr.com/138/350297527_ae232cab5f_m.jpg" alt="Ten Thousand Euro, Shredded"></a></p> <p><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/thrillho/350297918/"><img src="http://farm1.static.flickr.com/151/350297918_31dc9f8ac8_m.jpg" alt="Ten Thousand Euro, Shredded"></a></p> <p>This is <strong>ten thousand euros</strong>, in tens, twenties and fifties, completely shredded. <a href="http://seamus_walsh.livejournal.com/">Seamus</a> gave it to me on Saturday at <a href="http://www.thumped.com/bbs/showthread.php?t=43497">Rock and Roll Motherfucker</a> in Voodoo.</p> <p>And now I don&rsquo;t know what to do. With enough effort, I could probably crack this open and sellotape all this back together. But is there more than EUR10,000 worth of effort involved? Either way, it&rsquo;s still one of the most unique and depressing birthday presents anyone has given me.</p> Colours of the Incredibles https://lowbrowculture.com/post/cinema-verite/the-incredibles-colours/ Fri, 05 Jan 2007 17:08:25 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/cinema-verite/the-incredibles-colours/ <p><a href="http://www.pixar.com/">Pixar</a> make some stunning movies. You could complain that their stories are pretty basic but from a visual standpoint, there&rsquo;s no disputing their beauty.</p> <p>One thing I love about these movies is the amount of effort that goes into choosing the colour palette for the movie. Yet, because of the speed of the action, this work barely even get noticed.</p> <p>So what would it look like if we strip out the &lsquo;image&rsquo; from these images, and leave only the colour information?</p> <p>I used the Incredibles for this experiment because it&rsquo;s my favourite Pixar movie so far. Incidentally, there&rsquo;s an &ldquo;<a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Art-Incredibles-Mark-Cotta-Vaz/dp/0811844331/sr=8-1/qid=1168016746/ref=sr_1_1/202-0359632-8438215?ie=UTF8&amp;s=books">Art of the Incredibles</a>&quot;-sized space on my bookshelf, in case anyone feels like filling it for me.</p> <!-- more --> <p>(click on image for higher-res version - 960 * 1308 px, 186.5KB)</p> <p><a href="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/projects/cinema/incredibles.jpg"><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/projects/cinema/incredibles_thumb.jpg" alt=""></a></p> Star Wars: Original Version vs Special Edition https://lowbrowculture.com/post/cinema-verite/star-wars-original-version-vs-special-edition/ Fri, 05 Jan 2007 16:16:12 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/cinema-verite/star-wars-original-version-vs-special-edition/ <p>I know it&rsquo;s Star Wars, but&hellip; oh look, I just <em>had</em> to, okay?</p> <p>With movies laid flat like this, it&rsquo;s very easy to see how movies are structured. Much easier than actually watching them as movies. Now, this lead to a question: how are different <em>versions</em> of the same movie constructed? For example, how is Apocalypse Now structured compared to Apocalypse Now Redux? How does the American release of The Shining compare to the European version? Or, better still, just exactly how &ldquo;shot for shot&rdquo; was Gus Van Sant&rsquo;s remake of Psycho?</p> <p>Let&rsquo;s start on an easy one: Star Wars.</p> <p>(click on image for higher-res version - 1940 * 1416 px, 1.1MB)</p> <p><a href="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/projects/cinema/starwars-comparison.jpg"><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/projects/cinema/starwars-comparison_thumb.jpg" alt=""></a></p> <p>Strangely, for all his fucking about, Lucas has kept the structure remarkably intact. For most of the run-time, the two movies track each other pretty well, being only a few seconds out of sync. It&rsquo;s not until the second half when they really start to diverge. But even still, the Special Edition is only a couple of minutes longer than the original version. Which is odd, because the Special Edition <em>felt</em> like it was a lot longer.</p> <p>I also like the colours in the special edition. The faded pastel colours of the original are nice and all, but are definitely improved with a bit of spit and polish.</p> <p>Not sure about the change of colour in the scene with Luke looking at the two suns though.</p> Koyaanisqatsi https://lowbrowculture.com/post/cinema-verite/koyaanisqatsi/ Fri, 05 Jan 2007 15:30:10 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/cinema-verite/koyaanisqatsi/ <p>When movies are torn apart and stitched back together like this, it lets you see the movie with a completely different perspective. Presenting them as one flat image, rather than a fast-moving <em>sequence</em> of images essentially allows one to, uh&hellip; &lsquo;see through time&rsquo;, so to speak. The editing is torn apart and the pacing of the movie is laid bare, for all to see.</p> <p><strong>Koyaanisqatsi</strong> (<a href="http://www.lowbrowculture.com/2005/07/04/retrospective-koyaanisqatsi/">an old favourite</a> here at lowbrowculture) is a movie stripped to its fewest components. It is a movie that is <em>all about</em> the image and the editing. So that&rsquo;s probably a pretty good place to start.</p> <!-- more --> <p>(click on image for higher-res version - 960 * 972 px, 416KB)</p> <p><a href="http://www.lowbrowculture.com/pictures/projects/cinema/koyaanisqatsi.jpg"><img src="http://www.lowbrowculture.com/pictures/projects/cinema/koyaanisqatsi_thumb.jpg" alt=""></a></p> <p>What I love about this movie and this set of images is just how perfect each shot is - each frame above could easily exist outside of the movie, like a perfectly-composed photograph.</p> New Project: Cinema Verite https://lowbrowculture.com/post/new-project-cinema-verite/ Fri, 05 Jan 2007 15:20:09 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/new-project-cinema-verite/ <p>I&rsquo;m working on a new project: <a href="https://lowbrowculture.com/projects/cinema-verite">Cinema Verite</a>.</p> <p>Using <a href="http://www.processing.org">processing</a> (a powerful programming language with a lot of media capabilities), I&rsquo;m ripping apart some of my favourite movies and putting them back together again. By taking screenshots at every second of the movie and laying them out flat - one image per second, sixty images per row - you get a completely different view of the movie.</p> <p>So yeah, <a href="https://lowbrowculture.com/projects/cinema-verity">check it out</a>, if you like that kind of thing.</p> Charlie Kaufman I'm not https://lowbrowculture.com/post/charlie-kaufman-im-not/ Fri, 05 Jan 2007 15:03:37 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/charlie-kaufman-im-not/ <p>I have been itching to do a screenwriting course for ages now. I&rsquo;ve got a bunch of movie ideas that I don&rsquo;t really&hellip; I don&rsquo;t know, I don&rsquo;t necessarily expect to do anything with them, but I want to get them out of my head, just so my brain isn&rsquo;t cluttered with half-started/half-finished projects. The problem with the way I write, as you probably noticed, is that I find it hard to stay on one track for any length of time. Whenever I would start a screenplay, I would write the ideas I had in a half-assed way and then just hit a wall. I guess this stems from the way I come up with ideas for movies. For example, I want to write something called &ldquo;<strong>JOHN STEELE DOESN&rsquo;T KNOW HOW TO DIE</strong>&rdquo;, but where the fuck do I begin?</p> <p>So, after putting it off for months, I finally signed up for the filmbase course - &ldquo;<a href="http://www.filmbase.ie/training/script_courses.php">Screenwriting for Beginners</a>&rdquo;, which finished a couple of weeks ago.</p> <p>I found the whole thing very useful. I learned all the sorts of useful &lsquo;cheats&rsquo; to get you past the various stumbling blocks you&rsquo;re likely to run into. Like how to flesh out your characters before you ever put pen to paper (or uh&hellip; fingers to keyboard) - useful because you know exactly how your characters will react in <em>any situation</em> you put them in. Or the other cheat of buying a book of baby names for when you find yourself struggling to find a decent name for your characters. (Which led to an interesting moment when I went into Waterstones to buy a book of baby names and got served by a friend of mine - so that&rsquo;s what gobsmacked looks like).</p> <p>And the tutor, <a href="http://www.filmbase.ie/training/Lindsay-Sedgwick.php">Lindsay Sedgewick</a> was friendly, helpful and knowledgeable. Whenever I gave her ideas for her to look over, she seemed to know exactly which bits I was unhappy with and always gave me useful suggestions for how to improve them. Although she did poo-poo one of my favourite ideas (involving a lost commune of hippies who have to re-join society after their crop of weed fails), but never mind.</p> <p>So after finishing it, I started reading a few books on the subject: Joseph Campbell, Robert McKee, etc. So far, doing a good job of avoiding Syd Field. One of the books has really stood out for me: Blake Snyder&rsquo;s &ldquo;Save the Cat&rdquo;. This one stands out because it doesn&rsquo;t shy away from the &lsquo;high concept&rsquo; side of screenwriting. In fact, for this book, the higher the concept, the better, <em>as long as it sells</em>. Which is just fine by us here on lowbrowculture.com. Unfortunately, <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0811414/">his IMDB credits</a> make it a little hard to take the whole thing seriously&hellip; would you take advice from the guy who wrote &ldquo;Blank Check&rdquo; and uh&hellip; &ldquo;Stop, or my Mom will Shoot!&rdquo;?</p> <p>Ugh.</p> <p>But seriously, any other potential would-be-but-not-really screenwriters out there on the interpod could do a lot worse than to check it out. Especially if you would rather be the next Shane Black than the next Wes Anderson.</p> <p>Oh, and while you&rsquo;re at it, you should check out <a href="http://www.celtx.com/">Celtx</a>, a free (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libre#Free_as_in_beer_versus_free_as_in_speech">as in &lsquo;speech&rsquo;</a>) screenplay editor that is replacing Final Draft for a lot of people.</p> Thank Christ that's over https://lowbrowculture.com/post/2978/ Fri, 29 Dec 2006 10:14:15 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/2978/ <p><img src="http://www.lowbrowculture.com/pictures/10670837-1.jpg" alt=""></p> <p>And so that&rsquo;s another Christmas done and dusted. I hope everyone got what they wanted from Santa.</p> <p>Except you fuckers who keep asking for &ldquo;world peace.&rdquo; Give it up. Quit deluding yourselves, <strong>it&rsquo;s never going to happen</strong>. Just ask for a nice 42&quot; Sony Bravia LCD TV instead.</p> Michael Crichton, jurassic prick - New Republic → http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?pt=kVkvv0cQL8S27qg04PBaUS%3D%3D Tue, 19 Dec 2006 09:31:40 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/michael-crichton-jurassic-prick-new-republic/ <p>Great headline for a very, very bizarre story</p> Xbox 360 Versus PlayStation 3 Graphics Comparison on GameSpot → http://www.gamespot.com/features/6162742/index.html Thu, 07 Dec 2006 11:43:02 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/xbox-360-versus-playstation-3-graphics-comparison-on-gamespot/ <p>Might be useful for anyone still sitting on the fence as to what next-generation games console they&rsquo;re planning to get.</p> Small Claims Court accepting on-line applications now → http://www.courts.ie/Courts.ie/Library3.nsf/6556fea313d95d3180256a990052c571/fa1612690a8f33978025720a00338fe7?OpenDocument Wed, 06 Dec 2006 12:14:53 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/small-claims-court-accepting-on-line-applications-now/ <p>Sweet! I&rsquo;m going to automate the procedure on my phone so I can send in an application while I&rsquo;m arguing with the people in the shop. &quot;Hang on a second&hellip; wait&hellip; that&rsquo;s it, I&rsquo;ve got your fucking number, pal.&quot;</p> Halo 3 Trailer https://lowbrowculture.com/post/halo-3-trailer/ Wed, 06 Dec 2006 11:26:06 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/halo-3-trailer/ <p>[<img src="http://www.lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2006/12/halo3_cgi_screenshot.jpg" alt="halo3_cgi_screenshot.jpg">](&lt;a href=)</p> <p>The new CGI/live-action trailer for Halo 3 that ran during Monday Night Football in the USA hit the interpod yesterday. You can check out <a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/SHzL4AfeSDE">the crappy-quality Youtube version</a> or <a href="http://www.xboxyde.com/news_3863_en.html">download the high quality version from Xboxyde</a>.</p> <p>There&rsquo;s something important to note about this trailer. This is less a trailer for &ldquo;Halo 3&rdquo; than it is for &ldquo;Halo&rdquo; as a brand. And there&rsquo;s a real simple reason for this: it&rsquo;s a dual purpose trailer. First, it&rsquo;s meant to remind people of Halo&rsquo;s (and Microsoft&rsquo;s) relevance in a post-PlayStation 3 environment. And secondly, it&rsquo;s meant to &ldquo;sell&rdquo; Halo to the movie studios after <a href="http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117952317.html?categoryid=13&amp;cs=1">Universal and Fox got cold feet and pulled the plug on the Halo Movie</a>. Before, they were being asked to put up $135m on a first-time director based on Peter Jackson&rsquo;s word and they said &ldquo;no&rdquo;. Now they&rsquo;re being asked to put up $135m based on a well-received, highly-polished trailer.</p> <p>Let&rsquo;s see if they&rsquo;ll change their minds.</p> <p><strong>Update:</strong> I thought this trailer was directed by <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0088955/">Neill Blomkamp</a>, who was lined up as the director of the Halo movie before the plug got pulled. It was, in fact, directed by <a href="http://www.josephkosinski.com">Joseph Kosinski</a>, who previously directed the <a href="http://www.lowbrowculture.com/2006/11/16/gears-of-war-pre-emergence-day/">awesome, beautiful &ldquo;Mad Love&rdquo; trailer for Gears of War</a>.</p> Wired News: Say Hello to the Goodbye Weapon → http://www.wired.com/news/technology/1,72134-0.html Tue, 05 Dec 2006 17:03:02 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/wired-news-say-hello-to-the-goodbye-weapon/ <p>&lsquo;The beam produces what experimenters call the &quot;Goodbye effect,&quot; or &quot;prompt and highly motivated escape behavior.&quot;&rsquo; - because the &quot;OH SHIT MY FACE IS MELTING! YOU HEAR ME? MY FUCKING FACE IS MELTING effect&quot; would have been a much tougher sell</p> Embracing change https://lowbrowculture.com/post/embracing-change/ Tue, 05 Dec 2006 11:41:39 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/embracing-change/ <p><a href="http://blog.thoughtwax.com/?p=245">Over at thoughtwax, Emmet throws out a few ideas</a> regarding emulation and how this fits with the Nintendo Wii&rsquo;s Virtual Console functionality, which will allow you to download old NES, SNES, N64, Megadrive and PC Engine games from Nintendo&rsquo;s online marketplace. He suggests that the return to simplicity shows that games are &ldquo;maturing&rdquo;.</p> <p>Here&rsquo;s what I think.</p> <p>The Nintendo Wii is a console borne out of necessity. Compared to huge corporations like Sony and Microsoft, Nintendo just didn&rsquo;t have the cash reserves necessary to compete properly in the &rsquo;next generation&rsquo; of game consoles. The console arms race had escalated to the point where failure for Nintendo could mean the end of the company. So what do they do? They bow out, go a completely different direction. Chase an entirely different market.</p> <p>The point I&rsquo;m trying to make here is that the Nintendo Wii is, by design, a &lsquo;disruptive&rsquo; console, so it&rsquo;s easy to interpret this as a sign of many things. But is it a sign that the industry is maturing?</p> <p>Well, it means <em>Nintendo</em> is maturing <em>as a business</em>. With the weight of the failures of its last three (non-handheld) consoles straining the company&rsquo;s relevance, it seems to be learning from its mistakes. But until we see how well the Wii is accepted by both the consumers and developers, it&rsquo;s hard to say if this is any sign that the <em>industry</em> is maturing.</p> <p>But what about the return to simplistic games? Does the kind of thoughtful reduction offered by the games from the Virtual Console mean that Nintendo is also maturing, drawing us into a new era of videogames? Are games entering their minimalist period?</p> <p>Maybe not. Nintendo has fantastic first-party titles. In fact, it has traditionally had trouble securing third-party games because of the quality of its first-party titles. This means that the really quality games for Nintendo consoles come from Nintendo themselves and, given the length of time it takes to develop games, there could be months between &lsquo;quality&rsquo; releases. Looking forward, and given the unusual nature of the Wii&rsquo;s control system, there&rsquo;s a definite possibility that there will not be a steady stream of games for the Wii for some time. We can see how the drought of games throughout the year affected the Xbox 360 sales. So Nintendo did the only smart thing they could: they plundered their back-catalogue for their Virtual Console. This does two things - one, it gives them an instantly available source of games for their new machine and two, it gives them a way to constantly release &rsquo;new&rsquo; games to their customers.</p> <p>But the games that you play on the Virtual Console will be pixel-perfect versions of the games you played on your NES, SNES, N64, Megadrive or PC Engine. As the man says: Nothing added, nothing taken away. This shows no more maturity than the PlayStation 3&rsquo;s ability to play games from PlayStation 1. Or the Xbox 360&rsquo;s ability to play Xbox games. The only difference here is that PlayStation and Xbox&rsquo;s disk-based formats have made it easy to provide backward compatibility to their last consoles whereas Nintendo&rsquo;s ever-changing cartridge-based formats means people will have little choice but to buy up all their old games.</p> <p>But think about Xbox Live Arcade. Like the Wii&rsquo;s Virtual Console, it enables a player to download old arcade games and play them on their brand-new consoles. Except although nothing has been taken away, plenty has been added. For example, download Street Fighter 2 and you can play online against someone a thousand miles away from you. This, to me, is innovation. This, to me, is maturity. Accepting the on-line world and the way that games are more fun when they&rsquo;re social (for an example of this, compare the experience of the two-player Live co-op version of Gears of War to the solo one-player version) shows more maturity than Nintedo&rsquo;s apprach.</p> <p>But I do think Nintendo are following the right path. I was completely wrong about the DS because I didn&rsquo;t think its stylus control would be used. I couldn&rsquo;t imagine the kind of innovation it brought about because I was thinking too small. Nintendo have capitalised on this. But will it succeed?</p> <p>Perhaps Nintendo&rsquo;s smartest move to date has been to make the Wii as underpowered as they needed. The low cost of manufacturing means that, should the Wii be a complete disaster, Nintendo can easily scrap the entire thing and start work on a new console. Compare this to Sony&rsquo;s position - <a href="http://play.tm/story/8560">losing money, hand over fist</a>, and based on a recent shake-up of key personnel in Sony Computer Entertainment, <a href="http://blog.wired.com/games/2006/11/financial_times.html">analysts predict there may be no PlayStation 4</a>.</p> <p>Consoles have always been a risky business (just ask Atari or Sega). And one thing is for certain: the games industry must mature or die. But this is easier said than done.</p> This was a very difficult Thanksgiving - The Awful Forums → http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=2191192 Mon, 04 Dec 2006 17:57:38 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/this-was-a-very-difficult-thanksgiving-the-awful-forums/ <p>Dude is dropped a double-bombshell. First, he has a half-sister he knew nothing about. Then she turns out to be a porn star he&rsquo;s jerked off about. Then she turns up at thanksgiving dinner. Miramax is optioning this story for a Owen Wilson rom-com.</p> Real-world Ico → https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bTrm4Yie4ow Mon, 04 Dec 2006 13:02:54 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/real-world-ico/ <p>Cute!</p> NES Buckle → http://www.nesbuckle.com/buy_advantage.php Sun, 03 Dec 2006 00:50:25 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/nes-buckle/ <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2006/12/1498752799_l.jpg" alt="1498752799_l.jpg"></p> <p>This is like something from a demented personal ad. &ldquo;I enjoy long walks on the beach, fine wine, and HAVING A GIANT NINTENDO CONTROLLER ON MY COCK.&rdquo;</p> <p>I wish I could say it was a joke, but it&rsquo;s not.</p> Subtle Xbox ad on Gamespot's PlayStation 3 section → http://www.gamespot.com/ps3/index.html Fri, 01 Dec 2006 02:12:51 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/subtle-xbox-ad-on-gamespots-playstation-3-section/ <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2006/12/xbox_ps3ad.jpg" alt="Xbox Ad - thumb"></p> <p>Can you spot it?</p> Speaking of Mike Patton... → Fri, 01 Dec 2006 00:24:49 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/speaking-of-mike-patton/ <p>People often come up to me and say &ldquo;So John, what&rsquo;s the deal with Mike Patton?&rdquo; and after I get done smacking the mouth off them for asking stupid questions, I&rsquo;ll tell them to check youtube for Mike Patton videos. Specifically the one of Tomahawk playing &lsquo;God Hates a Coward&rsquo;.</p> <p>To save you a couple of clicks, here&rsquo;s that video:</p> <div class="embed video-player"> <iframe class="youtube-player" type="text/html" width="640" height="385" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/9X_RYMU5ATE" allowfullscreen frameborder="0"> </iframe> </div> <p>And as an extra video treat, an interview with <del>Mike Patton</del> Dyke Faggon</p> Guitar Hero 2 → Fri, 01 Dec 2006 00:17:56 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/guitar-hero-2/ <p><strong>Things I <em>love</em> about Guitar Hero 2</strong></p> <ul> <li> <p>Some of the songs are by the <em>actual artists</em> this time, not a stinkin&rsquo; cover band.</p> </li> <li> <p>The character animation is more entertaining and, more importantly, actually relates to what you&rsquo;re doing on your guitar-controller.</p> </li> <li> <p>Cherry-red SG controller.</p> </li> </ul> <p><strong>Things I <em>hate</em> about Guitar Hero 2</strong></p> <ul> <li> <p>So. Fucking. Hard. I can do most songs in Guitar Hero 1 on &lsquo;Expert&rsquo; without breaking a sweat. In Guitar Hero 2, Christ, &lsquo;hard&rsquo; is actually&hellip; hard.</p> </li> <li> <p>Some of the songs are really, really shit*. Example: Wolfmother? Really? (<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r98WLLWMq3o">Here&rsquo;s Mike Patton&rsquo;s Take on Wolfmother</a>: &ldquo;Are you hearing this shit? What year are we in?&rdquo;)</p> </li> <li> <p>These stickers are fucking lame.</p> </li> <li> <p>It&rsquo;s not Gears of War :(</p> </li> <li> <p>with a few exceptions. The major one being <a href="http://www.homestarrunner.com/sbemail58.html">Trogdor</a>, which is available as a hidden song. Trogdor comes in the NIIIIIIIiiiiiiiiiiight</p> </li> </ul> WoW Forums -> Funniest Corpse graffiti you have ever seen → http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=41936448&sid=1 Thu, 30 Nov 2006 11:12:08 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/wow-forums-funniest-corpse-graffiti-you-have-ever-seen/ <p>&ldquo;Corpse Graffiti&rdquo; just became my new favourite expression.</p> IGN's Top 50 Lost Loose Ends → http://tv.ign.com/articles/745/745595p1.html Tue, 28 Nov 2006 11:38:39 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/igns-top-50-lost-loose-ends/ <p>Useful list of the questions left unanswered by Lost, for those of us who have lost track</p> Christmas movies in the Square → http://www.dublinblog.ie/2006/11/27/christmas-in-dublin/ Tue, 28 Nov 2006 10:44:33 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/christmas-movies-in-the-square/ <p>Spotted over on the Dublin Community Blog, details of this year&rsquo;s Christmas events taking place in the city.</p> <p>Museums? Boring. Nativity with living animals? Opportunity to make my millions on You&rsquo;ve Been Framed watching baby jesus being kicked in the head by a donkey.</p> <p>But movies!</p> <p>Temple Bar will be doing free movies in the square over Christmas. Totally free, don&rsquo;t even need a ticket, you just turn up. The program includes:</p> <blockquote> <p>Love Actually - Thursday 7th December, 6pm</p> <p>It&rsquo;s a Wonderful Life - Saturday 9th December, 8pm</p> <p>Miracle on 34th Street - Thursday 14th December, 6pm</p> <p>The Santa Claus - Saturday 16th December, 8pm</p> <p>Santa Claus the Movie - Thursday 21st December, 6pm</p> <p><strong>Scrooged - Saturday 23rd December, 8pm</strong></p> </blockquote> <p>Now I know where I&rsquo;m going to be on Saturday 23rd December, 8pm. Anyone else coming along?</p> Away to Brussels https://lowbrowculture.com/post/away-to-brussels/ Fri, 24 Nov 2006 13:07:10 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/away-to-brussels/ <p>Herself indoors has been away in Brussels for some kind of conference or seminar or something (I wasn&rsquo;t really paying attention) and so rather than have her come back here today, I decided to head over there and we could make a weekend of it.</p> <p>Preparing for the trip has been rather disappointing. I used to think that the joke about Belgium being a really boring place was like the joke about the Irish being friendly. But it&rsquo;s not a joke. Belgium seems to be a really, really dull place to go. Even the guidebooks don&rsquo;t try to hide this. One of the &ldquo;22 Things You Must Do in Brussels&rdquo; is &ldquo;Go to Antwerp&rdquo;.</p> <p>(aside: I wonder if the guide to Antwerp suggests going to Brussels)</p> {fray} drugs - the worm within → http://www.fray.com/drugs/worm/ Fri, 24 Nov 2006 11:51:05 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/fray-drugs-the-worm-within/ <p>Ever had someone make you laugh when describing their experiences with a tapeworm? Well, there&rsquo;s a first time for everything.</p> Island at the Top of the World https://lowbrowculture.com/post/island-at-the-top-of-the-world/ Wed, 22 Nov 2006 16:58:17 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/island-at-the-top-of-the-world/ <p><a href="http://www.lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2006/11/island_1.jpg"><img src="http://www.lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2006/11/island_1_thumb.jpg" alt=""></a></p> <p>Something I love about my family are the weird, idiosyncratic movies that have been with us for as long as I can remember. I&rsquo;m sure your family has them too. The kinds of films that are almost a family institution, like the post-Christmas-dinner nap/singsong/fistfight, yet barely appear on anyone else&rsquo;s radar.</p> <p>For example, <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0055205/">Murder She Said</a> is a major deal within my family and this had a major impact on my development. Do you know what it&rsquo;s like to be 6 years old and be able to rattle off <em>every line</em> of a 30-year-old black and white Miss Marple movie? Compare this with the kid in my class who knew every line of The Terminator and would frequently reenact the <em>entire movie</em> in school. I bet that guy is making millions now.</p> <p>Then there&rsquo;s also <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0084637/">The Scarlet Pimpernel</a> (starring a young Ian McKellan), which is a useful tool for defusing family arguments. When things start getting out of hand and everyone&rsquo;s voices are booming a little more than they should, you just need to drop a mention of this movie and everyone&rsquo;s eyes glaze over and a happy smile appears on their faces like their medication has finally kicked in. This is the film that taught me the cruel reality that videotape starts to really lose its quality after a couple of hundred viewings.</p> <p>For me though, nothing can match <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0071671/">The Island at the Top of the World</a>. This movie had such a profound effect on my youth that it has become the yardstick by which all adventure movies are measured.</p> <p>Rather than try to bluster my way through a summary of the story, here&rsquo;s the blurb from the back of the box:</p> <blockquote>An American archaeology (David Hartman) joins a rich English businessman, an eccentric French inventor, and an Eskimo trapper (Mako, from Rising Sun), on an awe inspiring expedition to the Arctic. They're looking for a missing son, but they discover a world forgotten by time -- a world of 10th century Vikings, erupting volcanoes, and the legendary whales' graveyard.</blockquote> <p>The film itself has an impressive array of talent attached to it: directed by <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0829038/">Robert Stevenson</a>, who also directed many of Disney&rsquo;s most popular live-action movies including <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0058331/">Mary Poppins</a> and <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0064603/">The Love Bug</a>, the screenplay was written by <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0923735/">John Whedon</a>, grandfather of <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0923736/">Joss</a>, and the music was composed by <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0003574/">Maurice Jarre</a>, father of <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0418882/">Jean-Michel</a>.</p> <p><a href="http://www.lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2006/11/island_3.jpg"><img src="http://www.lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2006/11/island_3_thumb.jpg" alt=""></a></p> <p>It&rsquo;s not the cleverest movie you&rsquo;ll see and at times it will push your suspension of disbelief to breaking point. But it&rsquo;s a kid&rsquo;s movie. Y&rsquo;know&hellip; for kids! And that&rsquo;s just par for the course for kid&rsquo;s movies. Show me a kid&rsquo;s movie that doesn&rsquo;t require a conceptual leap of faith and I&rsquo;ll show you one dull kid&rsquo;s movie.</p> <p><a href="http://www.lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2006/11/island_5.jpg"><img src="http://www.lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2006/11/island_5_thumb.jpg" alt=""></a></p> <p>What makes Island at the Top of the World stand out is the charm with which it goes about telling its fantastic story and the spectacular, if slightly contrived set-pieces dotted throughout the movie. For example, at one stage, the characters outrun a flow of lava. If you leave your &lsquo;real-world logic&rsquo; at the door and forget about things like &ldquo;second degree burns&rdquo;, this is a lot more enjoyable; after all, this is a Disney movie, and you&rsquo;re only in trouble if the Lava actually catches you. As a child, this scene blew my mind and the sight of Donald Sinden being chased down by red-hot molten rock will stick with me forever.</p> <p><a href="http://www.lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2006/11/island_2.jpg"><img src="http://www.lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2006/11/island_2_thumb.jpg" alt=""></a></p> <p>And balls to people who complain about the special effects. More balls to people who try to give up excuses like &ldquo;they were good for the time&rdquo;. The effects in Island at the Top of the World are incredible. In terms of the the spectacle they create and the sense of <em>scale</em> they help achieve, it&rsquo;s easy to look on Island at the Top of the World as some proto-Lord of the Rings. The sight of the airship (the <em>Hyperion</em>) coming out of its hanger is just one example. I almost had a fit when I saw Disney had recreated this image for a restaurant in Disneyland Paris.</p> <p><a href="http://www.lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2006/11/island_4.jpg"><img src="http://www.lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2006/11/island_4_thumb.jpg" alt=""></a></p> <p>Also, I have to question some of the so-called &ldquo;mistakes&rdquo; in the special effects. For instance, in a scene where the evil high priest is blue-screened in front of a giant fire, his blue eyes meant that you could see the flames in his eyes. Is this <em>really</em> a mistake? Or another kick-ass idea in a movie full of kick-ass ideas? I&rsquo;m suggesting it&rsquo;s the latter. If you pay close attention to this scene (and I have, believe me), you&rsquo;ll see that this effect gets more pronounced as the priest gets angrier.</p> <p>It&rsquo;s almost a quarter-century since I first saw this movie. Watching it now is a weird experience. I used to know every line of this movie off by heart, but this useful knowledge has been buried under mounds of useless trivia (did you know you can tell a whale&rsquo;s age by <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earwax#Earwax_in_whales">cutting its earwax and counting the rings?</a>), so I get this weird, comforting, <em>giddy</em> sense of deja vu. Great times.</p> <p>Now if you don&rsquo;t mind, I think it&rsquo;s time I watched this again.</p> <p><a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Island-At-Top-World/dp/B0001MIQIA/sr=8-2/qid=1164214472/ref=sr_1_2/026-8212415-0769232?ie=UTF8&amp;s=dvd">Buy Island at the Top of the World on Amazon.co.uk</a></p> Frame-a-stock → http://www.frameastock.com Wed, 22 Nov 2006 10:17:59 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/frame-a-stock/ <p>Random Google search revealed this little nugget: <a href="http://www.frameastock.com">Frame-a-stock</a>. Okay, so it&rsquo;s not exactly a great way to invest; you&rsquo;re not getting in on the &ldquo;ground floor&rdquo; of any of these companies, so I&rsquo;m doubting you&rsquo;d ever make your millions from this.</p> <p>But still! I think a <a href="http://www.frameastock.com/shares/108/">framed Nintendo stock certificate</a> would look particularly awesome on my wall.</p> Continuing the theme of PlayStation violence... https://lowbrowculture.com/post/continuing-the-theme-of-playstation-violence/ Mon, 20 Nov 2006 19:05:01 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/continuing-the-theme-of-playstation-violence/ <p><a href="http://www.xkcd.com/c186.html"><img src="http://www.lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2006/11/console_lines.png" alt="console_lines.png"></a></p> <p><a href="http://www.kottke.org/06/11/psychology-of-the-wii-and-ps3">Kottke spends some time thinking about the differences in the launches of the PlayStation 3 and the Wii</a> and concludes that the <a href="http://www.usatoday.com/tech/gaming/2006-11-18-ps3-violence_x.htm">violence</a> and <a href="http://www.gamespot.com/events/ps3launch/story.html?sid=6161886">hysteria</a> that surrounded the PS3 launch was due to the fundamental philosophical differences between the two systems - PlayStation is about aggression and competition, Nintendo is about fun and hugging.</p> <p>Well, I&rsquo;m sure that was a <em>part</em> of the reason, but I think there was a much simpler reason: greed.</p> <p><a href="http://www.1up.com/do/minisite?cId=3145462">This week&rsquo;s 1up show</a> has interviews with people in the PlayStation queue outside San Francisco&rsquo;s Metreon. From the sample that they interviewed (that made it onto the show), the majority of people queuing up either didn&rsquo;t know or didn&rsquo;t care about the PlayStation 3. What they cared about was the profit they would make by selling this on eBay - <a href="http://cgi.ebay.com/Playstation-colsole-3_W0QQitemZ230052823594QQihZ013QQcategoryZ62054QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem">some PlayStations have sold for $20,000</a>, a remarkable 2300% profit. One gent informed the crowd how he &ldquo;would rather fight, go to jail, than let someone cut in front of [him]&rdquo;. Asked if he was buying the PlayStation to, y&rsquo;know, play it? &ldquo;Man, people are buying this to put it on eBay and cash out!&rdquo;. And this guy wasn&rsquo;t just buying one. He had people in lines all over, and he was going to sell them all. Except for the one he was &ldquo;going to give to a poor family&rdquo; (&lsquo;poor family&rsquo; with a hi-def TV?).</p> <p>And the attach rates mostly support this. <a href="http://www.kotaku.com/gaming/sony/japanese-ps3-sales-data-also-depressing-214864.php">Of the 81,639 consoles sold in Japan, only 66,684 were sold <em>with games</em></a>. Sure, the PS3 has online functionality and you can download demos, but come on - you&rsquo;ve just dropped <strong>seven hundred lids</strong> on this new, awesome piece of games hardware, you&rsquo;re not going to get something that really shows it off?</p> <p>But it&rsquo;s not all so cynical. My favourite interviewee in the 1up show explained how he was an Xbox man and was loving Gears of War, but his girlfriend wouldn&rsquo;t let him buy a decent Hi-Def TV to play it on. His solution was to queue up for a few hours, buy a PlayStation 3, sell it on eBay and buy himself a Hi-Def TV with the profits. I feel your pain, buddy.</p> <p>I doubt this kind of mercenary greed would work in Ireland. The supply will be just as short here, but will the scalpers be making as much of a profit? I doubt it. It hardly seems worth it, unless you just get a kick out of depriving people of something they want and watching their misery. And if that&rsquo;s your kind of thing, here&rsquo;s a video of someone smashing a brand-new PS3 in front of queuing fans. Enjoy!</p> Gamers riot for PlayStations! https://lowbrowculture.com/post/gamers-riot-for-playstations/ Mon, 20 Nov 2006 10:54:34 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/gamers-riot-for-playstations/ <p>I think this headline and this picture are just perfect together:</p> <p><a href="http://www.boston.com/news/globe/city_region/breaking_news/2006/11/police_called_t.html"><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2006/11/gamersriot.jpg" alt="gamersriot.jpg"></a></p> <p>I mean, Jeez. This is what counts as a &lsquo;riot&rsquo; these days? Boston&rsquo;s really clamped down on rioting after that whole &ldquo;tea party&rdquo; incident.</p> <p><a href="http://www.boston.com/news/globe/city_region/breaking_news/2006/11/police_called_t.html">Full article on Boston Globe</a></p> Gears of War, Pre-Emergence Day https://lowbrowculture.com/post/gears-of-war-pre-emergence-day/ Thu, 16 Nov 2006 08:59:28 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/gears-of-war-pre-emergence-day/ <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2006/11/gears_of_war.jpg" alt="Gears of War"></p> <p>Gears of War is released tomorrow. For everyone who already owns an Xbox 360: this is it! The one we&rsquo;ve been waiting for! The big game that&rsquo;s gonna make us proud. For everyone who is unsure about buying an Xbox 360: this is it! The one that&rsquo;s going to sell the system to you. Because let&rsquo;s face it, if you don&rsquo;t want to immediately rush out and buy an Xbox 360 after playing Gears of War (and if you don&rsquo;t want to immediately rush out and <em>play</em> Gears of War after seeing <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ccWrbGEFgI8">the awesome, beautiful &ldquo;Mad World&rdquo; trailer</a>), well&hellip; maybe you&rsquo;re just not an Xbox 360 kind of person?</p> <p>As for me, I&rsquo;m going to be frantically running around town tonight, looking for any shops that might have released it early My girlfriend is off out of the house tomorrow night so I&rsquo;ll have the house all to myself to play Gears of War at an eardrum-puncturing volume. Oh boy.</p> souvenirs - a photoset on Flickr → http://www.flickr.com/photos/michael_hughes/sets/346406/ Wed, 15 Nov 2006 11:12:43 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/souvenirs-a-photoset-on-flickr/ <p>Aweome set of photos where some guy holds tiny soveniers of landmarks in front of the real things.</p> Like the new digs? https://lowbrowculture.com/post/like-the-new-digs/ Wed, 15 Nov 2006 10:22:16 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/like-the-new-digs/ <p>In case you wonder why things have been so quiet around here (as I&rsquo;m sure many of you have, it&rsquo;s like the new &ldquo;Who shot JR?&rdquo;: &ldquo;Why is lowbrowculture.com so quiet?&rdquo;), well, here&rsquo;s your answer.</p> <p>Well, for one, I&rsquo;ve moved to a new host. One that will hopefully beat my last host&rsquo;s record of 50% uptime. One that has already beat my last host&rsquo;s record of 50K download speed.</p> <p>More noticeably, I&rsquo;ve redecorated. The new design is tidier and cleaner. And finally gives me a way to work Rodney Dangerfield into the design of the site.</p> <p>So will all this mean more posts around here?</p> <p>Probably not.</p> Mahir sues Borat → http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.11/play.html?pg=4 Mon, 06 Nov 2006 10:00:34 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/mahir-sues-borat/ <p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;m trying to find USA publisher, and I hope I can receive good offer from Hollywood and play my own life and share with my fans, Julia Roberts, Spielberg, David Bowie, or others, this movie.&rdquo;</p> An Open Letter to Bank of Ireland https://lowbrowculture.com/post/an-open-letter-to-bank-of-ireland/ Sun, 05 Nov 2006 21:54:22 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/an-open-letter-to-bank-of-ireland/ <p>Hi guys,</p> <p>I&rsquo;m feeling pretty dumb about losing my wallet, especially when I&rsquo;m 90% sure it just dropped out of my pocket while I was taking a dump in McDonalds. But seriously, who the fuck thought it would be a good idea to have &ldquo;Cry Me a River&rdquo; in the hold music for your &rsquo;emergency helpline&rsquo;? Can we fire them? Please?</p> <p>Regards, etc.</p> <p>(I&rsquo;m so glad I had my phone on speakerphone so my girlfriend could hear this shit, at least <em>someone</em> knows I&rsquo;m not making this shit up.)</p> <p>Anyway, other stuff I need to get replaced:</p> <ol> <li> <p><strike>Credit Card</strike></p> </li> <li> <p><strike>Laser Card</strike></p> </li> <li> <p><strike>Cineworld Card</strike> &ldquo;There&rsquo;s a €16 replacement fee, but I&rsquo;ll waive that because you&rsquo;ve been a member for 2 years.&rdquo;</p> </li> <li> <p>Library Card</p> </li> <li> <p>Driver&rsquo;s License</p> </li> </ol> <p><strong>Update:</strong> Crisis over. A couple of days after I lost my wallet, I got a very panicked phone call from my very panicked mother who had just received a visit from the Gardai asking if I lived there. Someone found my wallet in McDonalds and handed it in (but not before making off with the money in it; they even swiped the four US dollar bills(?!!)). The Gardai found my address because of my Driving License.</p> <p>I&rsquo;m a little disappointed now though. The few days of being without an identity (and financially fluid) were kind of liberating.</p> Review: Messiah J & The Expert - Now This I Have to Hear https://lowbrowculture.com/post/review-messiah-j-the-expert-now-this-i-have-to-hear/ Fri, 03 Nov 2006 10:51:09 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/review-messiah-j-the-expert-now-this-i-have-to-hear/ <p>(or: Why [Irish] hip hop sucks in &lsquo;06)</p> <p>Questions that crossed my mind when listening to this album:</p> <ol> <li>What year do these guys think it is?</li> <li>What&rsquo;s with the accent? Does he think he&rsquo;s in House of Pain?</li> <li>Can this guy actually rap about anything except rapping?</li> </ol> <p>Give me <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pfs6Er1U1Hg">DisFunktional</a> any day.</p> District 13 Dubbing https://lowbrowculture.com/post/district-13-dubbing/ Fri, 03 Nov 2006 10:27:07 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/district-13-dubbing/ <p>Before you press &ldquo;play&rdquo; on your new District 13 DVD, make sure you turn on the English dubbing. For one, playing it with subtitles will fool noone; the movie is thick as pigshit in any language.</p> <p>But mostly you&rsquo;re only getting half the value for money with the subtitles, because the dubbing is easily more entertaining than the movie itself. Bizarrely incongruous with the rest of the movie and the rest of the cast, the main character and his sister have thick, Colin Farrell-esque Oirish accents that had me laughing my ass off every time they spoke.</p> <p>Worth the price of the DVD alone.</p> Let's hug it out, bitch https://lowbrowculture.com/post/lets-hug-it-out-bitch/ Thu, 02 Nov 2006 18:29:26 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/lets-hug-it-out-bitch/ <p>From Popbitch:</p> <blockquote> <p>A recent conquest of Entourage&rsquo;s Jeremy Piven says that, alas, TV&rsquo;s Mr 10% is, in reality, still Mr 10%. She says unfortunately it &ldquo;was not even fun size.&rdquo;</p> </blockquote> <p>Even though I&rsquo;m a heterosexual guy in a happy, loving relationship, I was still disappointed by this news.</p> Horrorthon 2006 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/horrorthon-2006-2/ Wed, 01 Nov 2006 12:19:09 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/horrorthon-2006-2/ <p>**[The Host (Gwoemul)</p> <p>Giant mutated monster terrorizes a bunch of Asian people. A layabout father&rsquo;s daughter is taken by the monster and he vows to rescue her. Seriously, there&rsquo;s very little more to the movie than that - if you didn&rsquo;t like the sound of &ldquo;giant mutated monster&rdquo;, there&rsquo;s really not much more to this movie for you. Which is why I was so surprised to see this movie sold out. The movie itself is slick, and the monster effects are really well done (except towards the end, where rather than simulate fire, they seemed to hand-animate that sucker). The whole way through, I felt like I was watching some <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_White">Charlie White</a> (specifically &ldquo;<a href="http://www.andrearosengallery.com/files/cfcc19bd.jpg">Fleming House</a>&rdquo;).</p> <p><strong><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0454457/">Frostbite (Frostbiten)</a></strong></p> <p>Swedish movie about vampires terrorising a town in Sweden where it&rsquo;s night for months at a time. Great premise for a movie, and one of the movies I was most looking forward to on this year&rsquo;s program. Unfortunately, it never lived up to its promise. The story was very much one of throwing everything into the screenplay and seeing what stuck. A lot didn&rsquo;t stick. Still though, they stole the premise from <a href="http://www.steveniles.com/thirtydays/">30 Days of Night</a>, now they&rsquo;re stealing it back - <a href="http://us.imdb.com/name/nm1720541/">David Slade</a> (Hard Candy) is <a href="http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0389722/">set to direct a movie of that comic</a>.</p> <p><strong><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0089013/">Demons</a></strong></p> <p>I love this movie. and it was great to see it on the big screen.</p> <p><strong><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0451102/">The Lost</a></strong></p> <p>Not nearly as horrific as it thought it was. But still one of the highlights of the festival for me.</p> <p><strong><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0448190/">Masters of Horror: Brad Anderson&rsquo;s Sounds Like</a></strong></p> <p><strong><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0448190/">Masters of Horror: Takashi Miike&rsquo;s Imprint</a></strong></p> <p><a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0212997/">Andrew Deane</a> (executive producer of Masters of Horror) came out and introduced these. He was a funny guy, and full of anecdotes about getting these made. &lsquo;Sounds Like&rsquo; is familiar ground for Brad Anderson (The Machinist, Session 9): a man on the verge of collapse. Is there something &ldquo;spooky&rdquo; happening, or is he going insane? (he&rsquo;s going insane). But it&rsquo;s technically very impressive. They had the foley guy working overtime on this one. Before the screening of &lsquo;Imprint&rsquo;, Andrew Deane told us that &ldquo;even people who worked on this episode have trouble watching it&rdquo;. This was the episode that Showtime (the guys who produced the show) refused to screen. Now, confession time - I think Takashi Miike is horribly overrated. I grimace more during an episode of E.R. than most of his movies. My disappointment wasn&rsquo;t helped by scenery-chewing <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0236711/">Billy Drago</a>.</p> <p><strong><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0063350/">Night of the Living Dead</a></strong></p> <p>I never fail to fall asleep during this movie. From when Ben throws the flaming chair outside to the moment when Barbara finally snaps out of her catatonic state, you&rsquo;ll find me catching Zs. This was no different. Still though, I mostly just wanted to make sure I had good seats for the Surprise Movie. (More sacrilege: I think I prefer the <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0100258/">1990 remake of Night of the Living Dead</a>).</p> <p><strong><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0437179/">See No Evil (Surprise film)</a></strong></p> <p>This film&rsquo;s title is also serves as a handy warning for anyone thinking of going to see this movie. It&rsquo;s god-awful in a way that only WWF/WWE-produced movies <em>can</em> be.</p> <p><strong><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0457430/">Pan&rsquo;s Labyrinth</a></strong></p> <p>The audience for Pan&rsquo;s Labyrinth was roughly 50% typical arthouse nerds and 50% horrorthon nerds who had been there for almost three days straight and were fully charged on fizzy drinks and sugary sweets (and, in most cases, booze), so it was interesting to see the interplay between the two. When the movie started, all the horrorthon nerds starting whooping and clapping (because that&rsquo;s what you do during horrorthon, whoop and clap), and the arthouse nerds sat in reverence. Still though - good film. A lot less fantasy than the trailers and previews made out. But still really good.</p> <p><strong><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0112747/">Cruel Jaws</a></strong></p> <p>Wholesale cheapo ripoff of Jaws. And enjoyably so. This film was so stupid, it actually encouraged audience participation - chants of &ldquo;Hogan! Hogan! Hogan!&rdquo; when main character (and Hulk Hogan lookalike), Richard Dew appeared on screen.</p> <p><strong><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0475532/">Cello</a></strong></p> <p>So, so sick of Asian horror at this stage. Cello was like the proverbial straw that broke the camel&rsquo;s back.</p> <p><strong><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0084516/">Poltergeist</a></strong></p> <p>Like Demons, I love this movie and it was great to see it on the big screen. The 70mm print was awesome - lots of details I missed from watching it on dirty VHS copies. A great way to end the festival.</p> <p>After Poltergeist, we were told that they&rsquo;ve already started organising Horrorthon 2007 and the word is that Dario Argento might be in attendance, which would mean a triple-bill of <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0076786/">Suspiria</a>, <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0080923/">Inferno</a> and <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0804507/">Mother of Tears</a> is looking likely.</p> <p>I can&rsquo;t wait.</p> Rush Limbaugh is a total jackass → http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/news/archives/2006/10/25/rush_versus_fox.html Thu, 26 Oct 2006 11:11:03 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/rush-limbaugh-is-a-total-jackass/ <p>Michael J. Fox appears in an ad for Democratic party. Limbaugh accuses Fox of exaggerating his parkinsons - &ldquo;He is moving around and shaking, and it is purely an act &hellip; This is really shameless of Michael J Fox,&rdquo;</p> Marilyn Manson - This is Halloween → https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jU6iP0WLsU8 Thu, 26 Oct 2006 11:05:23 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/marily-manson-this-is-halloween/ <p>Horrorthon starts tonight! So Halloween officially starts for me at 8.30pm this evening. To celebrate this, here&rsquo;s Marilyn Manson&rsquo;s cover of &ldquo;This is Halloween&rdquo; (which is making me itch to see <a href="http://adisney.go.com/disneypictures/nightmare/index.html">The Nightmare Before Christmas 3D</a>.)</p> RIP Lik-Sang.com https://lowbrowculture.com/post/rip-lik-sangcom/ Wed, 25 Oct 2006 22:00:22 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/rip-lik-sangcom/ <p><a href="http://www.lik-sang.com/news.php?artc=3901">Lik-Sang announced yesterday that they were shutting up shop</a> because of the weight and volume of the lawsuits being thrown at them by Sony. Sony claimed that Lik-Sang weren&rsquo;t offering consumers the kind of <em>safe, quality</em> hardware that the consumers were used to (read: Sony wanted complete control over each region&rsquo;s retail channels). This is just the latest in a long line of <a href="http://www.engadget.com/2006/05/08/sony-shows-off-the-real-ps3-controller/">dumb</a>, <a href="http://www.engadget.com/2006/02/16/breaking-news-sonys-umds-arent-selling-well/">half-assed</a> or just plain <em><a href="http://www.gamepro.com/news.cfm?article_id=55089">mean-spirited</a></em> moves that Sony has pulled that makes me hope that, for the good of the industry, Sony is no longer the market leader when we reach the next generation of videogames.</p> <p>The Lik-Sang news bums me out for a whole bunch of reasons. Mainly because I really, really liked Lik-Sang. They&rsquo;re one of the few online shops that I&rsquo;ve had 100% satisfaction with, always going above and beyond the basics of shipping me out the things I want - usually throwing in free stickers, coupons off next purchases, lanyards etc. <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/thrillho/140236377/">When I bought my DS Lite from them</a>, they packed in so much extra stuff, it felt like all my Christmases had come at once. In May.</p> <p>But I&rsquo;m also bummed out because it means that it&rsquo;s even more difficult for me to get a hold of decent games while they&rsquo;re still relevant. For example: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C5%8Ckami">Okami</a> is an awesome game. With a narrative similar to Zelda and a visual style all its own, it has been frequently used to <a href="http://www.wired.com/news/columns/games/0,71986-0.html?tw=wn_index_5">support the idea that videogames can be art</a>. But I wouldn&rsquo;t know about that because, despite having been released in Japan in April of 2006, it won&rsquo;t be hitting our shores until <a href="http://www.play.com/Games/PlayStation2/4-/167773/-/Product.html?searchstring=okami&amp;searchsource=0">February 2007</a> (and given that its developers just folded, a European release might even be on the cards).</p> <p>Today, when my copy of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daigasso!_Band_Brothers">Daigasso! Band Brothers</a> arrived from Lik-Sang, it hammered it home for me - this was the last time this wonderful shop would help me get my hands on some wonderful games.</p> <p>For European gamers, the short end of the stick just got even shorter.</p> For the "Lost" nerd in your life → http://www.entertainmentearth.com/prodinfo.asp?number=MF15309 Wed, 25 Oct 2006 15:58:40 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/for-the-lost-nerd-in-your-life/ <p><a href="http://www.entertainmentearth.com/prodinfo.asp?number=MF15300A"><img src="http://www.lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2006/10/lost-toys1.jpg" alt="lost-toys1.jpg"></a></p> <p>I particularly like the one of Shannon - sunbathing with the plane wreckage in the background.</p> Sony's awesome new Bravia advert → http://www.bravia-advert.com/paint/thead/ Wed, 18 Oct 2006 10:12:13 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/sonys-awesome-new-bravia-advert/ <p>I have to keep reminding myself that these things aren&rsquo;t CGI</p> Bill Murray attends student party, does dishes - CNN.com → http://www.cnn.com/2006/SHOWBIZ/Movies/10/16/britain.billmurray.ap/index.html Mon, 16 Oct 2006 22:01:49 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/bill-murray-attends-student-party-does-dishes-cnncom/ <p>Slow news day? Still though - this only goes to prove how fucking awesome Bill Murray actually is</p> Scarlett Johansson releasing an album of Tom Waits covers → http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,221001,00.html Mon, 16 Oct 2006 21:57:02 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/scarlett-johansson-releasing-an-album-of-tom-waits-covers/ <p>Whaaaaaaaaaaat? Most insane story ever. My mind is blown already.</p> Viceland.com - DOs and DON'Ts → http://www.viceland.com/int/dd.php?id=355&country=uk Mon, 16 Oct 2006 11:15:24 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/vicelandcom-dos-and-donts/ <p>This is probably the funniest Vice Magazine &ldquo;Do&rdquo; ever.</p> Lumenlabs Projector: 144-Inch Picture for $500 → http://www.gizmodo.com/gadgets/home-entertainment/lumenlabs-projector-144inch-picture-for-500-207299.php Fri, 13 Oct 2006 09:25:16 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/lumenlabs-projector-144-inch-picture-for-500/ <p>Dear Santa, you know what to do.</p> Love Love Hamster - Nintendo DS → https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VPgFyPXzAp0 Thu, 12 Oct 2006 10:42:21 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/love-love-hamster-nintendo-ds/ <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2006/10/h_104_61072_hamu02_jpg.jpg" alt="h_104_61072_hamu02_jpg.jpg"></p> <p>They should just rename this &ldquo;<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/akagami">k.Akagami</a>: The Video Game.&rdquo;</p> <p>via <a href="http://www.gonintendo.com">gonintendo.com</a></p> Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories - How to hack LEDs into Lego minifigures for Halloween → http://www.evilmadscientist.com/article.php/LEDMinifigs Wed, 11 Oct 2006 15:00:23 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/evil-mad-scientist-laboratories-how-to-hack-leds-into-lego-minifigures-for-halloween/ <p>The Headless Horseman one is a work of genius</p> Horrorthon 2006 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/horrorthon-2006/ Mon, 09 Oct 2006 00:42:35 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/horrorthon-2006/ <p>Picked up my tickets for this year&rsquo;s <a href="http://www.horrorthon.com">Horrorthon</a>. I&rsquo;ve usually gone to one or two showings each year, but this is the first year I&rsquo;ve been interested enough to buy a full festival ticket. Highlights for me are</p> <ul> <li><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0457430/">Pan&rsquo;s Labyrinth</a> (!)</li> <li><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0468492/">The Host</a></li> <li><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0454457/">Frostbite</a></li> <li><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0074593/">Grizzly</a> and <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0112747/">Cruel Jaws</a></li> <li>Takashi Miike&rsquo;s episode of <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0448190/">Masters of Horror</a></li> <li>70mm print of <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0084516/">Poltergeist</a></li> <li>Lamberto Bava&rsquo;s talk</li> </ul> <p>Also looking forward to <em>The Fairies of Blackheath Wood</em>, which was directed by a guy I went to school with.</p> <p>I&rsquo;ve added this year&rsquo;s program to <a href="http://calendar.google.com">Google Calendar</a> and <a href="http://www.upcoming.org">upcoming.org</a>.</p> <p>Anyone else going?</p> Ultimate Game Chair: The Ultimate Video Game Chair → http://www.ultimategamechair.com/ Fri, 29 Sep 2006 10:31:15 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/ultimate-game-chair-the-ultimate-video-game-chair/ <p>&ldquo;12 Vibration Motors&rdquo;? &ldquo;Stain Resistant Fabric&rdquo;? What kind of games are they expecting people to play?</p> Xtorrent Public Beta https://lowbrowculture.com/post/xtorrent-public-beta/ Mon, 18 Sep 2006 16:56:36 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/xtorrent-public-beta/ <p>Might I suggest that all Mac users reading this hurry to their nearest browser and <a href="http://www.xtorrentp2p.com/">download the public beta of Xtorrent</a>, the new application from David Watanabe who also wrote <a href="http://www.acquisitionx.com/9">Acquisition</a>, <a href="http://www.inquisitorx.com/safari/">Inquisitor</a> and <a href="http://www.newsfirex.com/">NewsFire</a> (my favourite RSS reader).</p> <p>Things I love about Xtorrent</p> <ul> <li> <p>It&rsquo;s solid. Oh so solid. Stupid <a href="http://www.bitrocket.org/">Bitrocket</a> would crap out on me if I so much as looked at it funny</p> </li> <li> <p>In-application searching and downloading. Which translates into: no more fucking around on dodgy sites with equally dodgy ads (&ldquo;HORNY GIRLS IN ballyfermot ARE WAITING FOR YOU&rdquo;) looking for the latest episode of Lost.</p> </li> <li> <p>Upload <em>and</em> download rate limiting! You have no idea how much I&rsquo;ve wanted this - it&rsquo;s one thing limiting uploads, but when you&rsquo;re sharing a network with a bunch of people, you don&rsquo;t want to saturate the download connection.</p> </li> <li> <p>It&rsquo;s so freakin&rsquo; <em>pretty</em> I swear, <a href="http://www.newsfirex.com/blog/">David Watanabe</a> is like the Zinedine Zidane of the Mac software development world. Everything he does has beauty, elegance and style. And he&rsquo;ll floor you with one headbutt if you say anything mean about his mother.</p> </li> </ul> <p>(note to self: <em>link</em> to the thing you&rsquo;re blogging about, dummy)</p> Wii details revealed https://lowbrowculture.com/post/wii-details-revealed/ Fri, 15 Sep 2006 12:57:47 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/wii-details-revealed/ <p>Three days of Nintendo confrences, three days of non-stop Wii information. Here&rsquo;s the bits we care about:</p> <p><strong>Wii will launch in Ireland on December 8th for EUR250</strong>. It will come with a Wii-mote, a nunchuck controller and a copy of Wii sports. Zelda will be available at launch, as well as the new Super Monkey Ball. The games are expected to cost between EUR49 and EUR59.</p> <p>After hearing that the Wii will be launched in the US in November and Japan on December 8th, I was half expecting Nintendo to push the European release back to Q1 2007. So I&rsquo;m thrilled about this - I&rsquo;ve already cleared off a Gamecube-sized space under my telly in anticipation.</p> <p>On a similar note, anyone want a well-used Gamecube?</p> Perfect Job Title https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/perfect-job-title/ Thu, 14 Sep 2006 21:35:01 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/perfect-job-title/ <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2006/09/manager_the_world.jpg" alt="manager_the_world.jpg"></p> <p>Of course, they&rsquo;re talking about <a href="http://www.theworld.ae/">The World in Dubai</a>.</p> <p>(From Alain de Botton&rsquo;s <a href="http://www.channel4.com/4homes/ontv/the_perfect_home/index.html">The Perfect Home</a>)</p> Breakdown (1997) - Kurt Russell https://lowbrowculture.com/post/breakdown-1997-kurt-russell/ Wed, 13 Sep 2006 13:46:01 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/breakdown-1997-kurt-russell/ <p>I love the premise behind Breakdown. Its logline is deliciously appealing: A couple are driving across the country when their car breaks down, the wife gets a lift to the nearest town to call for help, the man eventually gets his car going again and follows his into town, except noone has seen the wife.</p> <p>It&rsquo;s then that the movie starts to go downhill.</p> <p>And there&rsquo;s a lot going for the movie. Kurt Russell gives one of his most underrated performances as an everyman in extreme circumstances, and the score by Basil Poledouris (who also did the killer score for Conan the Barbarian) is wonderfully Bernard Hermann-esque. But it&rsquo;s&hellip; wait, what&rsquo;s that moving in the corner of my eye?</p> <p>And what&rsquo;s that noise?</p> <p>OH FUCK, IT&rsquo;S A BEE.</p> <p>AND NOT JUST ANY BEE. IT&rsquo;S HUGE! LIKE SOME FUCKING UBERBEE. GOOD FUCKING CHRIST, IT&rsquo;S COMING THIS WAY! SHIT! SHIT! SHIT! RUN AWAY!</p> <p>Okay, now I&rsquo;ve got a glass door between me and the bee. Time to think this one out. Jesus, I can still hear it through this glass. That&rsquo;s so big. Maybe H. will know what to do.</p> <p>&hellip;</p> <p>Well, that was no fucking help. Put it under a glass?! It&rsquo;s bigger than every glass we have! I could maybe try putting it under a vase, except every vase we have is in the room with the bee. And what if he gets wind of what I&rsquo;m up to? He&rsquo;ll go spare and sting the shit out of me.</p> <p>Hang on. He&rsquo;s just hitting the patio door. He just wants out. Maybe I can just open the door and let him out! Okay, I&rsquo;ll just go back into that room and&hellip; wait, what the shit am I doing? I need to arm myself here. Defend myself. Magazines! Aha! I knew reading on the toilet would come in useful one day. Now I&rsquo;ve got a giant copy of Edge in case this little shitbag gets any ideas. H., did you just call me a &lsquo;fucking pussy&rsquo;? I&rsquo;ll let you away with that because you&rsquo;re still in bed and HAVEN&rsquo;T SEEN THE SIZE OF THIS GODZILLA-BEE.</p> <p>Here we go. Softly, softly. Oh no! He&rsquo;s stopped buzzing around! He&rsquo;s onto me! No, wait. He&rsquo;s just resting. Keep going. Keep&hellip; going&hellip; COCKING HELL, HE&rsquo;S THE SIZE OF MY FUCKING HAMSTER! And wait, don&rsquo;t they say that bees are especially ornery this time of year because they&rsquo;re all dying from the cold? That&rsquo;s not good. Why did I even remind myself of that? Am I trying to sabotage myself? Okay, easy big fella, I&rsquo;m here to help. Just a friendly guy with a friendly magazine, trying to help. This isn&rsquo;t good. This isn&rsquo;t good. Almost there! Hand is on the key now. Turning the key! OH SHIT HERE HE COMES, HE&rsquo;S COMING TO KILL ME! OPEN THE DOOR! NOW RUN! DON&rsquo;T STOP RUNNING!</p> <p>Is he gone? Is he gone? I can&rsquo;t tell if he&rsquo;s gone, I&rsquo;m sobbing too hard.</p> <p>He&rsquo;s gone!</p> <p>I need a lie down.</p> Rollercoaster of emotions https://lowbrowculture.com/post/rollercoaster-of-emotions/ Tue, 12 Sep 2006 22:52:08 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/rollercoaster-of-emotions/ <p>Here&rsquo;s some things from the past couple of weeks. Get ready for some old news.</p> <p><strong><a href="http://www.crocodilehunter.com/steve.php">Steve Irwin dies</a> - Boo!</strong><br> It&rsquo;s been over a week and I&rsquo;m still gutted about this. Steve Irwin was always, always entertaining and his unflinching upbeat outlook never once failed to cure me of whatever blues I had. I&rsquo;m running out heroes.</p> <p><strong><a href="http://www.cinematical.com/2006/09/07/mgm-plugs-five-new-sequels/">MGM are making a sequel to Wargames</a> - Yay!</strong><br> Some of my favourite films are sequels. Some of my favourite films are about nerdy things and have cute little bleepy soundtracks. It&rsquo;s a marriage made in heaven! The news report also mentions a sequel to <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0378109/">Into the Blue</a> which, as big dumb movies go, is really rather good.</p> <p><strong><a href="http://www.hbo.com/entourage/">Entourage is fucking awesome</a> - Yay!</strong><br> Okay, so this isn&rsquo;t exactly news, but hey - you come here for news? Seriously, this show is fucking killer - I threw it onto my computer and we watched almost all of Season 1 on the flight home when we should have been sleeping to beat jetlag. You know a show is special when you&rsquo;re willing to take a bullet like that for it.</p> <p><strong><a href="http://thrillho.listal.com/owned/dvds/1/?used=No&amp;sortby=dateadded-desc">My DVD inbox has grown to over 125 movies</a> - Boo!</strong><br> This wasn&rsquo;t helped by my visit to <a href="http://www.newburycomics.com/">Newbury Comics</a> in Boston. Their Criterion Collection section was both expansive <em>and</em> cheap. If I watch one movie a day, it will still take me over four months to get through them all. Thank fuck Big Brother is over and we can get our NTL disconnected.</p> Yeah, Dead Rising is great... https://lowbrowculture.com/post/yeah-dead-rising-is-great/ Tue, 12 Sep 2006 22:14:38 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/yeah-dead-rising-is-great/ <p>&hellip;but not <em>that</em> great. I was talking to a couple of people about this game. It seems as if most people who downloaded the 15-minute demo from Xbox Live were pretty disappointed by the full game. This seems to be a combination of the developers&rsquo; decision to start you off with a basic set of stats (since an RPG stats-building feature seems to be required in all games these days), which means that your character is next to useless at the start of the game. The demo throws you in at the halfway mark, where he can do most things without much trouble.</p> <p>Then there&rsquo;s also the way the game starts. The zombies invade the mall and you have to escape with everyone else in that part of the mall. Except you can&rsquo;t save them. And so the game throws up massive messages to tell you THIS PERSON DIED and then THAT PERSON DIED. So, within the first five minutes of starting play, you&rsquo;ve got the videogame equivalent of YOU FUCKED UP YOU FUCKED UP YOU FUCKED UP YOU SHOULD REALLY PUT THE CONTROLLER DOWN BECAUSE YOU FUCKED UP AGAIN</p> <p>Describing it as &lsquo;disheartening&rsquo; doesn&rsquo;t even come close. And don&rsquo;t get me started on the save system. Jeez.</p> <p>Thank God then for Lego Star Wars II! So much fun in such a little box!</p> Westward Ho! https://lowbrowculture.com/post/westward-ho/ Wed, 23 Aug 2006 22:52:03 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/westward-ho/ <p>Well, I&rsquo;ve got my pronunciation of &ldquo;Chowdaaah&rdquo; down pat, so I&rsquo;m heading off to Cape Cod and Boston for the next couple of weeks. This means posting will be even patchier than usual around here. Providing my camera behaves (and I can find internet access in Cape Cod - the nearest Starbucks is 13 miles from where I&rsquo;m staying), I&rsquo;ll be updating <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/thrillho/">my Flickr</a>.</p> <p>See yis soon!</p> Google maps 37Signals with Flickr iPod https://lowbrowculture.com/post/google-maps-37signals-with-flickr-ipod/ Wed, 23 Aug 2006 09:37:18 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/google-maps-37signals-with-flickr-ipod/ <p>H. pointed me to the awesome <a href="http://ldopa.net/2006/06/04/cory-doctorow-visits-a-radio-shack/">Cory Doctorow Visits a Radio Shack</a>. It&rsquo;s completely hilarious and very well written. My favourite bit:</p> <blockquote> <p>(AWKWARD SILENCE)</p> <p>CORY DOCTOROW: Google maps 37Signals with Flickr iPod.</p> <p>EMPLOYEE: What?</p> <p>CORY DOCTOROW: I didn&rsquo;t say anything. Now, about this cell phone&hellip;</p> </blockquote> <p>The phrase &ldquo;Google maps 37Signals with Flickr iPod&rdquo; has been adopted as a convenient shorthand for when I make a simple problem more complicated by adding layer upon layer of technology. Take last night, for example.</p> <blockquote> <p>&ldquo;So I&rsquo;ll put our itinerary into my Google Calendar, subscribe to it in my iCal and then synchronize that to my phone with Bluetooth&rdquo;</p> <p><em>&ldquo;Couldn&rsquo;t you just put it on some paper?&rdquo;</em></p> <p>&ldquo;Yes, but&hellip;&rdquo;</p> <p><em>&ldquo;Google maps 37Signals with Flickr iPod&rdquo;</em></p> </blockquote> BREAKING: Paramount Drops Cruise - Cinematical → http://www.cinematical.com/2006/08/22/breaking-paramount-drops-cruise/ Wed, 23 Aug 2006 09:07:46 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/breaking-paramount-drops-cruise-cinematical/ <p>Hooray! Karma finally kicks in!</p> local6.com - Local News - Live Rattlesnakes Released In 'Snakes On A Plane' Theater → http://www.local6.com/news/9717727/detail.html Wed, 23 Aug 2006 08:48:14 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/local6com-local-news-live-rattlesnakes-released-in-snakes-on-a-plane-theater/ <p>10 bucks says this was done as a marketing gimmick</p> BBC NEWS | Keane singer treated for drug use → http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/5273692.stm Tue, 22 Aug 2006 17:41:52 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/bbc-news-keane-singer-treated-for-drug-use/ <p>Too much ale and pipeweed, heading back to the Shire for some rest</p> First Person Shooter → http://www.datenform.de/fpseng.html Tue, 22 Aug 2006 17:36:10 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/first-person-shooter/ <p>I heard the graphics on the Playstation 3 are going to be even BETTER than this</p> Best Dressed Zombie! https://lowbrowculture.com/post/best-dressed-zombie/ Mon, 21 Aug 2006 15:08:47 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/best-dressed-zombie/ <p><img src="http://www.lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2006/08/zombies_sf_5.jpg" alt="Photo by Scott Beale / Laughing Squid"></p> <p>The <a href="http://www.xboxlivegamingcentre.com/">Xbox Live Gaming Centre</a> up on South William Street will be running a competition to coincide with the European release of <a href="http://ww2.capcom.com/deadrising/">Dead Rising</a> next month. Fittingly, the competition is to find the best-dressed zombie.</p> <p>From their newsletter:</p> <blockquote>The Xbox Live Gaming Centre is running a best dressed zombie competition to celebrate the launch of Capcom's Dead Rising (rated 18's) which will be hitting the centre on Friday September 7th. On Saturday 8th September, at 3pm we will be holding the competition in-store. Prizes include €100 cash, "I Love Zombies" t-shirts and limited edition Dead Rising faceplates.</blockquote> <p>Note: their dates are a little funny - Saturday is actually the 9th of September.</p> <p>The prizes aren&rsquo;t awesome. Faceplates? No copies of the game? Still though, I&rsquo;m happy with any excuse to dress like a zombie.</p> <p>See also: <a href="http://laughingsquid.com/2006/08/19/zombies-invade-san-francisco/">Zombies Invade San Francisco!</a></p> Paging Sheldon Turner https://lowbrowculture.com/post/paging-sheldon-turner/ Sun, 20 Aug 2006 09:40:45 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/paging-sheldon-turner/ <p><a href="https://lowbrowculture.com/post/high-concept/">In January, I wrote about Sheldon Turner</a>, one of the writers of Snakes on a Plane, and talked about how one of his next movies is about a serial killer who only kills people in the eye of a storm. Awesome idea, and I can guarantee that this guy will go far in Hollywood.</p> <p>Except when I went to see <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0417148/">Snakes on a Plane</a> last night, Sheldon Turner&rsquo;s name was nowhere to be found. And, sure enough, the IMDB page for SoaP doesn&rsquo;t list Sheldon Turner any more. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheldon_Turner">His Wikipedia entry</a> still lists him as a writer on SoaP, and googling <a href="http://www.google.ie/search?q=%22sheldon+turner%22+%22snakes+on+a+plane%22&amp;start=0&amp;ie=utf-8&amp;oe=utf-8&amp;client=firefox-a&amp;rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official">&ldquo;Sheldon Turner&rdquo; &ldquo;Snakes on a Plane&rdquo;</a> gives enough results to confirm I&rsquo;m not making shit up.</p> <p>Why was his credit removed for this movie? Anyone? Bueller? Bueller?</p> Snakes on a motherfuckin' Plane https://lowbrowculture.com/post/snakes-on-a-motherfuckin-plane/ Sun, 20 Aug 2006 09:37:27 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/snakes-on-a-motherfuckin-plane/ <p>Let me start this off by saying that Snakes on a Plane is a great movie. <a href="https://lowbrowculture.com/snakes-on-a-plane/">A full year since I first wrote about it</a>, a full year of <strong>anticipation</strong> has done nothing to harm this movie, it&rsquo;s still everything we expected. In fact, it&rsquo;s more than we expected, since we were expecting a cheesy, so-bad-it&rsquo;s-good movie and Snakes on a Plane is anything but - it&rsquo;s an enjoyable, light-hearted action/comedy/disaster movie, and I recommend you go see it now before the only people left to see it are the boring sort that will not clap and whoop their way through the movie.</p> <p>Now I&rsquo;ve got that out of the way, let&rsquo;s change gears.</p> <p>I left the movie last night (7.30pm, Cineworld) wondering what it was about <em>this movie</em> that appealed to nerds. The nerd quotient of this movie was unreal. Sitting in Eddie Rockets before the movie, I spotted a group of people going past, and just by the look of them, I knew they had just been to Snakes on a Plane (it turns out that one of them was a Googler who knew the Googler in our group and indeed, he had just been to Snakes on a Plane).</p> <p>The internet is abuzz with this movie in a way that only the internet knows how. Livejournal is unreadable right now because of it. There are multi-page threads about it on every forum I read. And <a href="http://www.newsfirerss.com">NewsFire</a> tells me I have a terrifying 50 articles about it in my RSS feeds.</p> <p>So why <em>this</em> movie? What makes it better than other light-hearted action/comedy/disaster movies? Sure, SoaP has a guy getting bitten on the cock by a snake after pissing on it (oops, spoilers!), but <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0149261/">Deep Blue Sea</a> has Samuel L. Jackson being eaten by a flying shark (kinda). SoaP may be high-concept, but then, so is <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0089901/">Remo: Unarmed and Dangerous</a>, whose similarly endearing concept is <em>stratospheric</em> and too bizarre to properly summarize here.</p> <p>So why <em>Snakes on a Plane</em>? Answers on a postcard, please.</p> Ninja Loves Pirate → http://www.ninjalovespirate.com/ Sat, 19 Aug 2006 23:41:49 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/ninja-loves-pirate/ <p>There&rsquo;s times when I regret having a mac. Reading about a windows-only game involving pirates and ninjas fighting zombies and robots is like all of those times at once.</p> A mystery wrapped in an enigma machine https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/a-mystery-wrapped-in-an-enigma-machine/ Sat, 19 Aug 2006 16:07:28 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/a-mystery-wrapped-in-an-enigma-machine/ <p>Nerdy as hell, but I would gladly put up with the inevitable beatings if I could get this printed on a t-shirt.</p> <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2006/08/schneier.jpg" alt="schneier.jpg"></p> <p><a href="http://geekz.co.uk/schneierfacts/">More Bruce Schneier facts</a></p> Toot toot! https://lowbrowculture.com/post/toot-toot/ Sun, 13 Aug 2006 21:54:54 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/toot-toot/ <p>So we&rsquo;ve all heard about the recent Mel Gibson debacle, right? You know, the one where he revealed himself to be a complete lunatic? Well, not to toot my own horn or nothing, I&rsquo;d just like to point out that <a href="http://www.lowbrowculture.com/2005/12/22/mel-gibson-has-officially-lost-it/">I called this in December of last year</a>. My exact words were</p> <blockquote>Gibson has officially Lost It and is now certifiably batshit insane</blockquote> <p>See? It&rsquo;s almost spooky. If Nostradamus had a blog, it would be lowbrowculture.com.</p> Threadless T-Shirts - Also Sprach Miyamoto → http://www.threadless.com/submission/85912/Also_Sprach_Miyamoto Sat, 12 Aug 2006 09:29:10 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/threadless-t-shirts-also-sprach-miyamoto/ <p>Awesome Kubrick/Miyamoto crossover. I hope this gets printed</p> Lomo Effect https://lowbrowculture.com/post/lomo-effect/ Fri, 04 Aug 2006 07:26:47 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/lomo-effect/ <p>Thanks to the <a href="http://the.taoofmac.com/space/blog/2005-08-23.23%3A59">Tao of Mac</a> for pointing me to <a href="http://www.flickr.com/groups/technique/discuss/12082/">this incredible tutorial</a> for using photoshop to give images a <a href="http://www.lomography.net">Lomo</a> effect.</p> <p>There&rsquo;s a delicious irony in using a high-tech piece of software like Photoshop to recreate the look of a cheap, plastic lens.</p> <h3 id="before">Before</h3> <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2006/08/helena.jpg" alt="Before Lomo Effect"></p> <h3 id="after">After</h3> <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2006/08/helena_lomo.jpg" alt="After Lomo Effect"></p> Things to keep me occupied on the long weekend https://lowbrowculture.com/post/things-to-keep-me-occupied-on-the-long-weekend/ Fri, 04 Aug 2006 07:20:40 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/things-to-keep-me-occupied-on-the-long-weekend/ <h2 id="download-the-dead-rising-demo-from-xbox-marketplace">Download the Dead Rising demo from Xbox Marketplace</h2> <p>It&rsquo;s time-limited to 15 minutes per game, but still. This is one of the games that finally convinced me to buy an Xbox 360. Let&rsquo;s hope it was worth it.</p> <h2 id="go-see-a-scanner-darkly-on-monday">Go see A Scanner Darkly on Monday</h2> <p>Get a coupon from today&rsquo;s copy of The Ticket in the Irish Times. Bring it to UGC today and exchange the coupon for a ticket for two to see the preview of this amazing-looking movie.</p> <h2 id="finish-reading-_on-stranger-tides_-by-tim-powers">Finish reading <em>On Stranger Tides</em> by Tim powers</h2> <p>I bought this because I&rsquo;ve got such a boner for pirates right now, and this is the book that inspired Ron Gilbert to write the Secret of Monkey Island. It&rsquo;s a huge story of pirates, voodoo and revenge. And lots of buckles being swashed, naturally. Also recommended: The Bumper Book of Pirate Stories, if only for the chapter entitled &ldquo;How Half-Arsed Became Captain&rdquo;. Half-arsed being a famous pirate who got half of his ass blown off by a cannon. They don&rsquo;t make &rsquo;em like that any more.</p> Snakes in your Motherfuckin' Email → http://snakesonaplane.varitalk.com/ Thu, 03 Aug 2006 05:19:05 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/snakes-in-your-motherfuckin-email/ <p>More genius internet marketing from those Snakes on a Plane fellas. With this, you can send a personalised Snakes On A Plane email (or phone greeting if you&rsquo;re in the US) &lsquo;from&rsquo; Samuel L. Jackson to your friends.</p> <p>So good, I&rsquo;ve even sent myself one.</p> <p><a href="http://www.waxy.org">[via]</a></p> Ireland's Bee Population in Decline → http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/northern_ireland/5214634.stm Wed, 02 Aug 2006 08:42:54 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/irelands-bee-population-in-decline/ <p>As someone who is mortally afraid of bees, wasps and other flying, stinging insects, let me be the first to say FUCK YEAH! TAKE THAT YOU LITTLE FLYING BITCHES.</p> Some days I feel like Kinski, some days I feel like the dog https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/some-days-i-feel-like-kinski-some-days-i-feel-like-the-dog/ Tue, 01 Aug 2006 10:48:06 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/some-days-i-feel-like-kinski-some-days-i-feel-like-the-dog/ <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2006/08/kinski.jpg" alt="Klaus Kinski"></p> <p>Notes: this picture, ripped from a copy of er&hellip; Empire (I think?) has been hung up on my bedside table for the past few months. Here&rsquo;s hoping I&rsquo;ll be the first hit on google images for &lsquo;kinski gun dog&rsquo;.</p> Billy Bragg's concerns over who owns songs posted to Myspace forces the site to change its policy → http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendID=34570397&blogID=137856388 Thu, 27 Jul 2006 09:40:42 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/billy-braggs-concerns-over-who-owns-songs-posted-to-myspace-forces-the-site-to-change-its-policy/ <p>Okay, so it&rsquo;s a far cry from supporting the miner&rsquo;s strikes in the 1980s. but it&rsquo;s still pretty neat.</p> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ikiw/gro.aidepikiw.ne//:ptth → http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ikiw/gro.aidepikiw.ne//:ptth Fri, 14 Jul 2006 08:16:37 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/httpenwikipediaorgwikiikiwgroaidepikiwneptth/ <p>The Wikipedia entry for &ldquo;Palindrome&rdquo; has a very cute URL</p> Nintendo send George W Bush a DS lite and Brain Age for his 60th Birthday → http://www.kotaku.com/gaming/president-bush/nintendo-gifts-ds-lite-to-president-bush-185282.php#more Thu, 06 Jul 2006 14:50:42 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/nintendo-send-george-w-bush-a-ds-lite-and-brain-age-for-his-60th-birthday/ <p>One hell of a publicity stunt&hellip;</p> Mac nerds rejoice: Ellen Feiss is all growned up https://lowbrowculture.com/post/mac-nerds-rejoice-ellen-feiss-is-all-growned-up/ Wed, 05 Jul 2006 16:30:09 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/mac-nerds-rejoice-ellen-feiss-is-all-growned-up/ <p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ellen_Feiss">Ellen Feiss</a>, internet phenomenon and star of the most famous Mac &ldquo;Switch&rdquo; advert, is all growned up. She is making her film acting debut in a French movie called &ldquo;<a href="http://www.bnb-movie.com/news/article/3/les-acteurs">Bed and Breakfast</a>&rdquo; alongside <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0175860/">Ruardhi Conroy</a> (&lsquo;Tito&rsquo; from Into the West).</p> <p>And, y&rsquo;know, now she&rsquo;s no longer jailbait/completely mashed, she&rsquo;s <a href="http://www.bnb-movie.com/news/images/4.jpg">actually kinda hot</a>.</p> Movie of His Dark Materials will start production on September 4th / November 16th 2007 release → http://www.joblo.com/index.php?id=11905 Fri, 30 Jun 2006 11:08:11 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/movie-of-his-dark-materials-will-start-production-on-september-4th-november-16th-2007-release/ <p>Dakota Blue Richards will play Lyra - still hope for Nicole Kidman as Mrs Coulter</p> New Snakes on a Plane trailer on Yahoo Movies → http://movies.yahoo.com/feature/snakesonaplane.html Tue, 27 Jun 2006 12:21:29 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/new-snakes-on-a-plane-trailer-on-yahoo-movies/ <p>Y&rsquo;know, I&rsquo;m beginning to think &ldquo;How much more amazing would this have been if they&rsquo;d gotten Delroy Lindo instead of Samuel L. Jackson?&rdquo;</p> Kevin Smith producing a theater-only commentary track for Clerks II → http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/25/movies/25jame.html?_r=3&adxnnl=1&oref=slogin&adxnnlx=1151359800-EHNh45px5wFDpOe41yC/9Q&oref=slogin Tue, 27 Jun 2006 08:44:52 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/kevin-smith-producing-a-theater-only-commentary-track-for-clerks-ii/ <p>Download an MP3, listen to it on your iPod while in the cinema. Neat way to encourage repeat viewings.</p> Tom Farrell - Funniest Irish Blogger → http://oldrottenhat.typepad.com/oldrottenhat/2006/06/sometimes_all_i.html Fri, 23 Jun 2006 10:09:47 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/tom-farrel-funniest-irish-blogger/ <blockquote> <p>Now I only saw five minutes of this film but it was enough to convince me of what a desperate desperate place Seventies Britain was. Did they really queue in line for this? Maybe the commies weren&rsquo;t so crazy after all, at least queuing for bread serves some sort of purpose, what&rsquo;s the point of queuing up to see a man get hit in the penis with a roller blind?</p> </blockquote> First clips from Danny Boyle's "Sunshine" online → http://www.sunshinedna.com/videos/8 Thu, 22 Jun 2006 09:31:39 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/first-clips-from-danny-boyles-sunshine-online/ <p>Looks a lot less low-budget/more high-concept than I was expecting</p> Balls to Google https://lowbrowculture.com/post/balls-to-google/ Sun, 18 Jun 2006 21:06:00 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/balls-to-google/ <p>&ldquo;Hey H., you know what would be awesome? A service where you could register a group of friends&rsquo; phone numbers, then when you&rsquo;re out and about, you text your location to a server and your friends could text the server and find out where all their friends are.&rdquo;</p> <p><em>&ldquo;You mean like <a href="http://www.dodgeball.com">Dodgeball</a>?&rdquo;</em></p> <p>I search for &ldquo;Dodgeball text&rdquo; and find out that not only has someone already thought of this, but <a href="http://www.infoworld.com/article/05/05/12/HNgoogledodgeball_1.html">Google has bought them already</a>.</p> <p>All the same, someone needs to launch this in Ireland. It would make weekends so much easier to organise. I hope this is built into <a href="http://www.britishgaming.co.uk/?p=861">Live Anywhere</a>.</p> DVD Inbox https://lowbrowculture.com/post/dvd-inbox/ Fri, 16 Jun 2006 21:40:37 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/dvd-inbox/ <p>My DVD inbox - movies I haven&rsquo;t seen <strong>or</strong> whose DVDs special features I haven&rsquo;t watched - has grown to 60 DVDs. I figure this is a good time to take a look through the list and see what&rsquo;s going on. Maybe figure out why I&rsquo;m having such trouble getting through them. If you&rsquo;re interested, the full list is <a href="http://thrillho.listal.com/viewlist/dvds/1724">available on listal.com</a>.</p> <h3 id="genre">Genre</h3> <p><img src="http://www.lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2006/06/dvds_genre.gif" alt="DVDs - Genre"></p> <p>To be honest, I&rsquo;m amazed that drama features so highly. From looking at my list, I&rsquo;d have guessed Horror or Sci-Fi would be the most popular genre. I put this down to shoddy tagging on IMDB. Or a really bad personal definition of &ldquo;horror&rdquo;. <em>Cutthroat Island</em> is <strong>horrific</strong>, so that makes it horror&hellip; right?</p> <h3 id="decade">Decade</h3> <p><img src="http://www.lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2006/06/dvds_decade.gif" alt="DVDs - Decade"></p> <p>For an eighties kid, the 1980s are seriously underrepresented here.</p> <p>(This was the first bar-chart I&rsquo;ve ever made in excel. I had to get H. to help me.)</p> <h3 id="language">Language</h3> <p><img src="http://www.lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2006/06/dvds_language.gif" alt="DVDs - Language"></p> <p>I couldn&rsquo;t be bothered breaking this down any further. Although I&rsquo;d say that the majority of the foreign-language movies were Japanese, from the large amount of J-Horror waiting to scare the pants off me.</p> <h3 id="tv-shows">TV Shows</h3> <p><img src="http://www.lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2006/06/dvds_tv.gif" alt="DVDs - TV"></p> <p>I&rsquo;ve all but given up watching TV now. I tend to do all my TV watching via bittorrent or DVD. This is probably lower than I would have guessed. Still haven&rsquo;t gotten around to watching Six Feet Under yet. Is it wrong that I am completely unable to get excited about this show? Loving Carnivale though.</p> Amazon: An Oral History of the Zombie War → http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0307346609/qid%3D1150469206/203-6473377-3104726 Fri, 16 Jun 2006 14:48:32 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/amazon-an-oral-history-of-the-zombie-war/ <p>The book isn&rsquo;t even published yet, but the screenplay has been bought by Brad Pitt&rsquo;s production company. Still, awesome title.</p> Douglas Coupland's JPod https://lowbrowculture.com/post/douglas-couplands-jpod/ Wed, 14 Jun 2006 09:22:31 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/douglas-couplands-jpod/ <p>I finished reading Douglas Coupland&rsquo;s JPod last night. Here are a couple of my theories regarding this book:</p> <ul> <li>Douglas Coupland is completely out of ideas and is gently strolling down the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Sedaris">David Sedaris</a> route of desperately presenting the most mundane situations and ideas as innovative. Not only that, but he <em>knows it</em>. There&rsquo;s a twinge of panic about JPod that completely sets it apart from the laid-back coolness of Microserfs.</li> <li>He got so sick of people asking for a sequel to Microserfs that he decided to punish them by churning out something that takes the same style and formula but takes it to the point where it actually mocks the reader. Case in point: 40 pages of the first 100,000 numbers of Pi with one wrong digit. What is this? The Da Vinci Code for autistics?</li> <li>Maybe he really has, once again, completely captured the zeitgeist and the world is actually full of the same kind of boring, selfish fuckholes that appear as characters in JPod.</li> </ul> <p>Personally, I think it&rsquo;s probably a combination of all three.</p> Point - Counterpoint → Tue, 13 Jun 2006 10:07:35 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/point-counterpoint/ <p><strong>Critics:</strong></p> <blockquote> <p>Frighteningly bad cinema is the only thing scary about Alone in the Dark, which gives video-game movies an even worse name, if that&rsquo;s possible.</p> <p>They say that even ugly babies have faces their mothers love, but this is truly a film that not even hardcore genre fans could appreciate.</p> <p>Saying Uwe Boll&rsquo;s Alone in the Dark is better than his 2003 American debut House of the Dead is akin to praising syphilis for not being HIV.</p> </blockquote> <p><strong>Uwe Boll:</strong></p> <blockquote> <p>I WILL LITERALLY KICK THE ASS OF ANYONE WHO HATED MY FILMS.</p> </blockquote> <p>Uwe Boll, worst director in the world, is <a href="http://www.gamespot.com/news/show_blog_entry.php?topic_id=24707327&amp;sid=6152650">offering critics of his films the chance to get into the ring with him</a> and settle their scores with fisticuffs. The critics will be chosen by Uwe Boll, flown to Vancouver, put up in a hotel as a guest of Uwe Boll and will finally step into the ring with Boll, where he will film the match to be included in his new film <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0486640/">Postal</a>, starring Gary Coleman.</p> <p>Uwe Boll has now, officially, lost the plot.</p> Awesome Pyramid Head t-shirt → http://rodent.tee-total.net/uk/products/detail/?id=201 Fri, 09 Jun 2006 10:03:35 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/awesome-pyramid-head-t-shirt/ <p>Also a lot of love for the &ldquo;maestro&rdquo; and &ldquo;weak spot&rdquo; shirts</p> My Xbox 360 has a blog → http://www.360voice.com/blog.asp?tag=swishypants Tue, 06 Jun 2006 11:08:09 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/my-xbox-360-has-a-blog/ <p>&hellip; and it&rsquo;s a total fag.</p> Wanna be a Freetar Hero? https://lowbrowculture.com/post/wanna-be-a-freetar-hero/ Tue, 06 Jun 2006 10:41:54 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/wanna-be-a-freetar-hero/ <p>Someone in work pointed me to <a href="http://antonstruyk.com/freetar/about.html">Freetar Hero</a> - a free PC-based replacement for Guitar Hero. Nothing really new there, there&rsquo;s been a few out there already. But what sets this apart is the awesome new Freetar Editor, which allows you to create your own levels from your MP3 collection.</p> <p>As <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BzM4BjfzJQY&amp;search=freetar">this video demonstrates</a>, the upshot of this is that I might actually get a chance to rock out on my Guitar Hero to Journey!</p> <p>Looks like <a href="http://www.mackers.com">Mackers</a> won&rsquo;t have to buy a TV to play this after all.</p> Cosplay https://lowbrowculture.com/post/cosplay/ Tue, 30 May 2006 10:02:27 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/cosplay/ <p>This is my favourite piece of cosplay ever:</p> <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2006/05/cosplay_maxpayne.jpg" alt="Max Payne"></p> <p>This is my second favourite:</p> <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2006/05/cosplay_mario.jpg" alt="Mario"></p> Hardee?s serves up 1,420-calorie burger → http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6498304 Mon, 29 May 2006 13:20:18 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/hardees-serves-up-1420-calorie-burger/ <p>2,340 meal if you include a drink and medium fries. Just looking at this picture is making me want to poop.</p> Paul Gleason, RIP https://lowbrowculture.com/post/paul-gleason-rip/ Mon, 29 May 2006 12:21:37 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/paul-gleason-rip/ <p><img src="http://www.lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2006/05/diehardgleas.JPG" alt="Paul Gleason"></p> <blockquote>BURBANK, Calif. - Paul Gleason, who was in "Trading Places" and "The Breakfast Club," has died. He was 67. <p>Gleason died at a local hospital Saturday of mesothelioma, a rare form of lung cancer linked to asbestos, said his wife, Susan Gleason.</p> <p>&ldquo;Whenever you were with Paul, there was never a dull moment,&rdquo; his wife said. &ldquo;He was awesome.&rdquo;</p> <p>A native of Miami, Gleason was an avid athlete. Before becoming an actor, he played Triple-A minor league baseball for a handful of clubs in the late 1950s.</p> <p>Gleason honed his acting skills with his mentor Lee Strasberg, whom he studied with at the Actors Studio beginning in the mid-1960s, family members said.</p> <p>Through his career, Gleason appeared in over 60 movies that included &ldquo;Die Hard,&rdquo; &ldquo;Johnny Be Good,&rdquo; and &ldquo;National Lampoon&rsquo;s Van Wilder.&rdquo; Most recently, Gleason made a handful of television appearances in hit shows such as &ldquo;Friends&rdquo; and &ldquo;Seinfeld.&rdquo;</p> <p>Gleason&rsquo;s passions went beyond acting. He had recently published a book of poetry.</p> <p>&ldquo;He was an athlete, an actor and a poet,&rdquo; said his daughter, Shannon Gleason-Grossman. &ldquo;He gave me and my sister a love that is beyond description that will be with us and keep us strong for the rest of our lives.&rdquo;</p> <p>Actor Jimmy Hawkins, a friend of Gleason&rsquo;s since the 1960s, said he remembered Gleason for a sharp sense of humor.</p> <p>&ldquo;He just always had great stories to tell,&rdquo; Hawkins said.</p> <p>Gleason was survived by his wife, two daughters and a granddaughter. Funeral plans were pending.</blockquote></p> <p>He never really got any huge roles, but the few lines he got were often the standout moments in movies. The moment in Trading Places where he turns around and tells and old woman to Fuck Off counts, for me, as the most perfect delivery of a &ldquo;fuck off&rdquo; ever filmed.</p> MTV Overdrive - Hamtrak '06 - Hamster Races → http://hamtrak06.mtv.co.uk/ Fri, 26 May 2006 13:29:39 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/mtv-overdrive-hamtrak-06-hamster-races/ <p>Fuck anyone who complains about MTV not playing music any more, their energies are much better spent coming up with shows like this.</p> Awesome, banned Xbox 360 ad → http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ydnz8WiSRks&search=xbox%20360 Wed, 24 May 2006 15:35:15 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/awesome-banned-xbox-360-ad/ <p>To celebrate my new Xbox 360 - an ad that&rsquo;s somewhere between an episode of Spaced and the Grand Central Station scene from the Fisher King</p> When your magazine is called "Butterick"... → http://store.sewingtoday.com/cgi-bin/butterick/shop.cgi?s.item.BPM45 Tue, 23 May 2006 17:22:56 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/when-your-magazine-is-called-butterick/ <p>&hellip;you have to be extra-careful what parts of your name are covered up</p> First porn movie released under a Creative Commons license → http://www.lustfilms.com/thegoodgirl/download.htm Fri, 19 May 2006 11:36:22 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/first-porn-movie-released-under-a-creative-commons-license/ <p>Ushering in a new era of culturally-conscious boners.</p> The Loneliness of the long-distance RPGer https://lowbrowculture.com/post/the-loneliness-of-the-long-distance-rpger/ Tue, 16 May 2006 22:06:05 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/the-loneliness-of-the-long-distance-rpger/ <p>For a while there, I was deeply in love with <em><a href="http://www.rpgamer.com/games/dq/dq8/dq8.html">Dragon Quest VIII: The Journey of the Cursed King</a></em>. Western RPGs like <em>Fable</em> and <em>Jade Empire</em> had made me soft, and I was itching for some stone cold dungeon crawling, the type made famous by the Dragon Quest series. Classic RPG gameplay, the likes of which I have rarely seen in this generation of video games. All this certainly isn&rsquo;t hurt by it&rsquo;s beautiful aesthetics: character design by Akira Toriyama, creator of Dragon Ball Z, and the most perfect cell-shading this side of Wind Waker. A beautiful, beautiful game, on many levels.</p> <p>But having spent a few days away from the Playstation, I&rsquo;m starting to wonder if I&rsquo;m just experiencing a mild form of Stockholm syndrome.</p> <p>I love the fact that it&rsquo;s <em>all</em> stats. It&rsquo;s a huge numbers game, knowing which monsters to battle and with what strategy. I love the fact that, if I was so inclined, I could bust out the graphing calculator and compute the outcome of any battle <em>before I even start it</em>. Guitar Hero it ain&rsquo;t. Ikaruga it ain&rsquo;t. But it&rsquo;s still got this wicked, twisted appeal.</p> <p>Unfortunately - and this is where I think I&rsquo;ve been spoiled - I&rsquo;m tired of spending 2 hours a night just running around outside a particular village leveling up. Once I&rsquo;ve finally reached a level I think is acceptable, I can tackle the quest I&rsquo;m supposed to be working on, and this might just take a half an hour to complete. But there&rsquo;s still the 2 hours where I do nothing else in the game except repeat the battle-battle-battle-rest, battle-battle-battle-rest strategy. At least games like <em>Oblivion</em> present side-quests to take the grind out of &ldquo;leveling up&rdquo; and turn it into something vaguely entertaining. 8 hours into Dragon Quest, I haven&rsquo;t seen one side-quest.</p> <p>And that&rsquo;s the worst part: if I didn&rsquo;t have to see the look on my girlfriend&rsquo;s face when I explain to her that I&rsquo;m coming to bed at 2am because I&rsquo;ve just spent the past two hours <em>leveling up</em>, I probably wouldn&rsquo;t mind this at all.</p> <p>[tags]dragon quest, playstation[/tags]</p> Wii "Classic" controller → http://files.nintendev.com/E3/Wii_classic_0501.jpg Wed, 10 May 2006 10:27:46 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/wii-classic-controller/ <p>Hidden in Nintendo&rsquo;s E3 press pack is a picture of a more &ldquo;standard&rdquo; controller. The filename itself is &ldquo;Wii_Classic_0501.jpg&rdquo;. I&rsquo;m guessing this answers the question of how we&rsquo;re supposed to play downloaded NES/SNES games on the Wii, since the Wii-mote doesn&rsquo;t seem up to it.</p> <p>Picture links to <strong>very</strong> high-res image of the controller.</p> Playstation 3 (or: Anything Wii can do, we can do better) https://lowbrowculture.com/post/playstation-3-or-anything-wii-can-do-we-can-do-better/ Tue, 09 May 2006 09:51:34 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/playstation-3-or-anything-wii-can-do-we-can-do-better/ <p>E3 this week. Biggest, most draining week in the gaming calendar. Not a chance of getting any serious work done.</p> <p>First up, Sony annoucing their PS3s. First up, the facts:</p> <ul> <li> <p>Two versions</p> </li> <li> <p>20GB version - EUR499 / 60GB version - EUR599</p> </li> <li> <p>20GB version will <strong>not</strong> have</p> <ul> <li> <p>Wireless</p> </li> <li> <p>Memory Stick / SD Storage</p> </li> <li> <p>HDMI out</p> </li> </ul> </li> <li> <p>Same controller as the PS2 except with Wireless, no rumble feature and - get this - a tilt sensor Releasing two versions of the same console is a smart move. Especially when you choose to remove such non-essential features (the Xbox 360&rsquo;s <strike>retardo</strike> Core pack didn&rsquo;t include a Hard Drive, meaning developers couldn&rsquo;t develop games using this feature.) Although the lack of HDMI output struck me as a little weird since this limits the PS3 as a Blu-Ray player. And let&rsquo;s face it, half of the point of the PS3 is as a way to sell the Blu-Ray format to consumers.</p> </li> </ul> <p>But the news about the controller is just funny. With so much pre-E3 talk focusing on Nintendo&rsquo;s new Wii-mote controller and how it would change the way we play games like Zelda, it&rsquo;s not surprising to hear Sony announce something similar. But this is so obviously a knee-jerk reaction, it&rsquo;s hard not to hear the collective <em>groan</em> rising up from bulletin boards across the internet. From <a href="http://e3.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3150508">1up&rsquo;s report of the Sony press conference</a>:</p> <blockquote>Ken Kutaragi is out showing off the last PlayStation controller, and basically looks like a sliver version of the Dual Shock 2. What's different? Sony has basically taken Nintendo's idea of a movable controller, and introduced the gyroscope technology into the PlayStation 3 controller. Yes, you read that right. <p>Kutaragi is looking smug.</blockquote></p> <p>&lsquo;Sup Nintendo?</p> <p><strong>update:</strong> <a href="http://www.kotaku.com/gaming/clips/e306-clips-playstation-3-controller-first-look-172407.php">this does not look like a lot of fun</a></p> Original theatrical version of Star Wars to be released on DVD → http://www.thedigitalbits.com/rumormill.html Thu, 04 May 2006 13:27:05 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/original-theatrical-version-of-star-wars-to-be-released-on-dvd/ <p>Greedo goes back to shooting first at the end of this year!</p> Lost ARG → http://www.thehansofoundation.org/ Thu, 04 May 2006 13:04:39 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/lost-arg/ <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2006/05/hanso.jpg" alt="hanso.jpg"></p> <p>Everyone still watching Lost? No-one given up yet? Good.</p> <p>With yesterday&rsquo;s show in the US, the makers also re-launched <a href="http://www.thehansofoundation.org/">thehansofoundation.org</a> as part of the Lost Alternate Reality Game (ARG). I haven&rsquo;t had much of a chance to play about with it yet, so I can&rsquo;t tell you if there&rsquo;s any spoilers. But my word, they certainly spent a few quid on the redesign.</p> YouTube - Super Soaker Oozinator → http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YdAIt4MgnHc&search=oozinator Thu, 04 May 2006 11:07:22 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/youtube-super-soaker-oozinator/ <p>More like Super Soaker Bukkakinator. &ldquo;Major Pumping Required&rdquo; indeed.</p> Nintendo Wii https://lowbrowculture.com/post/nintendo-wii/ Fri, 28 Apr 2006 09:06:01 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/nintendo-wii/ <p>For Nintendo, the name &ldquo;Revolution&rdquo; had always been a codename. People might say that it had caught on with the public and changing it now will confuse people, but Nintendo were very up-front about this: Revolution was just a codename, just like &ldquo;Dolphin&rdquo; (Gamecube) and &ldquo;Project Reality&rdquo; (Nintendo 64).</p> <p>Yesterday, Nintendo announced the official name of their next-generation console.</p> <p><strong>Wii.</strong></p> <p>I&rsquo;m on two minds here. Part of me thinks it&rsquo;s a brilliant, bold move - &ldquo;Revolution&rdquo; was too western, and didn&rsquo;t mean as much to its home market. Wii is a standard non-specific word bordering on onomatapaea. Whee!</p> <p>The other part of me is wondering what names were rejected to come to this one. I&rsquo;m reminded of an Eddie Izzard sketch, describing how Jerry Dorsey changed his name to Englebert Humperdink.</p> <blockquote>'Zinglebert Bambledack! Yingeebert Dangleban! Zanglebert Dingleback! Winglebert Humptiback! Slupbum Waller!' <p>&lsquo;What?&rsquo;</p> <p>&lsquo;Alright, Kringlebert Fishtibuns! Steveibuns Buttrentrunden&hellip;&rsquo;</p> <p>&lsquo;No, Jerry Dorsey! I like Jerry Dorsey&hellip;&rsquo;</p> <p>&lsquo;No we can&rsquo;t&hellip; Let&rsquo;s see, we have Zinglebert Bambledack, Dinglebert Wangledack, Slupbum Waller, Klingibum Fistlbars, Dinglebert Zambeldack, uh&hellip; Jerry Dorsey, Englerbert Humptiback, Zinglebert Bambledack, Engelbert Humperdinck, Dinglebert Wingledank&rsquo;</p> <p>&lsquo;No, no, go back one&rsquo;</blockquote></p> XBox 360 to get CPU upgrade → http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=31173 Tue, 25 Apr 2006 09:14:42 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/xbox-360-to-get-cpu-upgrade/ <p>Paving the way for cheaper XBox 360s next year?</p> Probably Greatest Pub Team in World - Google Video → http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3219386766071397128 Thu, 13 Apr 2006 09:26:08 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/probably-greatest-pub-team-in-world-google-video/ <p>I&rsquo;m such a sucker for things like this.</p> Every Girl's Crazy 'bout a Sharp Dressed Man https://lowbrowculture.com/post/every-girls-crazy-bout-a-sharp-dressed-man/ Fri, 07 Apr 2006 10:57:34 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/every-girls-crazy-bout-a-sharp-dressed-man/ <p>No updates because I&rsquo;ve been too busy rocking out on <a href="http://www.lowbrowculture.com/2006/04/02/guitar-hero/">Guitar Hero</a> (which got its proper release today - hurry!)</p> <p>Once I&rsquo;ve played through a game, I rarely go back and play it again, unless it offers a significantly different experience the second time around. For example, when you finish Shadow of the Colossus, it unlocks a &ldquo;hard&rdquo; mode. Balls to that. I&rsquo;ve got an ever-increasing list of games I have to play and an ever-decreasing amount of time to play them in. And especially not when it took a monumental effort to stop myself from smashing the controller to smithereens even on the &ldquo;normal&rdquo; difficulty.</p> <p>Guitar Hero is so perfectly balanced, I can&rsquo;t help myself. I&rsquo;ve worked through &ldquo;easy&rdquo; and &ldquo;medium&rdquo; and now I&rsquo;m halfway through &ldquo;difficult.&rdquo; Why? Because, unlike most games where luck has as much to do with your progress as actual skill, I can actually see myself getting better at Guitar Hero. When I first started playing through the game on &ldquo;medium&rdquo;, I thought it might be fun to see what &ldquo;I Wanna Be Sedated&rdquo; was like on &ldquo;expert&rdquo; difficulty. I found out: Scary. I was booed off stage before I&rsquo;d even reached the first verse. Now that medium is a long-distant memory and &ldquo;difficult&rdquo; is making me its bitch, I went back to &ldquo;I Wanna Be Sedated&rdquo; on expert. And y&rsquo;know what? I finished it. On my third attempt. But I finished it.</p> <p>To make matters worse, I&rsquo;m finding myself replaying songs on &ldquo;easy&rdquo; (and &ldquo;Medium&rdquo;), just so I can fill the scoreboard up with top marks.</p> <p>The last time a game hooked me like this &ndash; improving my skill and beating my own scores, just for the fun of it &ndash; was Super Mario Kart on the SNES. An odd comparison, to be sure, but one that makes me happy. I really didn&rsquo;t think people <em>made</em> games like this any more. Fun little games with no real narrative depth that can consume hours and still have you coming back for more.</p> <p>One other thing I&rsquo;ve noticed&hellip; playing this game has strengthened up my baby finger no end. It was always the runt of my fingers and even when I played normal guitar with it, it never really did what I wanted to when I wanted it to. Now, it&rsquo;s kicking my other fingers&rsquo; asses. So, bonus!</p> <p>[tags]playstation, games, guitar hero[/tags]</p> Silent Hill - Character Downloads → http://www.sonypictures.com/movies/silenthill/characters/ Fri, 07 Apr 2006 09:59:51 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/silent-hill-character-downloads/ <p>I hate to keep going on about this, but PYRAMID HEAD WALLPAPER. This is probably the movie I&rsquo;m most looking forward to this year.</p> Guitar Hero! https://lowbrowculture.com/post/guitar-hero/ Sun, 02 Apr 2006 11:09:26 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/guitar-hero/ <p><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/thrillho/121794676/"><img src="http://static.flickr.com/37/121794676_2d162f6581_m.jpg" alt=""></a></p> <p><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/thrillho/121794676/">Guitar Hero</a></p> <p>Originally uploaded by <a href="http://www.flickr.com/people/thrillho/">THRILLHO</a>.</p> <p>This isn&rsquo;t supposed to be out for another week or so. During the week, I was whinging that it had the same release date as the new Tomb Raider game. But hooray for Smyths, breaking the release date and selling Guitar Hero early.</p> <p>Now I&rsquo;m waking up at 9am on a Sunday morning just so I can rock out to Megadeth&rsquo;s Symphony of Destruction.</p> <p>Feels like I&rsquo;m 15 again.</p> YouTube - Super Mario Reloaded → http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zU0xC8M3CwA Fri, 31 Mar 2006 10:50:37 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/youtube-super-mario-reloaded/ <p>Awesome mash-up of Mario and the &ldquo;Burly Brawl&rdquo; from Matrix Reloaded. Shot-for-shot, hand-animated. Did I say how awesome it was?</p> Silent Hill 2 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/silent-hill-2/ Thu, 30 Mar 2006 15:20:10 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/silent-hill-2/ <p><img src="http://www.lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2006/03/silenthill2.jpg" alt="silenthill2.jpg"></p> <p>Much as I love &ldquo;survival horror&rdquo; games, I have genuine trouble playing them. I like to think this is because I become so engrossed in the game and commit myself to it so completely that the scares are extremely effective on me. But others might say that it&rsquo;s because I&rsquo;m a complete pussy. I&rsquo;ll let you decide which theory you want to subscribe to. When my girlfriend announced that she&rsquo;d had enough of the &lsquo;cutesy&rsquo; games I&rsquo;d been pushing on her (the risible &ldquo;Hello Kitty&rdquo; game being the proverbial straw) and wanted to try something meatier, I realised it was time to bit the bullet and bring out Silent Hill 2, a game that had been lying untouched since I bought it almost two years ago. The idea being that she would play most of the game, handing (read: throwing) the controller to me whenever the action got a bit much for her.</p> <p>Throughout the course of the game, you realise how much the game loves to fuck with you. It&rsquo;s true that most survival horror games like to fuck with you in some way - the cheap-but-fun parlour tricks of &ldquo;Eternal Darkness&rdquo; making you think your controller had become unplugged, or the twisted self-referential jokes of Resident Evil 2 and 3 - but Silent Hill turns this into an art form. The static on your character&rsquo;s hand-held radio being a particularly good example. It warns the player that an enemy is close, but doesn&rsquo;t give any indication of exactly where it is. And there&rsquo;s only one thing scarier than something you can&rsquo;t see: something you can&rsquo;t see, but know is there.</p> <p>By the middle of Silent Hill 2, you&rsquo;ll have collected most weapons and found plenty of ammunition for your arsenal. Even on &ldquo;normal&rdquo; difficulty, the enemies aren&rsquo;t particularly troublesome. The ones you can&rsquo;t kill are easy to avoid. At this stage, even my girlfriend was taunting the enemies. I&rsquo;m pretty sure I heard her smack-talking Pyramid Head.</p> <p>And that&rsquo;s when the game pounces.</p> <p>Inside a hotel, you come across a lift. You have to go down a couple of floors and pick up some items. Unfortunately, when you step into the lift (the only way down), an alarm goes off. A helpful sign informs you that the lift, in true videogame logic, has a weight limit of exactly one person. I spent five minutes shouting at the TV. &ldquo;You sneaky fuckers! There&rsquo;s someone else in the lift with me! Someone on the roof! Someone I can&rsquo;t see!? WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO?!!&rdquo; Eventually, I discovered what it wanted me to do: my inventory was weighing me down, so I&rsquo;d have to dump all of my guns and ammunition and go in unarmed. It wouldn&rsquo;t even let me carry a stick to club potential enemies with.</p> <p>And with that, my shouting went up a notch. I paused the game and shrieked at the TV for a good ten minutes. I knew that I would be in a cramped basement filled with the worst kinds of brain-spew this side of a Francis Bacon painting (see what I did there?). And I would be <em>completely defenceless</em>. In the end, I spent more time bitching and moaning about what I had to do than I spent actually doing it, but that&rsquo;s entirely beside the point.</p> <p>Not long after the game was finished, myself and my girlfriend went on a late-night tour of Kilmainham Jail, a special one-off tour as part of heritage week, given by a friend of ours. It was all about execution within the jail, taking us through some of the places not shown on the &rsquo;normal&rsquo; tour. I don&rsquo;t think anyone was as freaked out as us - the whole thing was exactly like something out of Silent Hill, right down to the <a href="http://www.mobygames.com/game/ps2/silent-hill-2-restless-dreams/screenshots/gameShotId,91363/">creepy map</a> on the wall.</p> <p>So now, if anyone asks me if Silent Hill 2 is a good game, I tell them about walking through Kilmainham Jail, constantly checking over my shoulder for zombie nurses. It takes a truly spectacular game to mess you up long after the computer is turned off.</p> Offical "Snakes on a Plane" logo! → http://www.ew.com/ew/report/0,6115,1175748_1_0_,00.html Thu, 23 Mar 2006 10:49:24 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/offical-snakes-on-a-plane-logo/ <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2006/03/snakesonaplane.jpg" alt="Snakes on a motherfuckin&rsquo; plane!"></p> <p>Weird to hear how it was inspired by fan artwork on the internet. It&rsquo;s like the internet and this movie are caught in a feedback loop of <em>awesomeness</em>.</p> GDC: Cam footage of God of War 2 - Playsyde → http://www.playsyde.com/news_2693_en.html Thu, 23 Mar 2006 10:13:44 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/gdc-cam-footage-of-god-of-war-2-playsyde/ <p>God of War was, hands down, my favourite game of last year. Epic brutality. So glad to see they&rsquo;re bringing it back for a sequel, and adding the bits they couldn&rsquo;t get to in the original (like a battle with the cyclops)</p> Underneath Dublin? - Archiseek → http://www.archiseek.com/content/showthread.php?t=514 Wed, 22 Mar 2006 14:22:00 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/underneath-dublin-archiseek/ <p>Another fascinating thread on Archiseek about the tunnels hidden around Dublin city. Not exactly enough for serious Urban Exploration, but still pretty interesting.</p> Cycling in Irish Cities - Archiseek → http://www.archiseek.com/content/showthread.php?t=4311 Wed, 22 Mar 2006 14:17:06 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/cycling-in-irish-cities-archiseek/ <p>Fascinating thread on Archiseek about cycling in Irish cities. As a cyclist in Dublin, I can safely say I have stared into the face of death on many occasions. Interesting to see what city planners think of all this.</p> Hey, scientists working on a life-saving cure for bird flu need to relax too, you know → http://www.makezine.com/blog/archive/2006/03/eye_glasses_for_houseflies.html?CMP=OTC-0D6B48984890 Wed, 22 Mar 2006 11:29:52 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/hey-scientists-working-on-a-life-saving-cure-for-bird-flu-need-to-relax-too-you-know/ <p>And how do they relax? By putting tiny-tiny glasses on houseflies.</p> <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2006/03/20060317-04325045-jijp-int-view-001.jpg" alt="20060317-04325045-jijp-int-view-001.jpg"></p> <p>Now, back to work. Slackers.</p> Listal: Catalogue your stuff! https://lowbrowculture.com/post/listal-catalogue-your-stuff/ Tue, 21 Mar 2006 11:51:35 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/listal-catalogue-your-stuff/ <p><img src="http://www.lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2006/03/listal.png" alt="listal.png"></p> <p>My DVD collection has reached the point where I can no longer keep track of what I&rsquo;ve got, what I&rsquo;ve loaned to other people or what I haven&rsquo;t yet watched. So for the past couple of weeks, I&rsquo;ve been slowly loading my entire collection into <a href="http://www.delicious-monster.com/">Delicious Library</a>. A very pretty application, with a number of really nice features (easy to mark an item as &ldquo;on loan&rdquo;; export to iPod, so I almost always have a copy of my collection on-hand), but still had problems for me. Most importantly:</p> <ol> <li> <p>It&rsquo;s Mac-only</p> </li> <li> <p>Needs a powerful computer to run properly (which I don&rsquo;t have at home)</p> </li> <li> <p>Needs a fast internet connection to run properly (which I don&rsquo;t have at home) Last week, I stumbled across <a href="http://www.listal.com">Listal</a>. From the website:</p> </li> </ol> <blockquote>Listal is a social website where you can list all the movies, books, music and games you own and want!</blockquote> <p>Despite of the lack of a decent &ldquo;import&rdquo; feature (right now, you can only import from DVD Profiler), meaning I&rsquo;m having to enter each one of my DVDs <em>by hand</em>, I&rsquo;m moving my catalogue from Delicious Library into Listal. Why? Well, there&rsquo;s a few reasons.</p> <ul> <li> <p><strong>It&rsquo;s internet-based</strong> I can access (and edit) my catalogue from any computer on the internet, not just my Mac</p> </li> <li> <p><strong>Thin-client suits my crappy internet connection</strong></p> </li> </ul> <p>The listal server does all the heavy lifting meaning my Clearwire connection remains relatively unruffled.</p> <ul> <li><strong>RSS feeds for every context</strong></li> </ul> <p>Besides the obvious applications of any kind of RSS feeds, it also means I can export my RSS feed to something like <a href="http://www.exdev.dk/blog/?page_id=2">iDropper</a> to dump the RSS feed onto my iPod, replicating the functionality of Delicious Library. This will probably get even easier when Listal finally has a &ldquo;proper&rdquo; export facility.</p> <ul> <li><strong>User-specified tags, ratings and lists</strong></li> </ul> <p>This is really what sold it for me - the ability to completely tag my collection as I want to. So I can have a whole bunch of movies listed as &ldquo;hangover movies,&rdquo; &ldquo;Sunday matinees,&rdquo; &ldquo;Cheesy horror.&rdquo; You get the idea. And this is without even touching on the &ldquo;social&rdquo; part of the application - being able to see friends&rsquo; collections, recommend new films and easily arrange loans.</p> <p><a href="http://thrillho.listal.com/">My listal profile is here.</a> I&rsquo;ve barely added 25% of my collection and even then, I&rsquo;m going to have to go back and tag them all properly, so I&rsquo;m going to be working on it a bit more. If you&rsquo;re on there, <a href="http://www.listal.com/friendsaction/add/?membername=thrillho">add me as a friend!</a></p> Consolevania is back https://lowbrowculture.com/post/consolevania-is-back/ Mon, 13 Mar 2006 14:11:11 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/consolevania-is-back/ <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2006/03/consolevania.jpg" alt="Consolevania"></p> <p>I used to bitch and moan about how videogames have always been misrepresented on TV. And all it would take to make me happy was a bunch of likeable presenters to make a show entertaining even to people who don&rsquo;t play videogames.</p> <p>Hooray then, for Consolevania. An online video TV show so entertaining that even my non-videogame-playing girlfriend will sit down and watch.</p> <p>Anyway, after seven months&rsquo; break, the new episode of <a href="http://www.consolevania.com">Consolevania</a> was released on Sunday. And it&rsquo;s as funny as ever. If you like videogames, you should download it. Even if you don&rsquo;t like videogames, you should download it. And if you&rsquo;re the maker of a video podcast, you need to watch this and see how it&rsquo;s done properly.</p> Curse of Unix https://lowbrowculture.com/post/curse-of-unix/ Sun, 12 Mar 2006 21:36:44 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/curse-of-unix/ <p>Six years of working professionally as a systems administrator and last week I realised that I really don&rsquo;t know much about the &rsquo;theory&rsquo; behind the stuff I do. I couldn&rsquo;t have told you what a &lsquo;sticky bit&rsquo; was, but I could tell you how to implement one. Making sense? Anyway, so I&rsquo;ve spent the weekend getting re-acquainted with low-level Unix stuff. This has mostly involved installed FreeBSD on my laptop and reading man pages for almost every command I&rsquo;ve run. Along the way, I wanted to install mackers&rsquo; o2sms and found out that FreeBSD&rsquo;s default perl doesn&rsquo;t have threading enabled. So I had to recompile perl - something I haven&rsquo;t had to do since 1998.</p> <p>Never mind OS X which has made my daily computing life a joy, even binary Linux distributions like Ubuntu have made me very lazy. Given a choice between downloading a pre-compiled binary and running that, and having my machine download the source code and waiting 30 minutes while it whittles the software out of 1s and 0s, I&rsquo;ll choose the one that has me up and running as soon as possible.</p> <p>I want out of computing completely. It&rsquo;s not like I <em>can&rsquo;t</em> do this stuff any more, I just don&rsquo;t <em>want</em> to.</p> LED Pac Man Bicycle Wheels https://lowbrowculture.com/post/led-pac-man-bicycle-wheels/ Thu, 09 Mar 2006 11:19:09 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/led-pac-man-bicycle-wheels/ <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2006/03/pacanim.gif" alt="LED Pac Man"></p> <p>The world just got 35% more amazing. Uses persistence of vision to &lsquo;draw&rsquo; images on your bike wheels. Not only does it look amazing, but it&rsquo;s functional as well - people can&rsquo;t exactly say they didn&rsquo;t see you when you&rsquo;ve got 60 LEDs showing Pac-man chasing a ghost on your wheels. And the <del>guy</del> girl who created it has <a href="http://www.instructables.com/ex/i/3C61E5B2FF42102880EC001143E7E506/?ALLSTEPS">put the instructions on her website</a> so you can make it yourself!</p> <p>Unfortunately, you couldn&rsquo;t have something like this in Dublin. From personal experience, I&rsquo;ve learned that in this city, when people see something cool, they try and break it or take it for themselves. (Still bitter about my bike being stolen.)</p> <p>(via <a href="http://www.makezine.com/blog/archive/2006/03/light_up_animated_pacman_bicyc.html?CMP=OTC-0D6B48984890">makezine</a>)</p> Shadow of the Colossus https://lowbrowculture.com/post/shadow-of-the-colossus/ Tue, 07 Mar 2006 10:55:47 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/shadow-of-the-colossus/ <p><img src="http://www.lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2006/03/0603_sotc.jpg" alt="Shadow of the Colossus"></p> <p>Remember the &ldquo;<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Bqq38WZctA&amp;search=playstation">Double Life</a>&rdquo; ad for the Playstation? A marvellous ad, full of the kind of lyrical braggadocio Sony brought to the word of videogames. In that one ad, I believe Sony did more for raising mainstream understanding of the <em>appeal</em> of videogames than all of Nintendo&rsquo;s efforts throughout the previous ten years.</p> <p>But the ad never really rang true for me. The creepy-cute kid with the lisp telling us how he&rsquo;d &ldquo;conequered worlds&rdquo; seemed like a bit of a lie. The worlds I had conquered had been superficial, cartoon worlds. Even the largest maps in <a href="http://westwood.ea.com/">Command &amp; Conquer</a> never really struck me as anything more than an extended game of <a href="http://www.the-underdogs.org/game.php?id=2125">Cannon Fodder</a>. A loose bit of fun that, ultimately, never made me feel even the least bit heroic. Certainly not as heroic as the games that creepy-cute kid seemed to be playing.</p> <p>Shadow of the Colossus is the first game that has made me feel like I could be a part of that ad. I feel like I&rsquo;m finally able to say, with no small amount of pride, that I have defeated giants. Armed with nothing more than a sword, a bow, and an unlimited supply of arrows (ahem), I have beaten&hellip; no, I have <em>slain</em> impossible goliaths. Did you hear that? I&rsquo;ve actually <em>slain</em> something.</p> <p>The sense of scale in this game is unbelievable. One level in God of War had you climbing a giant temple carried on the back of Kronos, the last titan. The scale of that one level sealed it for me - God of War was presenting familiar things in a way I had never experienced them and, as such, was one of the best games I&rsquo;d ever played. Shadow of the Colossus does the same thing, over and over again. Each level (16 in all) has a different colossus, with a different way of defeating them. Some are more obvious than others. Some require more skill and/or dexterity and/or luck than others. But each one has a scope beyond any other videogame I&rsquo;ve ever played. Quite simply, it&rsquo;s staggering.</p> <p>The Colossi themselves are strewn across a huge, empty game world. This in itself is a courageous move by the developers. Given the games relative brevity (in 3 hours, I had defeated 7 Colossi, almost half the total amount), it would have been easy to put incidental challenges in your way - the occasional enemy that will pop up out of nowhere and take 10 minutes to defeat (Hello Zelda: Wind Waker!) - thus artificially lengthening the game. Instead, they kept it barren, which only adds to the epic nature of the game.</p> <p>(Incidentally, I&rsquo;ve also noticed that the developers have thrown in cool little spot-details, like an ancient campfire near where you battle a colossus. Not entirely necessary, but adds the overall atmosphere of the game.)</p> <p>After Shadow of the Colossus, I still don&rsquo;t feel like I&rsquo;ve conquered worlds. But I&rsquo;ve conquered giants. And that&rsquo;s close enough.</p> R-Point https://lowbrowculture.com/post/r-point/ Mon, 06 Mar 2006 16:03:53 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/r-point/ <p>I&rsquo;m convinced there&rsquo;s a good war-themed horror out there somewhere. What started out as a general disappointment with Michael Mann&rsquo;s <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0085780/">The Keep</a> has taken me through <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0252963">The Bunker</a> (awful) and <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0286306">Deathwatch</a> (starts out promising, quickly turns awful). From reading IMDB&rsquo;s message boards, I thought Kong Su-Chang&rsquo;s <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0417072">R-Point</a> would answer my prayers.</p> <p>It tells the story of a squad of Korean soldiers in the Vietnam war sent to investigate radio transmissions coming from a group of soldiers thought to have been killed six months previously. Which is the same setup as Deathwatch. And that&rsquo;s the problem. Using the plot of Deathwatch as a foundation, R-Point tries to blend a mixture of <em>Platoon</em>, <em>Apocalypse Now</em>, <em>The Blair Witch Project</em> and <em>The Shining</em>, even going so far as to visually name-check some of these films. And among all these heavyweights, the few original things the filmmakers bring seem quite tame and undercooked.</p> <p>On paper, it&rsquo;s a recipe for magic: war-themed horror mixed with the nerve-shattering tension that Asian filmmakers seem able to tap into so well. In reality, R-Point is a disappointing anti-climax. Oh well, i still have high hopes for <a href="http://www.gorehoundinc.com/">Worst Case Scenario</a></p> Good Night, and Good Luck https://lowbrowculture.com/post/good-night-and-good-luck/ Mon, 06 Mar 2006 15:25:53 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/good-night-and-good-luck/ <p>For me, <em>Good Night, and Good Luck</em> fell squarely into the same genre as <em>Downfall</em>: an important movie, but not necessarily a <em>good</em> movie. It ticks a lot of boxes and zipped along at a fair pace but never really engaged me any better than a documentary on the same subject could have. In fact, the chapter about the Murrow/McCarthy feud in John S. Friedman&rsquo;s <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0312425171/sr=8-1/qid=1141658354/ref=pd_bbs_1/002-7184671-2625644?%5Fencoding=UTF8">The Secret Histories</a> did a better job of providing a context for the broadcasts than Clooney&rsquo;s film and remains, for me, more entertaining.</p> <p>Although perhaps that&rsquo;s because I wasn&rsquo;t being forced to chew down some paper-thin character development for paper-thin characters. I don&rsquo;t know.</p> World of Warcraft reaches 6,000,000 players → http://www.blizzard.com/press/060228.shtml Thu, 02 Mar 2006 11:35:00 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/world-of-warcraft-reaches-6000000-players/ <p>Online MMORPG has a larger population than Ireland. Holy crap.</p> YouTube - What if Microsoft designed the iPod packaging? → http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VAGr3mVVUwE Wed, 01 Mar 2006 10:19:00 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/youtube-what-if-microsoft-designed-the-ipod-packaging/ <p>Nerdy as it sounds, I still have the box from my iPod because I can&rsquo;t bear to throw out something so beautiful</p> News - Full SingStar Rocks track listing → http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=63066 Tue, 28 Feb 2006 17:34:00 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/news-full-singstar-rocks-track-listing/ <p>Singstar Rocks er&hellip; doesn&rsquo;t. They should just make a &ldquo;Singstar: Queen&rdquo; edition and be done.</p> Route 66 News » Here are some 'Cars' movie toys → http://rwarn17588.wordpress.com/2006/02/26/here-are-some-cars-movie-toys/ Tue, 28 Feb 2006 16:37:00 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/route-66-news-here-are-some-cars-movie-toys/ <p>More cool, useless junk to put on my shelves!</p> We Love Katamari https://lowbrowculture.com/post/we-love-katamari/ Tue, 28 Feb 2006 15:41:38 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/we-love-katamari/ <p>The Gardai have called in a specialist to help clean up the mess on O&rsquo;Connell Street after the riots on Saturday.</p> <p><strong>The Prince of All Cosmos!</strong></p> <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/katamari_dublin.gif" alt=""></p> Video of Microsoft "Origami" → http://creativecoremedia.com/mso.swf Mon, 27 Feb 2006 18:02:40 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/video-of-microsoft-origami-2/ <p>Wifi / Bluetooth / Email / Gaming / Remote Control &hellip; is there anything they aren&rsquo;t pitching this as? Good ad though.</p> Fuck. https://lowbrowculture.com/post/fuck-3/ Sat, 25 Feb 2006 17:05:54 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/fuck-3/ <p><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/51035636906@N01/104213664/">P1000850</a></p> <p>Originally uploaded by <a href="http://www.flickr.com/people/51035636906@N01/">THRILLHO</a>.</p> <p>I spent 24 hours eating pizza, playing videogames and watching really, really bad movies. Around 2pm, I decideded to take a trip outside the house. Get some air (and some more really, really bad movies). At about 3, I got a text from my girlfriend to tell me about rioting and looting on O&rsquo;Connell Street. So I took a look for myself.</p> <p>Dublin is fucked.</p> <p><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/51035636906@N01/104214557/"><img src="http://static.flickr.com/36/104214557_d9f2125eea_t.jpg" alt="P1000855"></a></p> <p><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/51035636906@N01/104214442/"><img src="http://static.flickr.com/42/104214442_c70a2f84b9_t.jpg" alt="P1000853"></a></p> <p><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/51035636906@N01/104214390/"><img src="http://static.flickr.com/35/104214390_06e0ec1ef1_t.jpg" alt="P1000852"></a></p> <p><strong>Update (22.05)</strong> First song the in-house band plays on Tubridy Tonight? &ldquo;I Predict a Riot.&rdquo; Surely I&rsquo;m not alone in thinking that&rsquo;s in poor taste?</p> HHGL: Hip-Hop Gaming League → http://hhgl.ggl.com/ Thu, 23 Feb 2006 11:15:00 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/hhgl-hip-hop-gaming-league/ <p>Celebrity gaming league launched by Snoop Dogg</p> Boo! (video) → http://www.flurl.com/uploaded/heulsuse_64670.html Wed, 22 Feb 2006 18:08:00 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/boo-video/ <p>This is like me playing Resident Evil</p> Walk the Line https://lowbrowculture.com/post/walk-the-line/ Tue, 21 Feb 2006 11:48:45 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/walk-the-line/ <p>As a promotional tool to shift a boadload of Johnny Cash albums, it&rsquo;s fantastic.</p> <p>As a way of giving casual fans a context to the songs they&rsquo;re listening to (even if that context is clearly exaggerated), it&rsquo;s pretty good.</p> <p>As an entertaining movie, it&rsquo;s a load of my hole.</p> Soft-modded Xbox Media Centre! https://lowbrowculture.com/post/soft-modded-xbox-media-centre/ Mon, 20 Feb 2006 15:28:31 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/soft-modded-xbox-media-centre/ <p>Remember a few days ago, I <a href="https://lowbrowculture.com/tv-recommendations---february-2006-edition/">wrote about the TV shows I love</a>? Well. apart from Grand Designs and the Channel 4-led shame-fest of Supernanny, Brat Camp and It&rsquo;s Me or the Dog, I don&rsquo;t tend to watch much TV on er&hellip; TV. The ease of availability of just about any show I want to watch (thank you Uknova and Mininova) means that I find it easier to just download the shows I want to watch. If I wanted to be fancy, I could call this &ldquo;time-shifting&rdquo; or something, but let&rsquo;s just call a spade a spade and say &ldquo;laziness.&rdquo;</p> <p>This generally means watching them on my computer in work (during lunch, honestly!). I&rsquo;m not particularly delighted with this. A dodgy CRT with a crappy set of speakers can&rsquo;t really compete with my setup at home. And it also adds another layer of hassle with shows that my girlfriend also wants to watch, like Lost. In these cases, I&rsquo;ve got a DVD player that will play DivXs, but is extremely fussy about what <em>kinds</em> of DivXs it wants to play. So I end up</p> <ul> <li> <p>Downloading the file</p> </li> <li> <p>Using FfmpegX to convert the file (even on my dual G5, this takes 20 minutes)</p> </li> <li> <p>Burn it to a CD</p> </li> <li> <p>Bring it homeAnd this doesn&rsquo;t take into account the loss of sync between the audio and visuals that FfmpegX tends to helpfully drop into its newly-converted files. Nor the amount of hassle involved in doing this for multiple episodes. It also means that once I&rsquo;ve watched the episode, I&rsquo;m left with a lovely new CD coaster taking up space on our already-overflowing shelves (<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/51035636906@N01/102145562/">visual evidence of overflowing shelves</a>).</p> </li> </ul> <p>What I needed was a media centre. Something that would let me download episodes, bring them home on my iPod and watch them on my TV. Originally, I had planned to use a G4 Powermac with Front Row at home for the media centre but lack of a graphics card with decent TV-out put an end to this idea. I thought about buying myself a mod chip for my Xbox and installing <a href="http://www.xboxmediacenter.de/">Xbox Media Center (XBMC)</a>, but even this struck me as too much work (and in the couple of weeks it would take for my mod chip to arrive, I would probably be bored of this idea already).</p> <p>Luckily, I stumbled across a <a href="http://www.i-hacked.com/content/view/114/62/">bunch of articles last week about soft-modding the Xbox</a>. This meant I could install XBMC without a chip. So on Friday, I gave it a go.</p> <p>I used a hacked save game for Splinter Cell which, when launched from within the game, ran a program from within Linux that did all of the hard work for me. Once I installed the softmod, installing XBMC was simple. Now, I can stream movies (I tried it against .avi, .mov, .wmv - all worked) off that same G4 Powermac and still play Xbox games - even play on-line with Live! And the cherry on top of all this is that these movies look absolutely beautiful on the TV. Way, way better than my converted DivXs ever did.</p> <p>The total cost to me for doing all this was the princely sum of&hellip; nattin. I had all the tools lying around (Xbox, memory card, usb/memory card convertor, media server) and it only took a few minutes to complete. Next up: putting a new hard drive in the Xbox. Let&rsquo;s see if that&rsquo;s as easy.</p> Trailer for "Special" starring Michael Rappaport → http://www.trailerdownload.net/downloads.php?id=422&trailer=932 Mon, 20 Feb 2006 10:12:21 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/trailer-for-special-starring-michael-rappaport-2/ <p>Feels like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. With more swearing.</p> Funniest thing overheard coming out of "Final Destination 3" last night https://lowbrowculture.com/post/funniest-thing-overheard-coming-out-of-final-destination-3-last-night/ Sat, 18 Feb 2006 20:35:35 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/funniest-thing-overheard-coming-out-of-final-destination-3-last-night/ <blockquote> <p>Well, I thought that was very predictable.</p> </blockquote> We are gathered here today to get through this thing called "life" https://lowbrowculture.com/post/we-are-gathered-here-today-to-get-through-this-thing-called-life/ Thu, 16 Feb 2006 20:48:14 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/we-are-gathered-here-today-to-get-through-this-thing-called-life/ <div class="embed video-player"> <iframe class="youtube-player" type="text/html" width="640" height="385" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/DbggBc7l9K4" allowfullscreen frameborder="0"> </iframe> </div> <p>When I was younger, I had such a major crush on Wendy Melvoin, Prince&rsquo;s guitarist in The Revolution. And depending on when you catch me, Purple Rain could be my favourite album and movie of all time, but never anything less than &ldquo;incredible&rdquo; to me. Watching the Brit awards, on comes Prince to perform some songs. Random snippets of our conversation here.</p> <p>&ldquo;Do you think Prince should reinvent himself? He&rsquo;s been playing the same music for years.&rdquo;<br> &ldquo;He&rsquo;s probably had a ton of work done.&rdquo;<br> &ldquo;This song is okay. I could do without the Pan Pipes though.&rdquo;<br> &ldquo;Hey, isn&rsquo;t that his guitarist from Purple Rain?&rdquo;</p> <p>Wendy and Lisa were back! Looking a little older, sure. Minus their bad-ass <em>hugh</em> hairstyles, sure. But my crush kicked right back in immediately. Oh boy.</p> <p>Oh, and after the Purple Rain medley: &ldquo;No. Prince shouldn&rsquo;t change his music. He should just keep playing this forever.&rdquo;</p> <p>ps - fuck the Kaiser Chiefs, Kasabien and Hard-Fi in their stupid fucking asses.</p> Tom Waits' High School Yearbook sold on eBay → http://cgi.ebay.com/1966-Hilltop-High-School-Yearbook-w-Tom-Waits-Sophmore_W0QQitemZ7588851478QQcategoryZ105071QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem Wed, 15 Feb 2006 12:35:50 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/tom-waits-high-school-yearbook-sold-on-ebay-2/ <p>.. for only $288?</p> TV recommendations - February 2006 edition https://lowbrowculture.com/post/everything-bad-is-good-for-you-2/ Mon, 13 Feb 2006 18:25:53 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/everything-bad-is-good-for-you-2/ <h3 id="tv-shows-i-love">TV Shows I love</h3> <p><strong><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_on_Mars_%28television%29">Life on Mars</a></strong></p> <p>I&rsquo;ll admit that I&rsquo;ve never been drawn to 70s British police dramas. Then again, I don&rsquo;t know that I&rsquo;ve ever actually seen a full episode of any of them. But Life on Mars is just fantastic. This and Doctor Who have renewed my faith in BBC drama.</p> <p><strong><a href="http://www.fox.com/prisonbreak/">Prison Break</a></strong></p> <p>When I&rsquo;m about to head off to bed after a hard day&rsquo;s TV watching, I tend to go for one last flick through the channels. I remember crying whenever I&rsquo;d stumble across CSI at midnight because it meant I was stuck for another hour without any way of wrenching myself away from the telly. Televisual crack. I was addicted.</p> <p>I get the same thing with Prison Break, the TV show with the most idiotic setup I&rsquo;ve ever seen. It makes me think of that episode of the X-Files where Mulder discovers the TV networks are putting subliminal messages between the frames of TV shows. I don&rsquo;t know why else I can&rsquo;t pull myself away from these breathtakingly stupid shows.</p> <p><strong><a href="http://www.televisionwithoutpity.com/show.cgi?show=136">Lost</a></strong></p> <p>Actually, I don&rsquo;t love Lost any more. I watched the entire first season over the course of a weekend and was completely hooked but since then, I think I mostly watch it out of some hope that they&rsquo;ll finally start dishing out some answers. So far, they haven&rsquo;t. And now there&rsquo;s talk of dragging this into four seasons, with a feature film finale. I think it&rsquo;s time I cut myself free.</p> <p><strong>Anything involving people being chastised for being <a href="http://www.channel4.com/health/microsites/S/supernanny/">bad parents</a>/<a href="http://www.channel4.com/life/microsites/B/bratcamp/">children</a>/<a href="http://www.channel4.com/entertainment/tv/microsites/I/itsmeorthedog/">pet-owners</a></strong></p> <p>Yes, they might be lowest-common-denominator TV, but these shows <a href="http://mekon.livejournal.com/?skip=20">have saved my life</a> on more than one occasion. However, this does not extend to anything presented by <a href="http://www.drgillianmckeith.com/">Gillian McKeith</a>. She is the <em>devil</em>. A bitter, hump-backed <em>devil</em></p> <p><strong><a href="http://www.channel4.com/4homes/ontv/grand-designs/">Grand Designs</a></strong></p> <p><a href="http://www.lowbrowculture.com/2005/10/28/grand-designs/">This has been mentioned before</a>, but I still can&rsquo;t get enough of it. I love everything about it, from the creepy Harry Potter-esque theme music to Kevin McCloud&rsquo;s shameless baiting of the absolute <em>cocks</em> he&rsquo;s showcasing. I wish it had its own channel.</p> <p><strong><a href="http://www.channel4.com/entertainment/tv/microsites/I/itcrowd/">The IT Crowd</a></strong></p> <p>Apparently, this isn&rsquo;t being as well received as I would have expected, which is a shame because I think it&rsquo;s one of the best-written, best-acted comedies on TV today (or at least since Black Books went shit). The fact that it&rsquo;s about a bunch of socially inept geeks - thus mirroring my own existence - only makes me love it more.</p> <h3 id="tv-shows-i-just-cant-get-into">TV Shows I just can&rsquo;t get into</h3> <p><strong>Battlestar Galactica</strong></p> <p>I&rsquo;ve tried and I&rsquo;ve tried and I&rsquo;ve tried, but I just can&rsquo;t get into this show. I think this means I have to hand in my nerd badge or something.</p> <p><strong>Veronica Mars</strong></p> <p>It&rsquo;s nice to have a female-led teen-oriented drama show that doesn&rsquo;t involve someone <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0118276/">being a superhero</a> or a <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0362359/">total fucking flake</a>. But I just couldn&rsquo;t care less about this show.</p> <p><strong>ER</strong></p> <p>I used to love this show, but I&rsquo;ve come to realise this was mostly down to my hetero boner for Noah Wyle. Now, not even John Leguizamo can save it.</p> intermaweb.net » Blog Archive » World Record #4: Peristaltic Action → http://intermaweb.net/index.php/2005/10/29/world-record-4-peristaltic-action Thu, 09 Feb 2006 17:33:00 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/intermawebnet-blog-archive-world-record-4-peristaltic-action-2/ <p>Girl creates a 26&rsquo; long turd - the length of her colon - in the name of.. science? art? my entertainment?</p> Teaser trailer for remake of The Omen → http://www.apple.com/trailers/fox/theomen/ Tue, 07 Feb 2006 15:08:00 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/teaser-trailer-for-remake-of-the-omen/ <p>Cute release date - 6.6.6</p> Genndy Tartakovsky is directing Dark Crystal 2!! → http://www.henson.com/company/20060201.html Tue, 07 Feb 2006 12:12:00 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/genndy-tartakovsky-is-directing-dark-crystal-2/ <p>Oh boy oh boy oh boy!</p> Jarhead https://lowbrowculture.com/post/jarhead/ Tue, 07 Feb 2006 00:04:07 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/jarhead/ <p>As a film, Jarhead was as schizophrenic as the marine mentality it tried to convey. It swung wildly between occasional bursts of brilliant writing into lazy references to other war movies (oh yes, Apocolypse Now and the Deer Hunter, we get it). Sometime beautiful cinematography gave way to murky, uninspired, <em>cliched</em> imagery. Following the same template as countless movies before it, yet structurally, it was a complete mess.</p> <p>But perhaps this is part of the point it&rsquo;s trying to make and it&rsquo;s done so subtlely as to be barely noticable. I&rsquo;d like to think so, really I would. But the clunky, heavy-handed way in which it tried to make its other points leads me to believe that the word &lsquo;subtle&rsquo; does not exist for these filmmakers.</p> Nintendo DS Lite https://lowbrowculture.com/post/nintendo-ds-lite/ Thu, 26 Jan 2006 09:40:49 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/nintendo-ds-lite/ <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/2006/01/nintendo_ds_lite.jpg" alt="Nintendo DS Lite"></p> <p>Okay, so I should be getting ready for Paris right now, but this is pretty big. After weeks of denying it, Nintendo finally announced that they will be launching a revamped version of the DS in late March. This new version will be two-thirds the size/80% of the weight of the original and the ability to set the LCD to four different levels of brightness (including the option to set it brighter than the original DS.)</p> <p>As well as this, they&rsquo;ve redesigned the case to match the <a href="https://lowbrowculture.com/post/talkin-bout-a-revolution/">design of the revolution controller</a>!</p> <p>My poor little Nintendo DS. We&rsquo;ve been together a long time. You&rsquo;ve seen me through some tough times, some God-awful transatlantic flights, and I&rsquo;ve even grown to love your beauty-spot of a dead pixel. But I don&rsquo;t know how much longer you have left.</p> One Night in Paris https://lowbrowculture.com/post/one-night-in-paris/ Thu, 26 Jan 2006 00:45:11 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/one-night-in-paris/ <p>Well, five nights, to be exact.</p> <p>Continuing this jet-setting lifestyle that I&rsquo;m becoming so accustomed to, herself indoors and I are heading off to Paris tomorrow for a few days. This is mainly a way of making up for the fact that I was 5,000 miles away for her birthday earlier in the month, but also as a way of recharging our collective batteries (and it means I&rsquo;m finally, FINALLY going to Disneyland, having been itching to go since it first opened).</p> <p>If all goes according to plan, I won&rsquo;t be anywhere near a computer until I come back. So things will be even quieter than usual around here. And it&rsquo;s a shame, because I had so much to talk about. Like my favourite ascerbic journalist, Charlie Brooker, describing Adrien Brody as &ldquo;<a href="http://film.guardian.co.uk/features/featurepages/0,,1680381,00.html">a cross between Ross from Friends and a disappointed sundial</a>.&rdquo; Or the <a href="http://movies.yahoo.com/feature/silenthillqt.html">new trailer for the Silent Hill movie</a>.</p> <p>But all these will have to wait. I&rsquo;ve got french people queueing up to be rude to me.</p> Netsource Speed Test https://lowbrowculture.com/post/netsource-speed-test/ Wed, 25 Jan 2006 18:54:58 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/netsource-speed-test/ <p><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/51035636906@N01/91105788/"><img src="http://static.flickr.com/21/91105788_67127f07d7_m.jpg" alt=""></a></p> <p><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/51035636906@N01/91105788/">Netsource Speed Test</a></p> <p>Originally uploaded by <a href="http://www.flickr.com/people/51035636906@N01/">THRILLHO</a>.</p> <p>For a little while now, I&rsquo;ve noticed that my netsource connection only sucks during the evening, when people are home from work, during which time it&rsquo;s barely better than dialup. In the very late night and early in the morning, the connection is spectacular and actually comes close to approaching the &ldquo;2MB DSL&rdquo; it&rsquo;s advertised as.</p> <p>So, to put my theory to the test, I set up a cron job to wget a 1MB file from <a href="ftp://ftp.heanet.ie">ftp.heanet.ie</a> twice every hour. I calculated the average of the two hourly downloads and used that for my result.</p> <p>And, well, the graph speaks for itself. The connection is best at 7AM, and worst at 6PM. At least this gives me some demonstratable proof of what I&rsquo;m saying when I speak to Netsource about my connection.</p> High Concept https://lowbrowculture.com/post/high-concept/ Tue, 24 Jan 2006 15:13:56 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/high-concept/ <p>Right, so where was I?</p> <p>A few months ago, I wrote about <a href="https://lowbrowculture.com/post/snakes-on-a-plane/">Snakes On A Plane</a>, the high-concept thriller about uh&hellip; snakes. On a plane. The IMDB has recently updated its information about Sheldon Turner, the writer of SoaP. One of his upcoming projects is called <em>The Breathtaker</em> and its IMDB plot summary runs like this:</p> <blockquote> <p>A small-town police chief pursues a serial killer who strikes only during tornadoes, brutally killing his victims in the eye of the storm.</blockquote></p> </blockquote> <p>Jesus. This guy is really working hard to redefine the term &ldquo;High Concept&rdquo;, bringing us into &ldquo;<strong>Huge</strong> Concept&rdquo;.</p> <p>Also: I&rsquo;ve started visiting <a href="http://www.scriptsales.com/DDScriptSales.htm">Script Sales</a> almost daily now. It always cheers me up to read about scripts whose log-lines describe them as &ldquo;A monkey spy adventure in the vein of &lsquo;The Bourne Identity.&rsquo;&rdquo;</p> <p>&hellip;?!</p> 10 Days in San Francisco https://lowbrowculture.com/post/10-days-in-san-francisco/ Wed, 11 Jan 2006 01:25:59 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/10-days-in-san-francisco/ <p>I wish I could say it was more than just a coincidence that I&rsquo;m in San Francisco at the same time as Macworld but unfortunately, I&rsquo;m only here to help our company move its San Francisco office two blocks down the road. The move itself took place over the past weekend (and the few days before it), so for the last few days I&rsquo;ve been running myself ragged trying to make the entire thing as seamless as possible. And, <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/51035636906@N01/84582680/">minor cable issue aside</a>, the whole ordeal has been fine. We&rsquo;re back up and running and I&rsquo;ve got time to enjoy myself.</p> <p>No gun issues this time. Actually, the whole trip has been rather subdued. Like I said, I&rsquo;ve been pretty busy since I got here. Working 12-hour days has meant that I&rsquo;m going hotel -&gt; work -&gt; hotel. Sleep -&gt; work -&gt; sleep. The jetlag hasn&rsquo;t been given a chance to catch up with me.</p> <p>Although it&rsquo;s not all been work. I&rsquo;ve still managed to find time to do some wandering. Being a huge nerd, I went hiking around San Francisco to find <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/51035636906@N01/84176954/">the offices of American Zoetrope</a>, Francis Ford Coppola&rsquo;s production company. While I was out there, I took a trip towards North Beach, past the City Lights bookstore - <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/51035636906@N01/84176914/">the heart of the beat movement</a>. And, naturally, also found time to do a little shopping. Current haul includes</p> <ul> <li> <p><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000BCKFWK/qid=1136940360/sr=8-1/ref=pd_bbs_1/103-1811960-0940610?n=507846&amp;s=dvd&amp;v=glance">Sin City: Recut, Extended, Unrated</a></p> </li> <li> <p><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00005JKFX/qid=1136940404/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/103-1811960-0940610?s=dvd&amp;v=glance&amp;n=130">Down by Law (Criterion)</a></p> </li> <li> <p><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0007M2234/qid=1136940456/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/103-1811960-0940610?s=dvd&amp;v=glance&amp;n=130">F for Fake (Criterion)</a></p> </li> <li> <p><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000063UR2/qid=1136940498/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/103-1811960-0940610?s=dvd&amp;v=glance&amp;n=130">Legend: Special Edition</a></p> </li> </ul> <p>But of course, the entire city has gone Mac crazy. Macworld is taking place just 10 minutes down the road from where I&rsquo;m sitting. Today, as I&rsquo;m sure you&rsquo;re all aware, is keynote day. On the trip down Market Street, from Powell to First (roughly ten or so blocks) I passed 4 Starbucks, each one filled to overflowing with people on Powerbooks and iBooks, presumably waiting for Steve Jobs&rsquo; keynote to begin (sitting in one of the windows was <a href="http://www.makezine.com/blog/archive/2005/11/laser_etched_powerbook.html">that guy who laser-etched his powerbook</a>).</p> <p>And now, only 6 hours after the keynote ended and the products were launched San Francisco is <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/51035636906@N01/85025379/">covered in ads for the new Intel Macs</a>. Unbelievable.</p> 27 Years Old Today https://lowbrowculture.com/post/27-years-old-today/ Mon, 02 Jan 2006 19:06:48 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/27-years-old-today/ <p><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/51035636906@N01/81027290/"><img src="http://static.flickr.com/42/81027290_d10d0b111e_m.jpg" alt=""></a></p> <p><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/51035636906@N01/81027290/">Birthday Loot!</a></p> <p>Today I managed to defy the odds by surviving exactly 27 years. To congratulate me (or perhaps console me), people gave me some loot. Current haul includes</p> <ul> <li> <p><a href="http://www.leisurepro.com/Catalog.aspx?op=ItemDisplay&amp;ProductID=CASG7301L1">Badass G-Shock watch that&rsquo;s been on my del.icio.us wishlist forever</a> (the same one I tried to order a while ago but they wouldn&rsquo;t ship to me because of the war in Iraq)</p> </li> <li> <p><a href="http://shop.vans.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/ProductDisplay?section=shoes&amp;catalogId=40000000002&amp;storeId=2&amp;productId=654&amp;langId=-1&amp;parent_category_rn=4003&amp;gender=76&amp;mainPageCat=mens&amp;mainNavCat=2&amp;mainNavSubCat=4&amp;mainNavDept=1114&amp;shopperGroup=null">Classic Slip-on Vans</a></p> </li> <li> <p><a href="http://www.mech-a.com/shop/product_info.php?products_id=751&amp;osCsid=7cd692eb5fde12d71005eba575ad77f3">Kubrick GTA III set</a></p> </li> <li> <p>A food mincer</p> </li> <li> <p>A food warmer (not pictured)</p> </li> <li> <p>Doctor Who Box Set</p> </li> <li> <p>Guerilla Film Makers Movie Blueprint</p> </li> </ul> <p>27 being the age of the Rock N&rsquo; Roll death, I&rsquo;m starting to feel a bit bummed out by the increasingly long list of people who had completed their entire careers and went to that great gig in the sky by the same age as I am right now. I&rsquo;ve got about another 11 months and 30 days left to make my mark on the world or else I&rsquo;ll miss my window.</p> Vincent Schiavelli 1948 - 2005 → http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/12/29/db2903.xml&sSheet=/portal/2005/12/29/ixportal.html Thu, 29 Dec 2005 13:33:37 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/vincent-schiavelli-1948-2005/ <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/0512_schiavelli.jpg" alt=""></p> <blockquote> <p>Vincent Schiavelli, who died of cancer at his home in Sicily on December 26 aged 57, was a popular character actor noted for his roles in films such as Ghost and One Flew Over the Cuckoo&rsquo;s Nest.</p> <p>Schiavelli&rsquo;s somewhat hangdog countenance appeared in more than 120 film and television shows; he excelled at parts which required an eccentric presentation, and in 1997 the magazine Vanity Fair declared him one of the best character actors in America.</p> </blockquote> Trailer for the Silent Hill movie → http://flash.sonypictures.com/movies/silenthill/site/silenthill.mov Tue, 27 Dec 2005 20:21:00 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/trailer-for-the-silent-hill-movie/ <p>It&rsquo;s got Pyramid Head! I am so psyched for this movie now</p> One last thing... https://lowbrowculture.com/post/one-last-thing/ Fri, 23 Dec 2005 14:44:39 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/one-last-thing/ <p>Last-minute Christmas drinks in the Lord Edward tonight at 8pm for anyone who&rsquo;s interested.</p> Christmas Funnery https://lowbrowculture.com/post/christmas-funnery/ Fri, 23 Dec 2005 14:43:17 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/christmas-funnery/ <p>We&rsquo;re almost finished in the office for the Christmas break. I&rsquo;ve still got 15 days holidays to take this year. Except there&rsquo;s only 3 working days left. See the problem here?</p> <p>Every year, we spend forever deciding who takes the consoles home for the Christmas break. Since the &ldquo;BAGSY THE DREAMCAST, DOUBLE STAMPSIES, NO REVERSIES&rdquo; method isn&rsquo;t particularly fair, and the stakes were particularly high this year, we held a Burnout 3 championship to see who would take the Xbox 360 home.</p> <p>Well, I won.</p> <p>To be very honest, I&rsquo;m not interested in the Xbox 360. My TV isn&rsquo;t nearly up to the task of making games like &ldquo;Condemned&rdquo; look pretty. But the title of &ldquo;Burnout 3 Champion&rdquo;? Oh boy. What a great Christmas present.</p> <p>(Today, I also got crowned Mario Kart DS champion - sweet.)</p> Mel Gibson Has Officially Lost It. https://lowbrowculture.com/post/mel-gibson-has-officially-lost-it/ Thu, 22 Dec 2005 15:54:07 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/mel-gibson-has-officially-lost-it/ <p>The trailer for Mel Gibson&rsquo;s &ldquo;<em>Apocalypto</em>&rdquo; has emerged from the ether with Kottke and others are <a href="http://www.kottke.org/remainder/05/12/10087.html">pointing out how awful-looking it is</a>. And true, at this early stage it&rsquo;s like a heavy-handed mix of <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000517/">Terrence Malick</a> and <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0103767">Baraka</a> (but without any of the nice things such a mix would suggest).</p> <p>He&rsquo;s got a bit of reputation as a &lsquo;prankster&rsquo; director (on one of the making-of featurettes on the <em>Braveheart</em> DVD, you can see Gibson reading &ldquo;Directing an Epic for Dummies&rdquo;). But I&rsquo;m going to say that this is just a ruse. Gibson has officially Lost It and is now certifiably batshit insane. As evidence for this, I present this image which you will find as a single frame cut into an intense part of the trailer. You&rsquo;ll have to go through the trailer frame-by-frame to find it yourself.</p> <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/0512_gibson_cuckoo.jpg" alt="Mel Gibson in the Apocalpyto Trailer"></p> <p><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0002ERX22/104-0487245-3036728?v=glance&amp;n=130">Southpark may have been closer to the truth than we know</a>. Kaablaa!</p> Christmas Wishlists https://lowbrowculture.com/post/christmas-wishlists/ Wed, 21 Dec 2005 16:57:34 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/christmas-wishlists/ <p>Amazon wishlists have never really worked me. Too cumbersome to suit my way of doing things and too limited to suit the things I want a wishlist for. So last year, I began using the del.icio.us <a href="http://del.icio.us/tag/wishlist">&ldquo;wishlist&rdquo; tag</a>. If I saw something I wanted, it would get tagged under wishlist+<em>$itemDescription</em>, e.g. wishlist+dvds, wishlist+clothes and so on.</p> <p>This means that I&rsquo;m able to keep things out of my head while still keeping them in a central place, one I use every day. But more importantly, it gives me a quick list of everything my heart desires that I can access from any computer on the internet. On my <a href="http://www.lowbrowculture.com/2005/12/05/in-san-francisco/">recent, exciting trip to San Francisco</a>, I was able to go into an internet cafe and print out entire shopping lists based on my wishlist tag, Unfortunately, this meant I came back with an armful of DVDs.</p> <p>But around Christmas, this system really starts to show its strength because it has the advantage of giving people a quick overview of everything I&rsquo;ve had my eye on. It paid off. My Livejournal Secret Santa bought me a book from the list - <a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0743226275/qid=1135169812/sr=8-1/ref=pd_bbs_1/104-0487245-3036728?v=glance&amp;s=books&amp;n=507846">The Mafia Cookbook</a> (Thanks <a href="http://www.livejournal.com/users/gwennie/">Karena</a>!).</p> <p>Incidentally, <a href="http://del.icio.us/THRILLHO/wishlist">here&rsquo;s my wishlist</a>. In case you were&hellip; y&rsquo;know&hellip; curious</p> <p>Technorati Tags: <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/wishlists">wishlists</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/del.icio.us">del.icio.us</a></p> JCB Song made it to Number 1 → http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio1/chart/singles.shtml Mon, 19 Dec 2005 01:00:59 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/jcb-song-made-it-to-number-1-2/ <p>You know, it might be a bit hokey, but I&rsquo;m so glad that <a href="http://www.jcbsong.co.uk">the JCB song</a> from Nizlopi is number one in the UK charts the weekend before Christmas. It really shows the power of viral marketing - so many people have sent me the link to the video over the past few months - and now it&rsquo;s finally made it to the top of the charts. I don&rsquo;t know if it was the well-deserved success, the amazingly touching song or the fact that I&rsquo;m a complete pussy, or some combination of these, but I genuinely got teary when I saw them on Top of the Pops.</p> <p>And it&rsquo;s keeping the Crazy Frog off the top, so that&rsquo;s another reason to celebrate.</p> Edge Online: Reviews Database → http://www.edge-online.co.uk/edgedb/ Thu, 15 Dec 2005 18:01:00 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/edge-online-reviews-database/ <p>Searchable database of all Edge review scores since issue 1</p> Trailer for Sophia Coppolla's new movie "Marie Antoinette" → http://progressive.stream.aol.com//aol/us/moviefone/movies/2005/marieantoinette_023756/marieantoinette_trlr_01_fhywet_dl.mov Fri, 09 Dec 2005 18:23:26 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/trailer-for-sophia-coppollas-new-mov/ <p>I have to say, I wasn&rsquo;t too impressed with The Virgin Suicides, but I really enjoyed Lost in Translation. So I&rsquo;m willing to give Sophia Coppolla the benefit of the doubt when it comes to her new movie, <em>Marie Antoinette</em>, a biopic about the life of&hellip; well, Marie Antoinette. Right now, it looks like Kubrick&rsquo;s <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0072684/">Barry Lyndon</a> set to some 80s New Wave music.</p> <p>And even if the trailer didn&rsquo;t attract me (and it does), the cast is eclectic enough to pique my interest, with Jason Schwartzman, Rip Torn, Steve Coogan, Marianne Faithful and Kirsten Dunst all running around in period costumes. I&rsquo;m looking forward to it.</p> No Jerks https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/no-jerks/ Wed, 07 Dec 2005 01:32:57 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/no-jerks/ <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/sf_jerks.jpg" alt="No Jerks"></p> The Ricky Gervais Show → http://www.guardian.co.uk/rickygervais Tue, 06 Dec 2005 02:09:25 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/the-ricky-gervais-show/ <p>Ricky Gervais has started a series of podcasts for Guardian Online. And they&rsquo;re off to a tremendous start. The story of how they taught a monkey to fly a spacecraft had me <em>crying</em> with laughter. Some very, very funny looks from around the office. Those few minutes were laugh-out-loud funnier than the entire series of <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0445114/">Extras</a>.</p> <p>(While we&rsquo;re on the subject - the uh.. extras.. on the <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/B000ANDBSK/qid=1133834837/sr=8-1/ref=pd_ka_1/202-7771012-5628662">Extras DVD</a> were also funnier than the show)</p> In San Francisco https://lowbrowculture.com/post/in-san-francisco/ Mon, 05 Dec 2005 19:27:08 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/in-san-francisco/ <p>I was in San Francisco less than 24 hours before a gun was pulled on me. I think that must be like some kind of record.</p> <p>Yesterday, I took some time out from my aimless wandering to worship at the <a href="http://www.apple.com/retail/sanfrancisco/week/20051204.html">church of Apple</a>. This place is scary-cool. It&rsquo;s easy to see why people are so devoted to the Apple brand when you see this much care and love in one place.</p> Empire's 50 Greatest Independent Films → http://www.empireonline.co.uk/features/50greatestindependent/10-1.asp Fri, 02 Dec 2005 15:19:16 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/empires-50-greatest-independent-films-2/ <p>They managed to include Dead Man&rsquo;s Shoes, so I&rsquo;m happy</p> Mad Hot Ballroom https://lowbrowculture.com/post/mad-hot-ballroom/ Wed, 30 Nov 2005 16:58:09 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/mad-hot-ballroom/ <p>I didn&rsquo;t want to like this movie. Fifteen minutes in and I had made up my mind that this was just <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0334405/">Spellbound</a> meets <a href="http://u.tv/satc/">The School Around the Corner</a> by way of <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0294034/">Come Dancing</a> and I was too old and too cynical to be taken in by such a cheap ploy.</p> <p>But then, around the thirty minute mark, something remarkable happened. These kids stopped being precocious little brats and started becoming likeable creatures. Watching Cyrus&rsquo; reaction to the results of the initial competition sealed the deal for me. Believe me when I say that we need to watch this kid closely because he is wise beyond his 10 years and almost certainly an evil genius in the making (the director says that when she first met him and discussed her movie with him, he asked if she had secured a production deal yet).</p> <p>Against my will, I had become emotionally invested in these kids. Their different personalities began to shine through and, by the time of the dancing final, I felt like I was joinging their teachers on the emotional rollercoaster they were riding. And the swell of pride I began to feel watching the kids put in some amazing performances was almost embarassing. It&rsquo;s only a movie, it&rsquo;s only a movie.</p> <p>Funny without lacking sincerity, sentimental without being po-faced. In spite of myself, I ended up liking this movie.</p> <p>Dammit.</p> Video for Why?'s new single "Rubber Traits" → http://www.anticon.com/rubbertraits.mov Tue, 29 Nov 2005 12:12:05 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/video-for-whys-new-single-rubber-traits-2/ <p>I am completely in love with this video. It suits the song so well.</p> Ghostwatch https://lowbrowculture.com/post/ghostwatch/ Tue, 29 Nov 2005 07:15:12 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/ghostwatch/ <p>Found a copy of <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0200659/">Ghostwatch</a> lurking in Tower records the other day. 13 years since its first (and only) broadcast, it still manages to scare the pants off me.</p> <p>Technorati Tags: <a href="http://www.technorati.com/tag/Ghostwatch">Ghostwatch</a>, <a href="http://www.technorati.com/tag/halloween">halloween</a>, <a href="http://www.technorati.com/tag/Television">Television</a></p> Mario Kart DS and Clearwire https://lowbrowculture.com/post/mario-kart-ds-and-clearwire/ Mon, 28 Nov 2005 08:13:27 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/mario-kart-ds-and-clearwire/ <p>I picked up a copy of Mario Kart for the DS over the weekend and have been having a great time ploughing through the 50cc and 100cc tournaments. How quickly my muscle memory has returned! Even cuter is the inclusion of some &lsquo;retro&rsquo; tracks - courses I haven&rsquo;t played since my SNES packed it in almost 10 years ago.</p> <p>One of the major draws of Mario Kart DS is the wireless multiplayer option. Mario Kart has always been about the multiplayer, and the idea of being able to race against people around the world (as well as DS-toting friends) is almost too much to handle. Unfortunately, I can&rsquo;t seem to get connected to the <a href="http://www.nintendowifi.com">Nintendo Wifi</a> service from home. Or I do get a connection, but it drops while searching for other players.</p> <p>I&rsquo;ve run a few checks on the traffic and it doesn&rsquo;t seem to have a problem on my network. Now, I&rsquo;ve heard rumours of Clearwire blocking a lot of stuff, mainly P2P and VoIP things, so this could be the problem. Anyone had any problems with Clearwire blocking stuff?</p> <p>Technorati Tags: <a href="http://www.technorati.com/tag/broadband">broadband</a>, <a href="http://www.technorati.com/tag/clearwire">clearwire</a>, [Mario Kart](<a href="http://www.technorati.com/tag/Mario">http://www.technorati.com/tag/Mario</a> Kart), <a href="http://www.technorati.com/tag/Nintendo">Nintendo</a>, <a href="http://www.technorati.com/tag/DS">DS</a></p> Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang https://lowbrowculture.com/post/kiss-kiss-bang-bang/ Wed, 16 Nov 2005 23:23:11 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/kiss-kiss-bang-bang/ <p>My girlfriend tells me that the reason she rarely wants to go to the cinema any more is because she&rsquo;s become disillusioned with movies. This comes from sitting through the near-endless amount of dirge on show this summer. And you don&rsquo;t register a domain like &ldquo;low brow culture dot com&rdquo; without being a fan of dirge, so I&rsquo;m almost certainly to blame.</p> <p>Apart from being extremely entertaining, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang assures us that there are people working in Hollywood with a genuine love for what they do. Shane Black has done an incredible job of creating something that will appeal to everyone: guns and car chases for the people that like that kind of thing, genuinely sharp and witty dialogue and a complex plot for the people who like <em>that</em> kind of thing.</p> <p>And lots of beautiful people for the people who don&rsquo;t like either of those things (including a blink-and-you&rsquo;ll-miss-her appearance by the girl every guy I know has a crush on, Shannyn Sossamon).</p> <p>My vote for film of the year.</p> <p><strong>Further reading:</strong> Shane Black is a terrific screenwriter. For examples of this, you should check out his screenplays for <a href="http://imsdb.com/Movie%20Scripts/Lethal%20Weapon%20Script.html">Lethal Weapon</a> and <a href="http://imsdb.com/Movie%20Scripts/Long%20Kiss%20Goodnight,%20The%20Script.html">Long Kiss Goodnight</a>. But the <em>piece of resistance</em> is his screenplay for <a href="http://imsdb.com/Movie%20Scripts/Last%20Boy%20Scout,%20The%20Script.html">The Last Boy Scout</a>, which contains the following:</p> <blockquote><b>INT. DINGY DRESSING ROOM - NIGHT</b> > > Cory and Jimmy are engaged in very hot sex. > This is not a love scene; this is a sex scene. > Sigh. I'm not even going to attempt to write this > quote-unquote "steamy" scene here, for several good > reasons: > A) The things that I find steamy are none of your damn > business, Jack, in addition to which -- > B) The two actors involved will no doubt have wonderful, > highly athletic ideas which manage to elude most > fat-assed writers anyhow, and finally -- > C) My mother reads this shit. So there. > (P.S.: I think we lost her back at the Jacuzzi blowjob > scene.) > > </blockquote> Irish celebrities sell their doodles for charity → http://www.doodle.ie/doodles.html Wed, 16 Nov 2005 21:52:00 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/irish-celebrities-sell-their-doodles-for-charity/ <p>Freud would have a field day.</p> The Brothers Grimm https://lowbrowculture.com/post/the-brothers-grimm-2/ Thu, 10 Nov 2005 10:59:13 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/the-brothers-grimm-2/ <p>I&rsquo;m a huge fan of Gilliam, but I had heard enough about this movie to know what to expect - Gilliam at his most mediocre. But to be fair, the movie isn&rsquo;t nearly as bad as people are making out. It&rsquo;s got a lot of dud moments, far more than any other Gilliam movie I&rsquo;ve seen, and it takes a long, long time to get going. But when it does (roughly around the third act), it is almost worth the previous hour or so of drudgery.</p> <p>Think of it as a panto writ large and you&rsquo;ll enjoy it a whole lot more.</p> Dead Meat https://lowbrowculture.com/post/dead-meat/ Tue, 08 Nov 2005 15:40:49 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/dead-meat/ <p>Released under the Irish Film Board&rsquo;s recent &lsquo;microbudget movie&rsquo; scheme, Conor McMahon&rsquo;s Dead Meat attempts to drag Ireland&rsquo;s horror movie output from the ditch it was thrown in and left in to die by the insufferably bad <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0091829/">Rawhead Rex</a>. And although it was clearly lovingly crafted with a definite knowledge of the genre, it suffers greatly from its lack of <em>understanding</em> of the genre, or the techniques it attempts to mimic.</p> <p>The premise, although just a rehash of countless previous zombie movies is still an effective way of presenting both a humourous and local view of the situation: BSE has mutated into something that first kills and subsequently zombifies anyone it infects. Having run into car trouble in the middle of farm country in Leitrim, Helena must escape and make her way back to safety while avoiding the hordes of undead (both human and bovine) roaming the countryside.</p> <p>Somewhat unfortunately compared to Shaun of the Dead on release, Dead Meat is similar to Shaun in that it draws on its rich knowledge of horror movies to create a pastiche of the significant releases, such as Night of the Living Dead and Evil Dead. But unlike Shaun of the Dead, the makers of Dead Meat create their movie without any actual understanding of what made these movies so scary in the first place. As a result, they fumble many of the shots they are aping, sometimes missing by a hair&rsquo;s breadth, but just as often they miss the point completely.</p> <p>This would be forgivable if the movie had a solid story to support it, but this seems to be missing as well. The story stumbles from one situation to the next without any indication of a solid vision driving it forward. Without a compelling story, it&rsquo;s left to the actors to bear the weight of the movie, and they&rsquo;re just not up to it. It&rsquo;s not until the final act, with the introduction of Eoin Whelan&rsquo;s Cathal Ceaunt character that we&rsquo;re given a something that is genuinely lively and entertaining.</p> <p>The DVD also features a making-of documentary, which was actually more entertaining than the movie itself.</p> <p>In the end, it&rsquo;s hard to recommend this movie to people. Fans of the Zombie genre will certainly get something out of it, but <em>what</em> exactly, I&rsquo;m not sure.</p> Hands on with the Xbox 360 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/hands-on-with-the-xbox-360/ Sun, 06 Nov 2005 21:25:28 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/hands-on-with-the-xbox-360/ <p>Smyths of Jervis Street have set up an Xbox 360 pod in their games section. The pod consists of an Xbox 360 in a perspex dome, a beautiful Samsung LCD screen and a couple of controllers. Altogether, these must cost a couple of grand a piece. Very nice pieces of kit.</p> <p>But most interesting is the fact that they actually give you a chance to play some of the games. Right now, they&rsquo;re only running the demo version of Ubisoft&rsquo;s King Kong game, but I&rsquo;ve been told that they&rsquo;re hoping to get a copy of Perfect Dark Zero during the next week.</p> <p>I stood in line for a while and finally got a chance to play a bit of King Kong, and I&rsquo;m not all that impressed. Although the game looks very pretty with a lot of little graphical effects, and a really satisfying <em>meat</em> to the models, this game has actually got me worrying about the overall quality of the Xbox 360. There was a definite price to pay for this high-definition lushness: the frame rate was terrible, and the game frequently slowed down during particularly busy scenes (and let&rsquo;s not even mention the questionable physics).</p> <p>Running right next to the Xbox 360 running King Kong was an Xbox running&hellip; King Kong. This side-by-side comparison was most likely intended to show us all the things next-gen games have to offer over the current-gen, but had the opposite effect of highlighting all of the flaws: the Xbox version didn&rsquo;t have the high-resolution textures, but ran well with a high frame rate and, most importantly, didn&rsquo;t drop a single frame, meaning it looked nicer on the eyes and well, looked like a nicer <em>game</em></p> <p>There are still a couple of months left before King Kong releases on the 360, which means there is still time to tidy it up and fix these problems - let&rsquo;s hope they do. In the meantime, roll on Perfect Dark Zero.</p> Clearwire: Initial Report https://lowbrowculture.com/post/clearwire-initial-report/ Sun, 06 Nov 2005 21:00:02 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/clearwire-initial-report/ <p>I&rsquo;ve had a weekend or so to play with Clearwire. Here&rsquo;s what I&rsquo;ve noticed:</p> <h3 id="speed">Speed</h3> <p>According to the <a href="http://www.irishisptest.com/index.php">Irish ISP speed test</a>, I&rsquo;m getting 2MB down, and approximately 300kb up. Sharing this among two computers isn&rsquo;t much of a stretch: my girlfriend was able to comfortably run Software Update on her iBook (which hadn&rsquo;t been updated in about 5 months) while I was able to maintain a 120kb/s download.</p> <p>I&rsquo;m not much of a PC gamer, but I&rsquo;ve had no problems using Xbox live on Clearwire. Smooth, lagless gaming. Which means there&rsquo;s no real excuse for me having my ass handed to me in Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow except my lack of real skills. Dammit.</p> <h3 id="setup">Setup</h3> <p>Setup was certainly simple. They just provide you with a little box, about the size of two DVD cases put together, that you just put near a window. It presents you with an RJ45 connection, and that&rsquo;s it. No messing about with usernames or passwords. Usually my first instinct when you give me a closed black box is to crack it open and see how it works, but after three months of struggling to get broadband in our apartment, I&rsquo;m really not going to push my luck with this one.</p> <p>My only concern is at the user end of the RJ45 connection is a public IP, meaning your computer is connected directly to the internet. And I&rsquo;ll be damned if I&rsquo;ll ever put have a Windows machine directly on the internet. But no worries, the clearwire works perfectly with my Linksys WRT54G.</p> <h3 id="issues">Issues?</h3> <p>Nothing too spectacular too far. The only thing I&rsquo;ve noticed is a couple of DNS oddities - the DNS servers they give you seem to have trouble with a lot of hosts. For example, thefraudcast.com:</p> <blockquote>Server: cwi004.clearwire.ie <p>Address: 85.134.255.245#53</p> <p>Non-authoritative answer:</p> <p>*** Can&rsquo;t find <a href="https://www.thefraudcast.com">www.thefraudcast.com</a>: No answer</blockquote></p> <p>versus a <em>working</em> server:</p> <blockquote>Server: 194.125.2.240 <p>Address: 194.125.2.240#53</p> <p>Non-authoritative answer:</p> <p><a href="https://www.thefraudcast.com">www.thefraudcast.com</a> canonical name = thefraudcast.com. Name: thefraudcast.com Address: 67.18.209.59</blockquote></p> <p>&hellip; but this can all be fixed by providing my own DNS server ahead of the ISP-provided ones.</p> <p>I&rsquo;m reasonably impressed so far. It&rsquo;ll be interesting to see how it scales as more people jump on board.</p> Journey Escape for the Atari 2600 → http://www.journey-tribute.com/journey/resources/atari2600/ Fri, 04 Nov 2005 17:36:00 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/journey-escape-for-the-atari-2600/ <p>&ldquo;You must lead all 5 members of Journey through waves of pesky characters and backstage obstacles to the Scarab Escape Vehicle before time runs out.&rdquo;</p> Broadband at last! https://lowbrowculture.com/post/broadband-at-last/ Thu, 03 Nov 2005 13:09:12 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/broadband-at-last/ <p>Reports are coming in of a <em>working</em> broadband installation in my apartment. Rumour has it that my girlfriend rang up the guys in <a href="http://www.clearwire.com">Clearwire</a> yesterday and they delivered the modem today - she just plugged it in and away she went.</p> <p>(Incidentally, right now, her IRC conversation consists of &ldquo;SO HAPPY&rdquo;, &ldquo;THIS IS THE BEST DAY OF MY LIFE&rdquo; and &ldquo;THIS IS HOW LIFE SHOULD BE! EASY!&rdquo; repeated again and again.)</p> <p>Can&rsquo;t wait to get home and get my hands on it. What will I download first?!!</p> <p>Technorati Tags: <a href="http://www.technorati.com/tag/broadband">broadband</a>, <a href="http://www.technorati.com/tag/internet">internet</a>, <a href="http://www.technorati.com/tag/clearwire">clearwire</a></p> Fatal Inertia https://lowbrowculture.com/post/fatal-inertia/ Fri, 28 Oct 2005 11:43:00 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/fatal-inertia/ <p><a href="http://www.gamespot.com/ps3/driving/fatalinertia/index.html">Fatal Inertia</a> will be one of the Playstation 3&rsquo;s first titles. It&rsquo;s being touted as a &ldquo;futuristic racing game&rdquo;, in which you whizz around canyons in super-fast aircraft blowing the other competitors out of the sky. So basically, a cross between WipeOut and the &ldquo;pod racing&rdquo; scene from Star Wars.</p> <p>But what on earth were they thinking when they came up with that name? A while ago, myself and my friends came up with a &ldquo;<a href="http://www.fuckcuntandbollocks.com/index.php?section=blog&amp;id=26&amp;viewfull=1">Random Shit Movie Generator</a>&rdquo; - take one ridiculous adjective, couple it with an absurd noun, throw on a couple of shit stars, and add a horrible tagline, and you&rsquo;ve got the makings of a completely shit movie.</p> <blockquote> <p>Example: <strong>Outlawed Fortunes</strong> <em>&ldquo;Ready or not, here he comes&rdquo;</em> starring Rutger Hauer &amp; Beverly D&rsquo;Angelo</p> </blockquote> <p>Is that what the Playstation 3 is going to be about? The gaming equivalent of a straight-to-video movie?</p> <p>Technorati Tags: <a href="http://www.technorati.com/tag/Games">Games</a>, <a href="http://www.technorati.com/tag/Playstation">Playstation</a></p> Grand Designs https://lowbrowculture.com/post/grand-designs/ Fri, 28 Oct 2005 10:03:43 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/grand-designs/ <p><a href="http://www.channel4.com/more4/">More4</a> launched a few weeks ago, and already it&rsquo;s become a major part of my TV-watching habits. Well, less than I&rsquo;d probably like. My girlfriend doesn&rsquo;t think Jon Stewart is particularly funny (and, <a href="http://www.ifilm.com/ifilmdetail/2652831">Crossfire appearance</a> aside, I tend to agree with her) so we tend to avoid that.</p> <p>But the most surprising thing has been a massive addiction to <a href="http://www.channel4.com/4homes/ontv/grand-designs/">Grand Designs</a>. In just a couple of weeks, that show has become such a massive part of my TV viewing habits, I turn it on even if I&rsquo;m in the middle of doing something else like cooking dinner.</p> <p>I&rsquo;ve thought long and hard about this. I think there are a couple of things going on here. First, obviously, is the actual building. Nine times out of ten, the people being showcased are the kinds of insufferable assholes that most likely had no other choice than to strike out on their own because no-one wanted these cunts for neighbours.</p> <p>This works for me because I like shouting at the TV. And these episodes give me plenty of opportunities to turn the air blue from the amount of obscenities I&rsquo;m hurling at these people with more money than taste. For example, Grand Designs Abroad recently a couple who built a god-awful wooden house in France because this the husband really wanted to become a writer and the only thing stopping him was the lack of a badly-designed house in the middle of a French valley. That episode gave me lots to shout about.</p> <p>But it&rsquo;s not always like this. As I said, this is only nine times out of ten. The other time is typically a really heartwarming, reassuring story about someone who really is chasing down their dream. Like the one last week of a guy who worked in a forest in England and spent ten years living in a leaky caravan while waiting for planning permission to build an organic house in the forest. The end result was something so pretty and beautiful that it absolutely brought a tear to my eye. That he built it all by himself, right down to the carving of the 16,000 wooden slates only added to the beauty of this episode.</p> <p>But there&rsquo;s another reason. And I&rsquo;m a little ashamed to admit it, but I think I&rsquo;m developing a bit of a hetero crush on the presenter, <a href="http://www.channel4.com/4homes/ontv/presenters/kevin_mccloud_gallery.html">Kevin McCloud</a>. Don&rsquo;t get me wrong - this isn&rsquo;t a major thing. Certainly not like my hetero crush on <a href="http://www.petergallagher.com/">Peter Gallagher</a> (more specifically: <a href="http://www.mcsweeneys.net/links/lists/20MorganDayFrank.html">Peter Gallagher&rsquo;s eyebrows</a>) or my full-on hetero <em>boner</em> for <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noah_Wyle">Noah Wyle</a>. No, no. This is much simpler - I just like his little soliloquies. These are perfectly judged breaks from the chaos of the actual home-building, providing just the right balance of caution and hope.</p> <p>I was thinking of dressing as Kevin McCloud for Halloween (other ideas included: Hellboy, Arthur Dent, Biff Tannen). There wouldn&rsquo;t have to be much to the costume, but I would occasionally step aside and offer my own soliloquies about the party, pausing occasionally for emotional effect.</p> <p>&ldquo;People&hellip; Are the life and soul of every party&hellip; And this party certainly <em>has</em> people&hellip; But are they they <em>right</em> people? &hellip; And will it be enough?&rdquo;</p> <p>Technorati Tags: <a href="http://www.technorati.com/tag/More4">More4</a>, [Kevin McCloud](<a href="http://www.technorati.com/tag/Kevin">http://www.technorati.com/tag/Kevin</a> McCloud)</p> Why gaming in Europe sucks https://lowbrowculture.com/post/why-gaming-in-europe-sucks/ Tue, 18 Oct 2005 09:14:05 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/why-gaming-in-europe-sucks/ <p>Shadow of the Colossus is the sequel to Ico, one of the most incredible games I&rsquo;ve ever played. Ever. I can&rsquo;t call Ico underrated, because everyone who played it agrees that it was, indeed, one of the best games they&rsquo;d ever played. Ever. Instead, it suffered from woeful under-exposure and an apathetic market. Incredible word of mouth and a dedicated fanbase mean that pre-owned copies of Ico swap hands for approximately EUR50 on eBay. It still ranks as the only game I&rsquo;ve ever played through more than three times.</p> <p>And to say that I&rsquo;ve been looking forward to its sequel would be an understatement. I&rsquo;ve been poring over every video, awe-struck by the scale and enormity of the promise. [ has only made matters worse. From the review:</p> <blockquote> <p>In short, Shadow of the Colossus breaks storytelling barriers none of us knew existed. It&rsquo;s the rare game for which the often overused words &ldquo;ground-breaking&rdquo; were truly reserved for, and it&rsquo;s enough to make you regret every stupid coin you ever collected. There&rsquo;s more to gaming than rote clichés and borrowed ideas, and Shadow of the Colossus is kind enough to remind us of what could be. You really couldn&rsquo;t ask for better than that. Besides merely being one of gaming&rsquo;s great moments, this is the experience of the year.</p> </blockquote> <p>The game is being released <em>today</em> (October 18th 2005) in the US. Checking out when I can expect to get my grubby little paws on my own, European copy&hellip; <img src="http://www.lowbrowculture.com/pictures/0510_colossus.gif" alt=""></p> <p>(Author&rsquo;s own emphasis)</p> <p>That&rsquo;s two thousand and six. Might as well be two thousand and fifty. And this is why gaming in Europe sucks: all the localisation that needs to be done - manuals, box art, voices, interface - multiplied the 6 or so languages that Europe requires, means that we don&rsquo;t usually get our games until much, much later than our American cousins. In some cases, like Animal Crossing, this can mean that we don&rsquo;t to play the game for over a year and a half after its original release (even though there are typically perfectly good PAL releases in English for the Australian market).</p> <p>This bites.</p> Simple Wifi Setup? https://lowbrowculture.com/post/simple-wifi-setup/ Mon, 17 Oct 2005 16:45:01 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/simple-wifi-setup/ <p>Our office is reasonably thin, but quite long. It&rsquo;s also broken up into three areas</p> <ul> <li>Developer Room</li> <li>Front office</li> <li>Board room</li> </ul> <p>The developer room is, obviously, where most of the action happens. It&rsquo;s got an existing wireless connection, but since our office is so long, its range doesn&rsquo;t quite extend to the front office. It would be nice if the people in the front office could also get access to the wireless network, since most of those people use laptops anyway. And since we&rsquo;re kitting out the building, why not give the board room its own wireless access point too?</p> <p>I didn&rsquo;t think it would be unreasonable to assume that there existed a wireless access point that contained two &ldquo;remote&rdquo; APs, that weren&rsquo;t actually APs at all, but simply extended the range of the main Access Point. This would mean that someone could connect in the developer room, walk the length of the building and enter the board room (where most of our meetings, both internal and external) are held, without having to disconnect and reconnect. Surely this would be a fairly common request?</p> <p>Apparently not. I spoke to our supplier about this and he told me he never heard of such a solution. He said that most companies just make do with the disconnect - move - reconnect scenario.</p> <p>There must be <em>something</em> out there like this. Has anyone heard of anything like it?</p> Coudal Partners Stanley Kubrick Archive → http://www.coudal.com/archive.php?cat=cat_stanley_kubrick Mon, 17 Oct 2005 14:58:00 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/coudal-partners-stanley-kubrick-archive/ <p>From the amount of material on here, it looks like this will be in my del.icio.us @inbox for quite a while</p> There's a special place in hell for bike thieves https://lowbrowculture.com/post/theres-a-special-place-in-hell-for-bike-thieves/ Mon, 17 Oct 2005 08:08:31 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/theres-a-special-place-in-hell-for-bike-thieves/ <p>In the 18-odd hours between coming home from <a href="https://lowbrowculture.com/post/techcamp-ireland/">TechCamp</a> and parking my bike in our building&rsquo;s underground parking area and stepping out again to cycle into town, someone had managed to break into the underground parking area and run off with approximately five bikes (I&rsquo;m guessing five because there were five mangled locks left where our bikes had been.)</p> <p>I&rsquo;m still pretty furious about the whole thing. But I can&rsquo;t tell if I&rsquo;m more furious at the guy (or girl!) who stole my bike, or our management company for recognising that there was a huge problem with theft and vandalism in our parking area and yet doing absolutely nothing to remedy the situation.</p> <p>Technorati Tags: <a href="http://www.technorati.com/tag/Bike">Bike</a></p> TechCamp roundup https://lowbrowculture.com/post/techcamp-roundup/ Mon, 17 Oct 2005 07:56:29 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/techcamp-roundup/ <p>On Saturday, I jetted across to the <a href="http://www.northsidecic.ie/civiccentre.html">Northside Civic Centre</a> for the inaugural <a href="http://www.bdmwiki.com/index.php/Tech_Camp_Ireland">TechCamp</a>. I gave a talk on &ldquo;Getting Things Done&rdquo; and moderated a discussion about &ldquo;Using technology to improve our lives.&rdquo;</p> <h3 id="so-how-did-it-go">So how did it go?</h3> <p>I thought my talk on Getting Things Done went okay, in spite of being time-limited to just giving a really brief introduction to the topic. The discussion didn&rsquo;t go so well. I&rsquo;d put this down to the fact that halfway through the thing, my mind started wandering down the more philosophical road of &ldquo;What actually counts as an improvement, and what&rsquo;s merely a convenience?&rdquo; and just wouldn&rsquo;t get back on-topic. Dammit.</p> <p>The other talks were good. Tom Raftery&rsquo;s discussion about blogs and marketing was quite interesting and eye-opening, even if I did come out with less of a clear idea of what &ldquo;blogging&rdquo; is all about than when I went in.</p> <h3 id="what-went-well">What went well?</h3> <p>Well, the casual, laid-back nature was nice. And it was really good to put a face (and a voice!) to many of the blogs I&rsquo;d been reading. And some of the talks were really very interesting. The venue, in spite of its awkward location, was well-fitted out.</p> <h3 id="how-could-it-have-been-better">How could it have been better?</h3> <p>Well, one of the things that I thought that made (Foo|Bar)Camp so compelling was the participatory nature of the things. There didn&rsquo;t seem to be as much of that at this one - although the talks were generally quite open and relaxed, it seemed to be pretty <em>one way</em>. Perhaps a communal project for the next one?</p> <p>In the end, I think it was definitely worth getting up at 7.30 on a Saturday morning to cycle the 10-odd kilometers to get to. And a rollicking good start to something that I hope will continue for quite a while.</p> <p>Technorati Tags: <a href="http://www.technorati.com/tag/TechCamp">TechCamp</a></p> Spielberg's next movie is a game? https://lowbrowculture.com/post/spielbergs-next-movie-is-a-game/ Fri, 14 Oct 2005 09:57:06 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/spielbergs-next-movie-is-a-game/ <p>Stumbled across two articles about Steven Spielberg this morning.</p> <p><a href="http://filmforce.ign.com/articles/657/657986p1.html">The first comes from IGN</a>, who discuss an interview he gave to the Hollywood Reporter, in which he says</p> <blockquote>A good movie will bring you inside of itself just by the sheer brilliance of the director/writer/production staff, but in the future, you will physically be inside the experience, which will surround you top, bottom, on all sides... I've invented it, but because patent is pending, I can't discuss it right now.</blockquote> <p><a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4341118.stm">The second comes from the BBC</a>, who report that Spielberg has signed a deal to work with EA on three games. From the article:</p> <blockquote>Steven Spielberg, who worked his magic with ET, is now looking do the same with games giant EA. <p>The acclaimed film director has agreed to develop three original games with EA&rsquo;s Los Angeles studios.</p> <p>Work has already started on the first of the three projects, which EA says will be a next generation game which appeals to a broad audience. </blockquote></p> <p>Perhaps the two are related, perhaps not. Anyway, let&rsquo;s hope the results are a little more like <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0139156/">The Dig</a>, and a little less like <a href="http://www.snopes.com/business/market/atari.asp">The E.T. video game</a>.</p> <p>Technorati Tags: <a href="http://www.technorati.com/tag/Games">Games</a>, <a href="http://www.technorati.com/tag/Spielberg">Spielberg</a>, <a href="http://www.technorati.com/tag/Movies">Movies</a></p> A video of someone playing 2-player Ikaruga. Alone. → http://video.google.com/videopreviewbig?q=ikaruga&time=0&page=1&docid=-163280885783523408&urlcreated=1126668468&chan=Uploaded&prog=Ikaruga&date=Mon+Apr+18+2005+at+3%3A06+AM+PDT Fri, 30 Sep 2005 19:45:00 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/a-video-of-someone-playing-2-player-ikaruga-alone/ <p>As someone who continually gets his ass handed to him by this game, I can just say: you have GOT to be shitting me.</p> The Shining Trailer: Remixed → http://www.ps260.com/molly/SHINING%20FINAL.mov Thu, 29 Sep 2005 11:00:00 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/the-shining-trailer-remixed/ <p>Ever wondered what the Shining would look like if it was directed by Cameron Crowe?</p> Fahrenheit https://lowbrowculture.com/post/fahrenheit/ Fri, 23 Sep 2005 10:06:18 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/fahrenheit/ <p><img src="http://www.lowbrowculture.com/pictures/0509_fahrenheit.jpg" alt=""></p> <p>Positioning itself as a &rsquo;true&rsquo; marriage of narrative and interactivity, and promising a different experience each time it&rsquo;s played, <em>Fahrenheit</em> has a lot to live up to. It&rsquo;s a shame then that the game comes off something more like a <a href="http://www.iamcal.com/games/choose/room.php?room=2&amp;from=1&amp;opt=2">&ldquo;Choose Your Own Adventure&rdquo;</a> for the 21st century, except perhaps slightly clunkier.</p> <p>Early on, the game seems to deliver on many of its promises. The initial flurry of interactivity appears impressive and leaves the player with high hopes for the rest of the game. Unfortunately, this is not the case. Regardless of what choices the player makes, the game remains largely unaffected. The game provides the illusion of a branching storyline where the players&rsquo; choices open new paths, but in truth there is just One True Path. This is most obviously demonstrated early on with the option to save a child who has just fallen into a frozen lake, with the police approaching. Choose to save the child and run away, the police find you - continue from last save. Save the child and run away in a different direction, and the police still find you (with the same cut-scene) - continue from last save. On my third attempt, I finally saw what the game wanted me to do. And it&rsquo;s this distinction that holds the game back: it&rsquo;s about what the <em>game</em> wants to do, not what <em>the player</em> wants to do.</p> <p>In a recent interview, Ron Gilbert (creator of Monkey Island) condemned the idea of &lsquo;interactive storytelling&rsquo;, saying</p> <blockquote>...I don't believe stories should be interactive. I believe stories should be _participatory_... You're participating in my story, but you're not going to change it, because it's _my_ story. I have a story to tell you.</blockquote> <p>This makes a lot of sense, and Fahrenheit sits a lot better as a &ldquo;participatory story.&rdquo; Hackneyed script aside, it&rsquo;s as immersive a game as I&rsquo;ve ever played, and it&rsquo;s quite capable of tearing away a few hours at a time, while comfortably providing plenty of opportunities to duck out of the game: a feature I wish more games provided.</p> <p>Technorati Tags: <a href="http://www.technorati.com/tag/Fahrenheit">Fahrenheit</a>, <a href="http://www.technorati.com/tag/Games">Games</a>, <a href="http://www.technorati.com/tag/Reviews">Reviews</a></p> Rokr ad featuring Madonna, Iggy Pop, J-lo and others in a phone box → https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8nf7vch3I4c Wed, 21 Sep 2005 14:57:00 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/local-mirror-of-the-rokr-ad-featuring-madonna-iggy-pop-j-lo-and-others-in-a-phone-box/ <p>&ldquo;Biggie, no!&rdquo;</p> Microsoft: Codename Max → http://www.microsoft.com/max Wed, 21 Sep 2005 14:10:20 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/microsoft-codename-max/ <p>Microsoft released &lsquo;Microsoft: Codename Max&rsquo;, a photo-organisation application, <del>just like</del> not at all like iPhoto or Picasa.</p> <p>I haven&rsquo;t had a chance to try this out properly just yet (still firmly entrenched in iPhoto territory), but my first impressions are: Wow, Microsoft are really going after the Apple dollar now. Right down to jacking their smooth gradient web style.</p> <p>Although, I&rsquo;ll give them this much - the transparent box icon is <em>very</em> cute.</p> <p>Technorati Tags: <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/Microsoft">Microsoft</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/Max">Max</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/Software">Software</a></p> Edge Online - Sam and Max back from the dead. Again. → http://www.edge-online.co.uk/archives/2005/09/word_of_sam_and.php Tue, 20 Sep 2005 14:27:00 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/edge-online-sam-and-max-back-from-the-dead-again/ <p>Sweet. This has made my day.</p> Talkin' bout a Revolution https://lowbrowculture.com/post/talkin-bout-a-revolution/ Mon, 19 Sep 2005 11:49:22 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/talkin-bout-a-revolution/ <p>Well, here&rsquo;s one thing I missed: <a href="http://cube.ign.com/articles/651/651275p1.html">Nintendo unveiled the controller for their next-generation console, the Revolution</a>, over the weekend. And it looks&hellip; well&hellip; it looks <em>different</em>. It looks blocky and basic - like an extremely simplistic DVD remote control.</p> <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/0509_revolution_lg.jpg" alt=""></p> <p>But it&rsquo;s not the looks that matter. If the DS has taught Nintendo nothing else, it&rsquo;s taught them that they can sidestep the Xbox 360 vs Playstation 3 one-upmanship and make innovative, entertaining games by exploring other possibilities - shifting the emphasis from the &ldquo;games&rdquo; to &ldquo;playing.&rdquo; What&rsquo;s more, it&rsquo;s taught them that these games can be made for a fraction of the budget of games on other platforms.</p> <p>This seems to be a lesson that they&rsquo;ve learned well. Although the Revolution will certainly be powerful enough to churn out some staggering amount of polygons, it seems as if a lot of the emphasis will be on small &lsquo;parlour games&rsquo;, <em>a la</em> Wario Ware or Mario Party. Things like EyeToy and Singstar were great ideas and encouraged a lot of people to play games that wouldn&rsquo;t normally because they were easy to pick-up-and-play - a quick burst of fun, rather than an epic challenge. But because these were niche accessories, they weren&rsquo;t catered for to any great extent. Since this is the primary controller for the new Nintendo console, there&rsquo;s no fear of it being relegated to that sort of niche status.</p> <p>And this is the other important lesson here: games have, essentially, plateaued. Let me explain. My girlfriend is someone who has never played games, and she&rsquo;s not going to start now. It&rsquo;s not because she doesn&rsquo;t like games, she does. She recently completed and enjoyed Silent Hill 2, but only through a system where she took on the puzzle/exploration parts, and threw the controller at me for action parts, or anything that required precise control. And that&rsquo;s the lesson here: unfamiliarity with controllers is a major barrier to entry for new gamers. Once again, we can give the example of EyeToy as an example of something that worked because people could play it without requiring the type of muscle-memory that gamers have built up through years of practice.</p> <p>But Nintendo aren&rsquo;t just courting a new market with this idea. With this new controller, it opens a whole range of possibilities for people who are more familiar with games to engage them with new a new way to experience familiar games. For example, playing First Person Shooters like Doom 3 with the long, remote control-style stick acting as your gun or torch and direction controlled by the analog thumbstick. According to the IGN hands-on, <a href="http://cube.ign.com/articles/651/651275p1.html">this set-up is more intuitive than any currently-existing system</a>.</p> <p>But all this yapping won&rsquo;t really do much good. For a much better glimpse of what Nintendo have in mind, you should check out their <a href="http://videogames.3yen.com/2005-09-19/nintendo-revolution-trailer/">promo video</a>, which gives you an idea of the various uses for the controller.</p> <p>I can&rsquo;t wait to get my hands on it.</p> <p>Technorati Tags: <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/Games">Games</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/Nintendo">Nintendo</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/Revolution">Revolution</a></p> "Free to those that can afford it, very expensive to those that can't" https://lowbrowculture.com/post/free-to-those-that-can-afford-it-very-expensive-to-those-that-cant/ Mon, 19 Sep 2005 10:49:00 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/free-to-those-that-can-afford-it-very-expensive-to-those-that-cant/ <p>On Friday, I took off out to Wicklow for a wedding, and I come back today with a bruised liver, a slightly soiled suit, an ingrown toenail and mild constipation from the amount of rich food and drink I consumed over the past three days.</p> <p>Three days kicking it around Greystones and Glendalough. Three days of sitting around <a href="http://www.glendaloughestates.com/">Glendalough House</a>, getting drunk on champagne and canapes, going for naps in the library. Three days of hanging out with people I only knew from their various neuroses. Three days of feeling like <a href="http://www.withnail-and-i.com/images.php?catagory=Monty">Uncle Monty</a>.</p> <p>It&rsquo;s so nice to be back to normality. Don&rsquo;t get me wrong, this was by far the most interesting party I&rsquo;ve ever been to, never once veering towards &ldquo;dull&rdquo;, and I loved spending a few days feeling like a member of the landed gentry, but by 10pm on Saturday I was ready to kill someone for a Diet Coke that didn&rsquo;t have alcohol in it.</p> <p>So, what have I missed?</p> <p>Technorati Tags: <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/glendalough">glendalough</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/Ireland">Ireland</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/personal">personal</a></p> The Brothers Grimm https://lowbrowculture.com/post/the-brothers-grimm/ Thu, 08 Sep 2005 15:17:23 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/the-brothers-grimm/ <p>I&rsquo;m a huge Terry Gilliam fan. The <a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0780022181/qid=1126199991/sr=8-1/ref=pd_bbs_1/002-3950553-8992834?v=glance&amp;s=dvd&amp;n=507846">Criterion edition of <em>Brazil</em></a> is one of the two DVDs I&rsquo;m taking with me to the grave (the other being the <a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B00005RYLE/qid=1126199041/sr=8-1/ref=pd_bbs_1/002-4010529-6684823?v=glance&amp;s=dvd&amp;n=507846">Book of the Dead edition of <em>Evil Dead</em></a>). Even the stories of his glorious failures are more interesting than most people&rsquo;s movies, as seen by Lost in La Mancha.</p> <p>And that&rsquo;s why his latest release, The Brothers Grimm, has me worried. So far, it has not been particularly well received by audiences in America, gathering an unimpressive <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0355295/">5.9/10 on IMDB</a> - making this <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000416/filmorate">his lowest-ranking film yet</a>. What&rsquo;s more, it hasn&rsquo;t been well received by critics either. <a href="http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/brothers_grimm/">Some of the reviews on Rottentomatoes</a> paint a pretty grim (if you&rsquo;ll excuse the pun) picture.</p> <p>But what&rsquo;s most worrying is <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/film/4213476.stm">Gilliam&rsquo;s counter-reaction</a>; he has labelled the film&rsquo;s critics as &ldquo;narrow minded&rdquo;, even going so far as to say &ldquo;&ldquo;Everybody has their opinion - and some people are wrong.&rdquo;</p> <p>Of course, there&rsquo;s no way I&rsquo;m going to miss The Brothers Grimm when it opens here on November 4th, and I really hope I&rsquo;m going to love it. But it certainly carries a certain amount of baggage, knowing that if I don&rsquo;t like it, I&rsquo;m &ldquo;wrong.&rdquo;</p> <p>Technorati Tags: <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/Gilliam">Gilliam</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/Movies">Movies</a></p> Final SingStar '80s track-list announced → http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=60704 Thu, 01 Sep 2005 09:32:56 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/final-singstar-80s-track-list-announced/ <p>Blondie! Survivor! Duran Duran! Nena!</p> The Onion redesigns, opens archives → http://www.theonion.com/content/ Wed, 31 Aug 2005 11:34:00 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/the-onion-redesigns-opens-archives/ <p>&ldquo;Our Dumb Century&rdquo; is the funniest thing I&rsquo;ve ever read - the Onion&rsquo;s archives are a close second.</p> The Moxie Cinema is (finally) opening https://lowbrowculture.com/post/the-moxie-cinema-is-finally-opening/ Wed, 31 Aug 2005 09:20:41 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/the-moxie-cinema-is-finally-opening/ <p>If you&rsquo;re anything like me, and you&rsquo;ve been feeling like your list of accomplishments has started looking a little sparse, and maybe you&rsquo;ve been wondering when you&rsquo;re going to finally get around to leaving your mark on the world (and if &lsquo;stains&rsquo; count as marks), then your day is about to get worse - the <a href="http://www.moxiecinema.com/">Moxie Cinema</a> is finally opening on September 21st.</p> <p>For over a year, Dan and Nicole have been struggling to open an independent cinema in their hometown of Springfield, MO. They&rsquo;ve overcome financial and legal setbacks and worked their fingers to the bone - all of which has been excruciatingly and entertainingly documented by Dan on <a href="http://blog.moxiecinema.com/">the Moxie Blog</a>. Now finally, they&rsquo;re seeing the light at the end of the tunnel.</p> <p>What makes all this slightly painful for me is that Dan is actually a year younger than I am. I have a year&rsquo;s head start on him, but nothing to show for it.</p> <p>Aw, just kidding. Best of luck to Dan and Nicole. If I&rsquo;m ever near Springfield, I promise to drop by and show my support.</p> <p>Technorati Tags: <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/Movies">Movies</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/Moxie">Moxie</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/Cinema">Cinema</a></p> Review: Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl in 3D https://lowbrowculture.com/post/review-adventures-of-sharkboy-and-lavagirl-in-3d/ Tue, 30 Aug 2005 16:35:03 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/review-adventures-of-sharkboy-and-lavagirl-in-3d/ <p>Regardless of how you try to justify it, <em>Sharkboy and Lavagirl in 3D</em> is a bad movie. <em>Spy Kids 3D</em> (the obvious comparison) was the weakest of that series and yet it still towers over Sharkboy in terms of plot and well&hellip; sense of fun. Even worse is that <em>Sharkboy</em> commits that cardinal sin of children&rsquo;s movies: actually talking down to its audience.</p> <p>And yes, I know it&rsquo;s a kid&rsquo;s movie and all, and I shouldn&rsquo;t have high expectations but none of the kids in the cinema with me seemed particular engaged. In fact, most seemed bored by the story, although completely wowed by the 3D effect. The standout moment came for me when Lavagirl died (In children&rsquo;s movies, all heroes are contractually obliged to die or appear to die) and some kid behind me shouted out &ldquo;<strong>Dead</strong>girl&rdquo;.</p> <p>Genuinely poor.</p> <p>Technorati Tags: <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/Movies">Movies</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/3D">3D</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/Reviews">Reviews</a></p> Pre-order the GTA III Kubrick box set → http://www.mech-a.com/shop/product_info.php?products_id=751&osCsid=7cd692eb5fde12d71005eba575ad77f3 Fri, 26 Aug 2005 09:56:00 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/pre-order-the-gta-iii-kubrick-box-set/ <p>del.icio.us tags: toys, thanks!</p> TechCamp Ireland https://lowbrowculture.com/post/techcamp-ireland/ Thu, 25 Aug 2005 14:16:38 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/techcamp-ireland/ <p>Irish bloggers have taken the question of &ldquo;<a href="http://eirepreneur.blogs.com/eirepreneur/2005/08/wanted_more_gee.html#trackback">why can&rsquo;t we have more geek get-togethers like [Bar Camp] in Ireland?</a>&rdquo; and run with it. <a href="http://www.bdmwiki.com/index.php/Tech_Camp_Ireland">TechCamp</a> was born almost overnight.</p> <p>It&rsquo;s a really good idea, and it&rsquo;s really encouraging to see people taking a pro-active stance with regards the things they&rsquo;d like to see being done. Until now, the closest thing Irish geeks have to this kind of thing is the occasional LinuxWorld, which staggers between inaccessible to all but the most hardcore geeks and irrelevant to all but IT managers with huge budgets.</p> <p>But, as it stands, TechCamp is suffering from an extremely blog-heavy proposal of events. Things like &ldquo;How to blog&rdquo;, &ldquo;How to promote your blog&rdquo; and &ldquo;How to get others to blog&rdquo; well&hellip; just aren&rsquo;t of much interest to me. I&rsquo;d rather see a more diverse agenda, one covering not only aspects of geek life, but of geek life in Ireland specifically.</p> <p>Technorati Tags: <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/Ireland">Ireland</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/TechCamp">TechCamp</a></p> Broadband Update https://lowbrowculture.com/post/broadband-update/ Thu, 25 Aug 2005 13:39:48 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/broadband-update/ <p>Nearly four months after moving in, we&rsquo;re nearing the end of our broadband saga. Smart sent us our modem and login details. So, I plugged the phone into the wall socket in our bedroom - no dialtone. There&rsquo;s another wire coming up through the wall in our living room, presenting Cat 5 - I wired together a socket using the usual combination of blue -&gt; red, white/blue -&gt; green, but to no avail. In desperation, I yanked the face-plate off the wall socket in the bedroom and found that it wasn&rsquo;t actually connected to anything.</p> <p>Smart were very nice about the whole thing, merely remarking that the whole situation was &ldquo;very unusual&rdquo; (a very diplomatic way of saying &ldquo;My word, you&rsquo;re a moron for not checking this earlier&rdquo;).</p> <p>Either way, Eircom engineers are on their way out to us and we should be hooked up by next week.</p> Google Maps caught a plane landing in Dublin Airport → http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?q=dublin&ll=53.421720,-6.291625&spn=0.005084,0.013393&t=k&hl=en Thu, 25 Aug 2005 12:40:00 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/google-maps-caught-a-plane-landing-in-dublin-airport/ <p>But what&rsquo;s with the four wings? Weird joining artifact?</p> Product Placement in the Island https://lowbrowculture.com/post/product-placement-in-the-island/ Sun, 21 Aug 2005 23:59:19 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/product-placement-in-the-island/ <p>Spoilers!</p> <p>Some spoilers included here. But since The Island is Michael Bay&rsquo;s latest Big Dumb Action Movie, am I really spoiling much?</p> <p>I don&rsquo;t see how I could possibly run a blog called &ldquo;low brow culture&rdquo; and not like Michael Bay movies. Sure, he&rsquo;s got all the subtlety of a jackhammer. And sure, his movies are based around explosive set-pieces, but you know what? I don&rsquo;t care. He packs more visceral flourishes into two hours than most directors have managed in their entire careers. And since this is exactly what he&rsquo;s going for, I say fair balls to him.</p> <p>So, the Island.</p> <p>I wanted to see this since I first read about it a few months ago. I mean, what&rsquo;s not to love? It&rsquo;s directly lifting pieces from a shedload of movies I love. Logan&rsquo;s Run, THX-1138, the Matrix&hellip; Surely, with a bunch of explosions and car chases, The Island would be better than the sum of its parts.</p> <p>It is. Barely. But what struck me more than anything else was the unrelenting stream of product placement in this movie. Now, I&rsquo;ll be the first to admit I&rsquo;m not the brightest spark in the fire, and product placement typically whizzes over my head like a jet plane. So, the fact that I&rsquo;m dedicating an entire blog entry to this just makes me think: Jesus, Michael. Couldn&rsquo;t you have toned it down just a <em>little</em>?</p> <p>These are all in roughly chronological order. If you spot any more, let me know and I&rsquo;ll add them up here.</p> <h2 id="puma">Puma</h2> <p><img src="http://www.lowbrowculture.com/pictures/the_island/the_island_puma.jpg" alt=""></p> <p>Barely three minutes into the movie, we&rsquo;re greeted with an entire tray of Puma footwear. Lincoln Three-Echo appears to be missing a shoe. Now, this begs a couple of questions.</p> <ol> <li>In a perfect society, where they can detect two people touching, how does a shoe go missing?</li> <li>In a hermetically sealed world, why bother with branding at all?</li> </ol> <hr> <h2 id="aquafina">Aquafina</h2> <p><img src="http://www.lowbrowculture.com/pictures/the_island/the_island_aquafina.jpg" alt=""></p> <p>Oh, how very droll. But this just brings up the issue of Question 2 again.</p> <hr> <h2 id="xbox">Xbox</h2> <p><img src="http://www.lowbrowculture.com/pictures/the_island/the_island_xbox.jpg" alt=""></p> <p>Now, this is just baffling.</p> <p>The movie is set in 2017 (or so). And yet they use the <em>old</em> Xbox logo. The one that got retired in 2004, and is being replaced by the new <a href="http://www.xbox360.com">Xbox 360</a> one.</p> <p>Within the story - Sean Bean proclaims how he keeps the products docile and without emotion. What possible purpose could there be for a game room that encourages fighting between fully 3D holographic representations of the characters? Don&rsquo;t they know <a href="http://www.stopkill.com/">videogames are bad for you</a>?</p> <hr> <h2 id="msn">MSN</h2> <p><img src="http://www.lowbrowculture.com/pictures/the_island/the_island_5_msn.jpg" alt=""></p> <p>The nerd in me just wants to snort at the idea of MSN Search powering a city&rsquo;s telephone system.</p> <hr> <h2 id="microsoft">Microsoft</h2> <p><img src="http://www.lowbrowculture.com/pictures/the_island/the_island_ms1.jpg" alt=""></p> <p>For me, this makes the least sense. If you look carefully, you can probably make out the Microsoft logo on the building in the background. I&rsquo;m not sure if this building exists or not (I&rsquo;m doubting it does), but either way, this is most certainly a deliberate inclusion. But it only appears on the screen for a fraction of a second - whizzing by far too fast for most people to notice.</p> <p>Except those poring over every frame, looking for product placement, of course.</p> <hr> <h2 id="johnny-rockets">Johnny Rockets</h2> <p><img src="http://www.lowbrowculture.com/pictures/the_island/the_island_3_johnnyrockets.jpg" alt=""></p> <hr> <h2 id="calvin-klien">Calvin Klien</h2> <p><img src="http://www.lowbrowculture.com/pictures/the_island/the_island_4_ck.jpg" alt=""></p> <p>This is either the most galling of the lot: having an actual ad play within the movie, or a really nifty post-modern idea using an actual <em>Scarlett Johansson</em> in a movie where she plays her clone. I&rsquo;ll give the filmmakers the benefit of the doubt and say it&rsquo;s the latter.</p> <hr> <h2 id="michelob-light">Michelob Light</h2> <p><img src="http://www.lowbrowculture.com/pictures/the_island/the_island_6_micheloblight.jpg" alt=""></p> <p>Michelob recently launched &ldquo;Michelob Light in an Aluminium Bottle.&rdquo; Here it is. In the movie, it looks even more like a straight-out advertisment. The bottle provides the only colour in the scenes it&rsquo;s featured in, as the camera reverentially zooms and pans its way around the bottle.</p> <hr> <h2 id="nokia">Nokia</h2> <p><img src="http://www.lowbrowculture.com/pictures/the_island/the_island_7_nokia.jpg" alt=""></p> Snakes on a plane! https://lowbrowculture.com/post/snakes-on-a-plane/ Wed, 17 Aug 2005 09:39:39 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/snakes-on-a-plane/ <p>Samuel L. Jackson is one of the heroes of lowbrowculture, for the simple reason that he&rsquo;s not too proud to take an awful job to pay some bills, or simply because he likes the sound of it.</p> <p>In the next couple of years, he&rsquo;s got two movies coming out that have grabbed my attention. The first is &ldquo;Afrosamurai&rdquo;, which tells the story of a Samurai who &ldquo;seeks revenge on those who murdered hiss father in front of him when he was just a boy.&rdquo; The other is &ldquo;Pacific Air Flight 121.&rdquo; Don&rsquo;t let the dull title scare you off, it&rsquo;s soon to be changed back to its much more impressive title of &ldquo;Snakes on a Plane.&rdquo; The plot outline reads &ldquo;<em>On board a flight over the Pacific Ocean, an assassin, bent on killing a passenger who&rsquo;s a witness in protective custody, let loose a crate full of deadly snakes.</em>&rdquo;</p> <p><a href="http://www.collider.com">Collider.com</a> recently published an <a href="http://www.collider.com/index.asp?cid=9&amp;aid=599">interview with Jackson</a> where he talks about the movie.</p> <blockquote> <p>Beaks: One of those films that you&rsquo;re working on right now is&hellip; well, it&rsquo;s called &ldquo;<em>Pacific Air 121</em>&rdquo;<br> <strong>Jackson: Snakes on a Plane, man!</strong><br> Beaks: Exactly.<br> <strong>Jackson: We&rsquo;re totally changing that back. That&rsquo;s the only reason I took the job: I read the title.</strong><br> Beaks: <em>Snakes on a Plane!</em> That&rsquo;s everything!<br> <strong>Jackson: You either want to see that, or you don&rsquo;t.</strong><br> Beaks: And how are those snakes? Besides being on a plane?<br> <strong>Jackson: Some of them are aggressive, some of them are cool. They&rsquo;re interesting to watch, and interesting to interact with. It depends on what kind of snake it is. One day, it took, like, four guys to bring in this 350 lb. Burmese Python. We were all like, &ldquo;Where&rsquo;s that goin&rsquo;?&ldquo; And I watched an Albino Cobra strike airplane seats the other day. I watched it from another studio. It&rsquo;s actually been a fun show. But we&rsquo;re taking the name back!</strong></p> </blockquote> <p>Samuel L. Jackson, we salute you.</p> Kiss me like the ocean breese (redux) https://lowbrowculture.com/post/kiss-me-like-the-ocean-breese-redux/ Wed, 17 Aug 2005 09:28:49 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/kiss-me-like-the-ocean-breese-redux/ <p>Technically, can you call it &lsquo;surfing&rsquo; when you barely managed to get to your knees? Consequently, can I start calling myself a &lsquo;surfer&rsquo; now? Please?</p> Kiss me like the ocean breeze https://lowbrowculture.com/post/kiss-me-like-the-ocean-breeze/ Fri, 12 Aug 2005 13:36:16 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/kiss-me-like-the-ocean-breeze/ <p>In just under an hour, I&rsquo;m leaving Dublin and heading to sunny Sligo for a weekend&rsquo;s <a href="http://www.perfectdaysurfing.com/">surfing</a> and <a href="http://www.virtualtourist.com/hotels/Europe/Ireland/County_Sligo/Sligo-294263/Hotels_and_Accommodations-Sligo-Strandhill_Caravan_and_Camping_Park-BR-1.html">camping</a>. According to <a href="http://www.met.ie/forecasts/">Met Eireann</a>, it&rsquo;s going to be rainy and windy (42km/h). Perfect for the surfing part of the weekend, not so great for the camping part.</p> <p>For the rain-delay parts, I&rsquo;m bringing a few things to read:</p> <ul> <li> <p><a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0747561516/qid=1123853583/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i1_xgl/202-1482191-7698203">Bear V. Shark - Chris Bachelder</a></p> </li> <li> <p><a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0262620014/qid=1123853618/sr=2-1/ref=sr_2_11_1/202-1482191-7698203">Image of the City - Kevin Lynch</a></p> </li> <li> <p><a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0571227554/qid=1123853643/sr=2-1/ref=sr_2_3_1/202-1482191-7698203">Screen Burn - Charlie Brooker</a></p> </li> </ul> <p>Of course, there&rsquo;s a very good chance I could die out there. Whether it&rsquo;s from exposure, or at the hands of a crazed, knife-wielding maniac. Or maybe even in a really nonsensical, over-hyped way, Blair Witch-style. Or perhaps just from embarassment as I make a complete ass of myself on a surfboard.</p> <p>Either way, if I don&rsquo;t make it back, avenge my death.</p> Games are art → http://www.gamesareart.com/ Wed, 10 Aug 2005 14:05:54 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/games-are-art/ <p>Just wanted to throw a little Google-juice in the direction of <a href="http://www.gamesareart.com/">GamesAreArt.com</a>. Needlessly fussy site design and current lack of content aside, it&rsquo;s an important site. The games industry has just entered an extremely difficult time, with critics <a href="http://www.livejournal.com/users/gamepolitics/23355.html">discounting video games as a medium of entertainment, never mind <em>expression</em></a>, and it&rsquo;s important that we, as games players and games enthusiasts, have some way of showing non-games players just how far the games industry has come.</p> <p>Anyway, best of luck to them.</p> Batman Shakespeare Bust Life-Size Replica - TV PROPS → http://www.entertainmentearth.com/prodinfo.asp?number=MRZ10000 Fri, 29 Jul 2005 08:57:00 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/batman-shakespeare-bust-life-size-replica-tv-props/ <p>Tilt his head back, flick the switch, turn on your stereo.</p> Happy Sys Admin Day! https://lowbrowculture.com/post/happy-sys-admin-day/ Fri, 29 Jul 2005 08:41:53 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/happy-sys-admin-day/ <p>It&rsquo;s the last Friday of July, and we all know what that means, right?</p> <p>It&rsquo;s <a href="http://www.sysadminday.com/">System Administrator Appreciation Day</a>!</p> <p>Presents in the form of <a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/3822822841/qid=1122626575/sr=8-1/ref=pd_bbs_1/104-0066303-7814360?v=glance&amp;s=books&amp;n=507846">books I want</a>, <a href="http://www.play.com/play247.asp?pa=sr&amp;page=title&amp;r=R2&amp;title=156492">DVDs I want</a>, or anything else from my <a href="http://del.icio.us/THRILLHO/wishlist">del.icio.us wishlist</a> are greatly appreciated.</p> "Ghost Town" on Google Maps → http://maps.google.com/maps?ll=33.293158,-115.955286&spn=0.058683,0.048923&t=k&hl=en Thu, 28 Jul 2005 17:33:00 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/ghost-town-on-google-maps/ <p>A town that was laid out in the 1950s, but never fully built. Very creepy.</p> EffecTV - real-time visual effects https://lowbrowculture.com/post/effectv-real-time-visual-effects/ Thu, 28 Jul 2005 14:15:50 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/effectv-real-time-visual-effects/ <p>There&rsquo;s a discussion on Thumped about the <a href="http://www.thumped.com/bbs/showthread.php?t=24408">merits of &lsquo;visuals&rsquo; at gigs/shows</a>. Personally speaking, I&rsquo;m all in favour of some sort of visual show to accompany the music, especially when the music of the particularly chin-stroking variety. Although I can see where many people&rsquo;s complaints are coming from: it gets very tiring seeing the same handful of movies being chopped up to make a visual backdrop.</p> <p>So that&rsquo;s why I think something like <a href="http://effectv.sourceforge.net/index.html">EffecTV</a> is such a good idea. Armed with a computer running Linux and a webcam, you can create some pretty interesting visuals in real-time, for a tiny, tiny budget. Installation (on Ubuntu, at least) was a snap. And it goes some way to providing a middle-ground for the people who don&rsquo;t want to spend the night looking at a DJ nodding his head and people who don&rsquo;t want to see the same old stock footage soaked in irony.</p> <p>Here&rsquo;s a shot of me playing with it earlier - not mind-blowing, but bear in mind that this was being displayed on my desktop <em>in real time</em>.</p> <p><img src="http://www.lowbrowculture.com/pictures/0507_effectv.jpg" alt=""></p> <p>Side-note: Jesus, I really need to trim my beard.</p> IGN has the first teaser for the new 'Doom' movie → http://media.filmforce.ign.com/media/490/490104/vids_1.html Wed, 27 Jul 2005 16:23:00 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/ign-has-the-first-teaser-for-the-new-doom-movie/ <p>And it looks just like the Resident Evil Movie.. except without Milla Jovovich in a skimpy dress</p> Unlocking Sony DVD players https://lowbrowculture.com/post/unlocking-sony-dvd-players/ Wed, 27 Jul 2005 15:48:23 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/unlocking-sony-dvd-players/ <p>I recently bought another new DVD player - a <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/B0009A41IS/qid=1122479045/sr=8-2/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i2_xgl/026-6395639-7255652">Sony DVP-NS52</a>. Both the Sony Store and Peats offer to make this player multi-region for an extra EUR20. I opted not to go for this and take my chances unlocking it myself (albeit safe in the knowledge that I could bring it into Peats and get them to unlock it at any time in the future for the EUR20).</p> <p>Anyone with a region-locked Sony DVD player could do worse than to check out Selen.org&rsquo;s <a href="http://www.selen.org/sonydvd.html">Making the Sony DVP-NS705V multi-region</a> before shelling out for a &lsquo;chip&rsquo; or anything like that. Although this didn&rsquo;t list my model explicitly, it did say that it theoretically should work for the entire &ldquo;NS&rdquo; series, and has even worked across other models. I tried it on mine last night and success!</p> <p>One note though - Windows 2000 and XP have nasty IR support. You&rsquo;re much better grabbing a DOS boot disk from <a href="http://www.bootdisk.com">bootdisk.com</a> and using that instead.</p> A weekend wasted https://lowbrowculture.com/post/a-weekend-wasted/ Tue, 26 Jul 2005 14:16:51 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/a-weekend-wasted/ <p>My girlfriend took off to Westport on Friday for a hen weekend, leaving me with an entire weekend to myself. By Friday evening, I had slipped back into the exact lifestyle I lived before I met her. Watching bad movies, eating food that would rot my teeth (and my gut) and playing games that would rot my brain.</p> <p>Over the course of a single weekend, I watched nine movies (For the record: Children of the Corn I-III, House of the Dead, Jaws, the Incredibles w/animators commentary, Red Sonja, Exorcist III, Clerks). I also spent some time rearranging my DVDs. After trying a few standard organisational schemes (Alphabetical, chronological..), I decided to set myself a challenge and organise my 800+ DVDs by <em>colour</em> (and then by sub-colour, e.g. white background with red writing, white background with blue writing).</p> <p>I&rsquo;m not entirely thrilled with the results. Disappointingly, approximately 60% of my DVDs have either black or white sleeves, which means that our shelves look a whole lot more sterile than I&rsquo;d hoped.</p> <p>My favourite organisational scheme so far has been contextual - <em>Robocop</em> beside <em>Total Recall</em> beside <em>Scanners</em> (Paul Verhoeven directed Robocop, he also directed Total Recall, Total Recall has Michael Ironside who also starred in Scanners). Because the context is purely my own, it makes the whole thing more personal. This was fine when I had a couple of hundred DVDs, it could be done in an afternoon. At 800, I think I&rsquo;ll need a week off work.</p> <p>I also spent a while getting back into GTA: SA. Given the recent furor about the &ldquo;Hot Coffee&rdquo; &lsquo;mod&rsquo;, I&rsquo;ve been shocked at the amount of stuff that people <em>aren&rsquo;t</em> getting upset about. For example, a billboard with an image of a girl licking her lips suggestively and the words &ldquo;A taste of what&rsquo;s to come&rdquo; that suddenly gets a hole ripped in it to change the words to &ldquo;A taste of &hellip; come.&rdquo;</p> Watch Me Change - Gap viral marketing → http://www.watchmechange.com/ Tue, 26 Jul 2005 10:13:00 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/watch-me-change-gap-viral-marketing/ <p>Lowbrowculture verdict: Not enough jiggling</p> So You Want to Write a Book? → http://www.oreilly.com/oreilly/author/ Mon, 25 Jul 2005 11:29:00 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/so-you-want-to-write-a-book/ <p>O&rsquo;Reilly&rsquo;s guide for new authors</p> Opinion Column by PC Magazine: Creative Commons Humbug → http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,1838244,00.asp Wed, 20 Jul 2005 12:05:00 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/opinion-column-by-pc-magazine-creative-commons-humbug/ <p>Dvorak seems to have discovered trolling = outraged nerds = page hits = $$$</p> Shadow Billboard → http://archives.canneslions.com/images/p_p/high/2005/01799.jpg Tue, 19 Jul 2005 17:16:00 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/shadow-billboard/ <p>Brilliant, original way of advertising sunscreen - use shadows to draw the main image</p> Potato Bravas https://lowbrowculture.com/post/potato-bravas/ Mon, 18 Jul 2005 10:12:54 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/potato-bravas/ <p>Browsing around the cookery section in Chapters, I came across a book called &ldquo;<em>Potatoes: Mash and More</em>.&rdquo; Atkins be damned, I love potatoes and I&rsquo;m always searching to make the perfect mash. Unfortunately, the book doesn&rsquo;t reveal any previously-unknown tips, so my mash remains at &ldquo;average&rdquo;, but it does have a few other good ideas which suit my tasty-but-easy demeanor.</p> <p>So last night, I decided to try out their &ldquo;Potato Bravas&rdquo;, with a few changes.</p> <p><strong>Ingredients:</strong></p> <p>(Serves 2)</p> <ul> <li>10 small new potatoes</li> <li>1 Chorizo, chopped into thin slices</li> <li>1 medium onion chopped fine</li> <li>4 tablespoons Olive Oil</li> <li>2 tablespoons water</li> <li>1 tablespoons Red Wine Vinegar</li> <li>1 teaspoon chili powder</li> <li>2 teaspoon &ldquo;Cajun&rdquo; seasoning</li> <li>Salt</li> </ul> <p><strong>Preparation:</strong></p> <ol> <li>Preheat the oven to 220 degrees.</li> <li>Chop the potatoes into 1cm slices and lay them in a baking tray, one row deep. Drizzle all over with olive oil and salt, and put it into the oven for 30 minutes, turning occasionally.</li> <li>Make the sauce: put the olive oil, water, red wine vinegar, chili powder and cajun seasoning into a bowl and mix well. Add some salt to season.</li> <li>In a pan, fry the onions until they&rsquo;re opaque but not brown, then add the chorizo. Turn the heat down to a low simmer.</li> <li>Pour the sauce into the pan and add the potatoes. Keep turning until the potatoes are completely covered and the sauce has reduced down.</li> <li>Pour into bowls and serve with sour cream and salsa.</li> </ol> <p>Now I have one less reason to go to the Market Bar.</p> Something for the weekend, sir? https://lowbrowculture.com/post/weekend/ Fri, 15 Jul 2005 10:47:38 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/weekend/ <p>A few things before I disappear for the weekend (still no broadband at home!)</p> <h3 id="bbbq">BBBQ</h3> <p>The weather being unnaturally sunny and warm, and I being Irish and a slave to tradition, we&rsquo;re having a barbeque tonight. As well as making tabbouleh, babaganoush, Moroccan pork chops and the old favourite: cheeseburgers, I&rsquo;m hoping to approximate the taste of the chicken wings from Elephant and Castle, which are easily the best in Dublin (Magruder&rsquo;s on Thomas Street taking second place).</p> <h3 id="games">Games</h3> <p>My copy of <a href="http://www.1up.com/do/feature?cId=3140041">Everyone Loves Katamari</a> arrived today, and I&rsquo;m hoping to give it a good blast over the weekend. But my back-log has reached the point of panic. I&rsquo;m also in the middle of playing:</p> <ul> <li><strong>God of War</strong> Gameplay is fast and kinetic - you can literally tear your enemies apart in a shower of blood. &ldquo;Contains Strong Bloody Violence&rdquo; indeed. The sex mini-games are slightly embarassing, however.</li> <li><strong>Destroy all Humans</strong> Bought cheap in Game. Not the most spectacular game ever, but worth the occasional look. Amazing physics though :)</li> <li><strong>Midway Arcade Classics 2</strong> I bought this purely for <em>Hard Drivin&rsquo;</em>_ and _<em>NARC</em>, two of my favourite games when I were a lad.</li> </ul> <p>To top it all off, my girlfriend and I are playing Silent Hill 2 together (her: to prepare for the upcoming <a href="http://www.avary.com/rogeravary/journal/journal.php">Roger Avary movie</a>; me: because I just can&rsquo;t play that game on my own).</p> <h3 id="cycling">Cycling</h3> <p>I bought a bike last weekend, and have been making the most of the freedom it has given me. It has broken the chains of lunchtime bondage - Spar/Centra/Mannings (virtually the only places to get lunch on Thomas Street). I&rsquo;ve been zipping into Blazing Salads for lunch and eating it in Stephen&rsquo;s Green, and have been gorging myself on their baked tofu and goat&rsquo;s cheese pizza.</p> <p>So far, I&rsquo;m please to say that I haven&rsquo;t really been in any major scrapes, touch wood (<em><em>touches wood</em></em>), but if you see someone on a grey bike whizzing past you and he looks like he&rsquo;s not really paying any attention - watch out! And sorry!</p> Edge's review policy https://lowbrowculture.com/post/edges-review-policy/ Tue, 12 Jul 2005 12:10:35 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/edges-review-policy/ <p><a href="http://www.kottke.org">Jason Kottke</a> <a href="http://www.kottke.org/05/07/movies-stars">recently changed his movie review system</a> from a 100-point scale to a 5-star scale, claiming that a 5-star scale is easier for him to judge (he asks &ldquo;How can there be a tangible difference between a 75 movie and a 76 movie?&rdquo;).</p> <p>This reminded me of something from Edge magazine a while ago. They did an issue where they got rid of the review score completely. At the time, they suggested that the score did not necessarily give an accurate representation of the nuances of the videogame they were reviewing.</p> <p>As a reader, I found this issue especially interesting. One of my (many) bad habits is reading the review score first, then the body of the review. Without a score, I was forced to read the text to find out whether a game was particularly good or bad. This was definitely more challenging and informative than usual, since I tend to skip bad reviews completely, unless it&rsquo;s a game I had high hopes for and wanted to see what the reviewer disliked about the game.</p> <p>It seems Edge&rsquo;s dislike of neat &lsquo;scores&rsquo; for games still continues. With their recent redesign (which has taken quite a bit of getting used to), they also revamped their &ldquo;review policy&rdquo;</p> <p>Previously, it read:</p> <blockquote>Every issue, **Edge** evaluates the best, most interesting, hyped, innovative or promising games on a scale of ten, where five naturally represents the middle value. **Edge**'s rating system is fair, progressive and balanced. An average game deserves an average mark -- not, as many believe, seven out of ten. Scores broadly correspond to the following sentiments: zero: nothing, one: disastrous, two: appalling, three: severely flawed, four: disappointing, five: average, six: competent, seven: distinguished, eight: excellent, nine: astounding, ten: revolutionary</blockquote> <p>Now, it goes:</p> <blockquote>**Edge**'s scoring system explained: 1 = one, 2 = two, 3 = three, 4 = four, 5 = five, 6 = six, 7 = seven, 8 = eight, 9 = nine, 10 = ten</blockquote> <p>Deliciously succinct and pithy.</p> <p>While I&rsquo;m on the subject, I honestly don&rsquo;t think Edge magazine gets enough praise. It was promoting &ldquo;new games journalism&rdquo; before anyone ever thought of giving it a name. Every month, it writes the most beautiful prose-poems about video games. It&rsquo;s less a videogame magazine, and more a love-letter to video game culture.</p> The Triforce - Tubes really are cunts. So are terrorists. And Tony Blair. → http://www.thetriforce.com/newblog/?p=244 Fri, 08 Jul 2005 14:47:00 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/the-triforce-tubes-really-are-cunts-so-are-terrorists-and-tony-blair-2/ <p>Ex-editor of Edge Magazine talks about his experience on one of the trains that exploded yesterday</p> The New Gamer:Grand Theft Outtakes → http://www.thenewgamer.com/archives/000316.html Fri, 08 Jul 2005 13:59:00 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/the-new-gamergrand-theft-outtakes/ <p>One gamer decides to take a virtual holiday in the world of GTA:SA. I really wish I could get into this game as well.</p> Housekeeping https://lowbrowculture.com/post/housekeeping/ Fri, 08 Jul 2005 10:35:02 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/housekeeping/ <p>A lot of people have started asking me <em>&ldquo;Do you have a blog?&rdquo;</em> I&rsquo;ve been trying to play this down with responses like &ldquo;Oh maybe, but you&rsquo;ll never find it - try Googling for &lsquo;John Kelly&rsquo;&rdquo; But people have been getting smarter: <em>&ldquo;Yeah, but what if I search for &lsquo;john kelly&rsquo; and uh.. shit, cunt, prick dot com?&rdquo;</em></p> <p>I realised then that people are going to find this blog, whether I like it or not. They might spend a few minutes pumping the kind of obscenities into Google that would make a sailor blush, but they&rsquo;ll eventually find it.</p> <p>And my mother&rsquo;s pretty well-read, she&rsquo;s probably seen the recent piece about blogs in the Sunday Business Post. I&rsquo;m sure she&rsquo;s going to ask me if I have a blog soon. And when she does, well&hellip; I can&rsquo;t lie to my mother, but then again, I can&rsquo;t turn the air blue just by telling her my domain.</p> <p>So I got a new one - <a href="http://www.lowbrowculture.com">LowBrowCulture.com</a></p> <p>It might not sound like much of an improvement to you, but any domain I can tell my mother about is a <strong>huge</strong> improvement to me.</p> Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow https://lowbrowculture.com/post/splinter-cell-pandora-tomorrow/ Tue, 05 Jul 2005 09:37:54 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/splinter-cell-pandora-tomorrow/ <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/0507_pandora_tomorrow.jpg" alt=""></p> <p>The third level of <em>Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow</em>, which takes place on board a moving train, is simulatenously one of the most thrilling and exciting and yet <strong>entirely frustrating</strong> levels of any game I have ever played. And as such, it is a perfect macrocosm of the game as a whole.</p> <p>The level starts with your character, Sam Fisher, rappelling down from a helicopter onto the roof of a speeding train. From here, he has to get on board the train and locate one passenger, a suspected double agent named &ldquo;Mortified_Penguin&rdquo; (yes, the dumb name is even made fun of in the game). All this without killing anyone and, above all, without being seen - if your character is spotted by anyone other than Mortified_Penguin, it&rsquo;s game over. Simple, right?</p> <p>Since games tend to take their cues from Hollywood blockbusters, it&rsquo;s fair to say that a lot of people playing <em>Splinter Cell</em> will be familiar with many of the settings, combat techniques and high-tech fuckery-foo featured in this game from watching James Bond and Mission Impossible movies. And although the Splinter Cell series had always aped its influences to a very high standard, it really hadn&rsquo;t shown me anything I hadn&rsquo;t seen elsewhere.</p> <p>And that&rsquo;s why this level took me completely by surprise.</p> <p>Let me explain. Very few games have ever really attempted to do anything involving trains. The few that stand out in my mind are the train from GoldenEye (although that was just like being in any really long, narrow corridor and never once felt like an actual train). There was also a train level in Red Dead Revolver that attempted to recreate the atmosphere of the trainride shootouts from old Westerns. But on the whole, there are very few games that can support a &rsquo;train'.</p> <p>So kudos to Ubisoft for trying to actually give us something that behaved like a real train. When you first drop down on the train roof, your character automatically crouches against the wind. Pushing the stick forward, your character visibly struggles; straight movement is difficult, and he staggers around against the force of the wind. Stand up for an instant, and he&rsquo;s blown back a bit. Jump and he&rsquo;s blown off the train entirely, although why anyone would want to do something so obviously stupid is beyond me. Ahem.</p> <p>Once inside the train, things get no more simple - each compartment is well lit and populated. When your goal is to remain completely unnoticed, both of these are immediate show-stoppers.</p> <p>The first trolley is the storage area, patrolled by an inspector. There are a couple of lights here, and a locked door at the far end, blocking your exit there. Fortunately, there is a trap in the floor which allows you to crawl out and under to the next compartment.</p> <p>So here&rsquo;s where things get tricky. Shooting out the lights gives you an extra few feet of darkness to crouch in, unseen. But there is virtually no way to reach the trap in the floor without being seen by the guard. I know: I&rsquo;ve tried. I tried again and again. I must have retried this one particular compartment roughly a dozen times before I discovered what I was supposed to do: knock out the guard.</p> <p>But I didn&rsquo;t know that I could do this. In the previous level, your character meets up with an informant in a locked room with no obvious exits apart from an air vent, which brings you to another locked room. After 10 minutes of running around, trying a few things, I started to get frustrated. I spoke to the informant again, my character asking him if there was any way out. &ldquo;Do you think I&rsquo;d still be in here if there was?&rdquo; I asked again. And the game started repeating this one conversation again: <em>&ldquo;Is there a way out?&rdquo;</em> &ldquo;Do you think I&rsquo;d still be here if there was?&rdquo; <em>&ldquo;Is there a way out?&rdquo;</em></p> <p>So I hit the informer.</p> <p>Just a quick punch, that&rsquo;s all. After I did this, I crawled around for a while and finally spotted the gas-vent I was supposed to shoot to open up the way to the extraction point. At the end of the level, my character&rsquo;s boss gave out to me for killing the informant. But wait a minute - I just punched him?! Obviously, my punches are lethal!</p> <p>So, it was in a similiar burst of frustration that I hit the guard. This time, no boss giving out to me for killing him. How come my punches only knock this guy out? Is he made of sterner stuff than the informant?</p> <p>Through the floor-trap and onto the next compartment, and there are similar issues. I wait until the guards finish their conversation and run for the door - I&rsquo;m spotted. I try again, doing the exact same thing as before, and this time I&rsquo;m not spotted.</p> <p>From there, I climb outside the train and inch my way along the side of the compartment, trying not to be spotted by anyone and also trying to avoid being knocked off by a passing train.</p> <p>And so on, and so on, until finally I meet mortified_penguin. He tells me he has to make a phone call, and I&rsquo;m my orders come in to follow him and listen to his conversation using my &ldquo;Laser Mic&rdquo; - a telescopic microphone which the manual tells me &ldquo;works by picking up microscopic vibrations, especially from glass.&rdquo; So I stand outside the door of the compartment where the conversation is taking place and point the laser mic <em>through the glass</em>, but I get nothing. I&rsquo;m told I failed the mission, try again. Only when I go through the door and use the laser mic from close-range do I complete this part of the level.</p> <p>This lack of consistency is apparent in virtually all areas of this game - from the videogame tradition of only having <em>some</em> doors that can open, there are also some lights that you can shoot out while others can take a grenade and still shine. And it&rsquo;s this lack of consistency that ruins the game&rsquo;s ultimate objective of completely free-form gameplay.</p> <p>Anyway, back to the train.</p> <p>The level ends with a brief firefight on the train followed by your character climbing onto the roof again and running down the full length of the train to climb onto a rope hanging from a helicopter, all this while an enemy helicopter is shooting at you. Thrilling stuff - arguably better and more innovative than anything Hollywood has given us.</p> <p>But I reckon, in all, I must have restarted this level 20 times, because each time I was forced to use trial-and-error rather than a consistent set of rules to complete each section. When restarting a level becomes second-nature, it&rsquo;s time to start asking questions.</p> Retrospective: Koyaanisqatsi https://lowbrowculture.com/post/retrospective-koyaanisqatsi/ Mon, 04 Jul 2005 10:32:15 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/retrospective-koyaanisqatsi/ <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/0507_koyaanisqatsi.jpg" alt=""></p> <p>Koyaanisqatsi has no plot. Nor does it have any characters or dialogue. Apart from the credits and a translation of the Hopi prophecies from which the film takes its name, it includes no text nor attempts at explanation. By all accounts, it&rsquo;s not a movie at all.</p> <p>But it&rsquo;s the most extraordinary movie I&rsquo;ve ever seen.</p> <p>My first experience with Koyaanisqatsi came when I was about 14. My art teacher in school &ndash; a lovely guy whose heart was in the right place, but just could not control a bunch of teenagers &ndash; spent an entire class raving about this movie, and eventually brought in a book of stills to &lsquo;inspire&rsquo; us, but these didn&rsquo;t do any justice to the movie so my imagination remained unsparked. But when I began to see its name used as an adjective, I knew it was something I had to check out.</p> <p>I never did. In days before DVD, it was just too hard to get a hold of. I could have imported it with no small amount of trouble, but it was so costly and the quality of my VCR was so awful from years of abuse, it never seemed worth it. So when I got my first DVD player (first generation, baby!), this was the first thing I imported. When it arrived, I called up a friend of mine who was also interested in seeing it and we made an evening of it.</p> <p>We giggled at the beginning. Uncomfortable giggles: Is this it? Pictures and music? What&rsquo;s the big deal? But the film just starts off slow; fifteen minutes in, it started building up to an acceptable pace, and our jaws started inching towards the floor.</p> <p>I&rsquo;ve since noticed how much of Koyaanisqatsi&rsquo;s images and visual techniques have been repeated by other movie makers, but none have managed to achieve such amazing results. The visuals are, at worst, stunning. At best, they are absolutely breathtaking. Filmed by some of the best cinematographers in the world, everything is in such a way to add extra gravitas or a new layer of meaning to the subject matter. For example, a long panning shot of a waterfall gives you an extremely effective sense of the scale involved - likewise, a time-lapse shot of people getting on and off an escalator demands that you view this everyday activity in a completely new way.</p> <p>Likewise, Philip Glass&rsquo; score is equally incredible. It is easily the best and most accessible of all his works, and stands apart from the visuals as a beautiful piece of music in its own right. The story goes that director Godfrey Reggio presented the movie to Glass for scoring. Glass composed a score to fit the movie, and sent it back to Reggio. Then Reggio re-cut the movie to fit the score a little better. Then Glass changed his score slightly to fit this new cut of the movie. And so on. I can&rsquo;t think of another movie where this has happened on such a grand scale</p> <p>By the time the film finished, myself and my buddy looked at each other and realised our jaws were still on the floor. We&rsquo;d experienced something completely new to us: a movie as art. Art as a movie, beyond the casual lip-service thrown thrown about for &rsquo;experimental&rsquo; movies like Warhol&rsquo;s 8-hour film about the outside of the Empire State Building.</p> <p>I fell in love with Koyaanisqatsi that day. I think I watched it three times that week, never once getting bored and each time discovering something new. I still come back to it every few months, especially when I&rsquo;m drunk - there&rsquo;s something especially fascinating about this movie when my brain isn&rsquo;t going at full speed. I remember saying that I don&rsquo;t take hard drugs, but Koyaanisqatsi made me want to start, just so I could take advantage of a fucked-up view of the world to see this movie in a whole new light. Think <em>2001: A Space Odyssey</em>&rsquo;s &ldquo;Stargate&rdquo; sequence on a whole bunch of new drugs, and you&rsquo;re in the right ballpark.</p> <p>The comparison to <em>2001: A Space Odyssey</em> is useful because besides both movies presenting a really strong case for recreational drug use, there is a message at the core of both movies. Both are, essentially, social allegories. Koyaanisqatsi has a very deep message telling us about our past, our present and our future. On one of the DVD extras, Reggio explains that he didn&rsquo;t want to hit people over the head with his message - he dislikes movies that attempt to force a particular message or opinion on its viewers, so he doesn&rsquo;t mind that, sometimes, people miss Koyaanisqatsi&rsquo;s central message completely.</p> <p>And that&rsquo;s okay, because they&rsquo;ll still have experienced one of the most beautiful films ever made.</p> <ul> <li> <p><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0085809">Koyaanisqatsi on IMDB</a></p> </li> <li> <p><a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00007DWRI/qid=1120486911/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i1_xgl/202-1177136-8250228">Buy Koyaanisqatsi on DVD</a></p> </li> </ul> Jesus, that's a hell of an act https://lowbrowculture.com/post/jesus-thats-a-hell-of-an-act/ Fri, 01 Jul 2005 14:18:45 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/jesus-thats-a-hell-of-an-act/ <p><a href="http://www.apple.com/trailers/independent/the_aristocrats.html">The Arisocrats</a> is a movie about <em>one</em> joke, breaking the record for &ldquo;Least amount of jokes in a movie&rdquo;, previously held by <em>Team America</em>.</p> <p>Wikipedia <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_aristocrats">explains the joke well</a>, but here&rsquo;s the basics: it&rsquo;s a non-joke. An in-joke among comedians. The start is always the same, the punchline is always the same, so the joke is all about the creativity put into the depraved, obscene stuff in the middle (I&rsquo;m no expert, but I&rsquo;d say that the South Park guys currently <a href="http://www.monkeyfight.org/southparkjoke.wmv">hold the record for obscenity</a>).</p> <p>And so to the movie - a documentary featuring 100 comedians explaining their own personal version of the joke, as well as the history of the joke, and the relevance in a society at odds with the &ldquo;limits of free speech&rdquo;. The movie was co-produced by Penn Jillette (of <em>Penn and Teller</em> fame) and features, among other things the amazingly obscene George Carlin, the amazingly funny Eddie Izzard and uh&hellip; Carrot Top.</p> <p>In other documentary news: I know my birthday is months away, but there&rsquo;s an <a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B00094AS8G/qid=1120231279/sr=8-1/ref=pd_bbs_ur_1/102-7438013-7696924?v=glance&amp;s;=dvd&amp;n;=507846">Errol Morris DVD Collection</a> coming out that would look fabulous in my house, don&rsquo;t you think?</p> California Institute for Earth Art and Design come up with "Eco Domes" built of sand → http://www.calearth.org/EcoDome.htm Thu, 30 Jun 2005 12:10:00 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/california-institute-for-earth-art-and-design-come-up-wtih-eco-domes-built-of-sand/ <p>Star Wars cosplay just got even more realistic</p> Potato Salad with Salsa Verde https://lowbrowculture.com/post/potato-salad-with-salsa-verde/ Thu, 30 Jun 2005 09:23:13 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/potato-salad-with-salsa-verde/ <p>We had a vegetarian friend coming over for dinner, so I had to quickly throw some stuff together. This is a variation of a Salsa Verde. If I was making it again (and not catering for a vegetarian), I would probably include the more traditional ingredient of a few anchovies.</p> <ul> <li>Bag of new/baby potatoes (6 potatoes per person)</li> <li>Jar of Pickled Gherkins (3 gherkins or so)</li> <li>Handful of Parsley</li> <li>Jar of capers (a small handful of capers)</li> <li>Zest &amp; Juice of 1 Lemon</li> <li>Salt &amp; Pepper</li> <li>Olive oil</li> <li>Red wine vinegar</li> </ul> <p>Preparation:</p> <ol> <li>Bring a pot of salted water to the boil.</li> <li>Cut the new potatoes into reasonably small chunks, about the thickness of your thumb, put them into the water.</li> <li>Chop the parsley really fine</li> <li>Chop the gherkins really fine</li> <li>Put the parsley, gherkins and lemon into a bowl and mash them (use a pestle and mortar or even food processor if you want)</li> <li>Pour in a good dash of red wine vinegar</li> <li>Pour in enough olive oil to make the paste runny but still thick</li> <li>When the potatoes are cooked, drain most of the water (leaving a little bit in there to be soaked up). Keep the potatoes in the pot with the leftover water.</li> <li>Pour in the paste and shake the pot, making the potatoes slightly fluffy at the edges. This helps the potatoes collect and absorb the sauce.</li> </ol> The first King Kong trailer is out! → http://www.kingkongmovie.com/ef239524432ba87f1ca8f70eed4b1fa7/en_splash.html Tue, 28 Jun 2005 10:48:00 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/the-first-king-kong-trailer-is-out/ <p>And they kept the dinosaurs! This looks just as big, bold and incredible as I&rsquo;d expected.</p> Worst smelling street in Dublin? https://lowbrowculture.com/post/who-done-a-fart/ Wed, 22 Jun 2005 09:56:44 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/who-done-a-fart/ <p>Since moving apartment, I&rsquo;ve had to change my route to work. Now, I walk down the road beside the Guinness Brewery - Watling Street, which takes me onto Thomas Street.</p> <p>In a city full of foul-smelling streets, I would like to nominate Watling Street as the foulest. Imagine the smell of a pub at closing time. That smell of spilled beer starting to congeal and sour. Now imagine that condensed to the point where it causes you to gag. And throw in some sewage gas for good measure. That&rsquo;s what Watling Street smells like.</p> <p>It&rsquo;s so bad that I&rsquo;m considering changing my route to work - going five minutes out of the way just to avoid going down this street. I just can&rsquo;t put up with the flash headaches and nausea caused by that awful smell.</p> <p>Or am I wrong? Could there possibly be a worse-smelling street?</p> New Yorker article about Philip Glass scoring the Qatsi trilogy → http://www.newyorker.com/critics/music/articles/050627crmu_music Mon, 20 Jun 2005 15:48:00 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/new-yorker-article-about-philip-glass-scoring-the-qatsi-trilogy/ <p>Koyaanisqatsi is the most amazing movie I&rsquo;ve ever seen, a perfect marriage of visuals and sound. It&rsquo;s single-handedly responsible for the Philip Glass wing of my CD collection</p> Boring3D → http://www.boring3d.com/ Mon, 20 Jun 2005 11:43:00 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/boring3d/ <p>Beautiful, simple 3D images. Like a high-tech explodingdog</p> I wonder what Freud would say https://lowbrowculture.com/post/i-wonder-what-freud-would-say/ Mon, 20 Jun 2005 10:27:10 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/i-wonder-what-freud-would-say/ <p>Over the weekend, I dreamt I met Steve Jobs.</p> <p>I crossed a humped bridge and came into an abandoned carnival which was being dismantled. As I wandered around checking everything out, I came across a second-hand book stall and sitting there, selling books by some guy called Eugene Stanford<sup id="fnref:1"><a href="#fn:1" class="footnote-ref" role="doc-noteref">1</a></sup> (who looked remarkably like Jerry Garcia) was Steve Jobs.</p> <p>I was overwhelmed, and shook his hand enthusiastically. He was polite and chatted for a bit. I decided to press a little further, beyond the normal smalltalk of a starstruck fan.</p> <p>&lsquo;&ldquo;How did you do it, Steve? You were 20 when you started Apple. You were in the prime of your life, and you were devoting 18 hours a day to your dream. How did you maintain that focus? How did you maintain relationships with those around you?<sup id="fnref:2"><a href="#fn:2" class="footnote-ref" role="doc-noteref">2</a></sup> I mean&hellip; I&rsquo;m spending my time worrying about shelves and varnishing and things like that. I&rsquo;m not pursuing any of my dreams. I haven&rsquo;t accomplished <strong>anything</strong>. How did you do it?&rdquo;</p> <p>He replied simply and calmly.</p> <p><em>&ldquo;I took a lot of drugs.&rdquo;</em></p> <div class="footnotes" role="doc-endnotes"> <hr> <ol> <li id="fn:1"> <p>which gives me a clue as to why was dreaming of Steve Jobs - I&rsquo;d just read his <a href="http://news-service.stanford.edu/news/2005/june15/jobs-061505.html">Commencement Address to <strong>Stanford University</strong></a>&#160;<a href="#fnref:1" class="footnote-backref" role="doc-backlink">&#x21a9;&#xfe0e;</a></p> </li> <li id="fn:2"> <p>of course, having read <em>The Second Coming of Steve Jobs</em>, I know that he <strong>didn&rsquo;t</strong> really manage to maintain relationships with those around him during the start of Apple&#160;<a href="#fnref:2" class="footnote-backref" role="doc-backlink">&#x21a9;&#xfe0e;</a></p> </li> </ol> </div> The Cult of the Hipster PDA https://lowbrowculture.com/post/the-cult-of-the-hipster-pda/ Mon, 13 Jun 2005 11:39:06 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/the-cult-of-the-hipster-pda/ <p>There&rsquo;s an old saying in software development that says that &ldquo;<em>Every application expands to the point where it can read mail</em>&rdquo; - even if the software started as a way to get away from reading mail.</p> <p>When it was first introduced by <a href="http://www.merlinmann.com/">Merlin Mann</a>, the <a href="http://www.43folders.com/2004/09/introducing_the.html">Hipster PDA</a> was a bit of an anomoly. Its analog, low-tech approach to task management and organisation was something unexpected and interesting. It ditched all of the fancy padding we put around our personal productivity and stripped it right down to the bare minimum. Perhaps that&rsquo;s why it <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/hipsterpda">caught on so well</a>.</p> <p>For the uninitiated, the Hipster PDA is simply a stack of 3&quot;x5&quot; index cards held together with a binder clip which functions as a notebook, to-do list, calendar, shopping list, whatever you need. Breathtakingly simple.</p> <p>Over at a million monkeys typing, Douglas Johnson has <a href="http://www.douglasjohnston.net/weblog/archives/2005/06/11/diyp2_hipsterpda/">released a &ldquo;Hipster PDA edition&rdquo;</a> of his popular &ldquo;DIY Planner&rdquo; pages. In this, he includes</p> <ul> <li>GTD quick reference card</li> <li>Covey Planning quick reference card</li> <li>calendar of the next two years</li> <li>few month planner cards</li> <li>weekly planner card</li> <li>a few &ldquo;day keeper&rdquo; card</li> <li>&ldquo;GTD all-in-one&rdquo; card</li> <li>next actions/agendas/waiting for</li> <li>a shopping list</li> <li>a &ldquo;finances&rdquo; list</li> </ul> <p>and a whole bunch of other stuff.</p> <p>Now, maybe I&rsquo;m completely missing the point (and let&rsquo;s be honest, it wouldn&rsquo;t be the first time), but this is looking more like my packed, hardback diary/planner than the Hipster PDA as Merlin originally described it. It has, in effect, returned a lot of the padding that the Hipster PDA took away. It has, in effect, expanded to be able to read mail.</p> <p>I&rsquo;m not trying to say that the DIY Planner isn&rsquo;t a good idea, because it most certainly is. All of its blank lines and empty tickboxes made me shiver with excitement at being able to fill them in. But it lacks the beautiful simplicity of the Hipster PDA &ndash; the very thing that, for me, made the Hipster PDA unique.</p> <p>Even though it is just a stack of plain paper.</p> Guardian Unlimited Film | Features | To cut a long story short → http://film.guardian.co.uk/features/featurepages/0,4120,1449360,00.html Fri, 10 Jun 2005 17:10:00 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/guardian-unlimited-film-features-to-cut-a-long-story-short/ <p>The art of the movie trailer</p> jwz - that was, in fact, the final straw. → http://www.livejournal.com/users/jwz/494040.html Fri, 10 Jun 2005 15:29:00 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/jwz-that-was-in-fact-the-final-straw/ <p>jwz switches to a mac. Hah!</p> Television Without Pity » Lost Episode Recaps → http://www.televisionwithoutpity.com/show.cgi?show=136 Fri, 10 Jun 2005 14:46:00 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/television-without-pity-lost-episode-recaps/ <p>&ldquo;I imagine someone told the writers that they needed to give us some of Boone, God&rsquo;s Friggin&rsquo; Gift to Humanity&rsquo;s backstory, so they used a random number generator to determine the moment in the show where&rsquo;d they&rsquo;d throw that information in.&rdquo;</p> Retrospective: Stop Making Sense https://lowbrowculture.com/post/retrospective-stop-making-sense/ Thu, 09 Jun 2005 16:00:44 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/retrospective-stop-making-sense/ <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/05/06/talkingheads.jpg" alt=""></p> <p>Talking Heads were the first band I was can remember being &lsquo;aware&rsquo; of.</p> <p>I mean, I understood music in a general sense. I understood &ldquo;songs&rdquo;. I understood that there were songs that scared the crap out of me (I used to challenge myself to listen to Ray Parker Jnr&rsquo;s theme from &ldquo;Ghostbusters&rdquo; in the dark, alone. I don&rsquo;t think I&rsquo;ve managed to do it yet) and I understood that there songs whose videos made me laugh (Dire Straits&rsquo; &ldquo;Walk of Life&rdquo;). But I really didn&rsquo;t understand the concept of &ldquo;bands&rdquo; until quite late.</p> <p>When I was about four or five, my sister - ten years older than me and a die-hard Prince/Adam Ant fan - challenged me to name the bands I liked. So I named &ldquo;Talking Heads&rdquo;, the only band I was aware of.</p> <p>&ldquo;Arty wanker.&rdquo;</p> <p>(I was <strong>five</strong>)</p> <p>It wasn&rsquo;t until much, much later that I understood what she meant. Talking Heads did their best to skirt the line between art and commercialism, occasionally pushing one more than the other. Sometimes this produced something difficult and awkward (like the deliberate nonsense-language of &ldquo;I Zimbra&rdquo; on &ldquo;Fear of Music&rdquo;). But sometimes, it produced something beautiful. Like &ldquo;Stop Making Sense&rdquo;.</p> <p>The few concert videos that stand out as something special do so because the artist and the director have a clear definition of what they want to achieve (and both have the talent to support it). Other examples, such as Prince&rsquo;s <em>Sign O&rsquo; The Times</em> and Scorsese&rsquo;s <em>The Last Waltz</em> are both as entertaining to watch <em>as movies</em> as they are to listen to. Stop Making Sense represents a band at the peak of their abilities with enough of a vision to, if nothing else, produce something completely unique.</p> <p>I&rsquo;ve always been just a casual fan of Talking Heads. I&rsquo;d never seen Stop Making Sense, but I thought I&rsquo;d gotten everything I could out of their music. Until a few weeks ago. I was at a Skinny Wolves night in Bodkins. At these things, they usually accompany the music with movies projected on a big screen without the sound - things like the Clash&rsquo;s Rude Boy and Devo Live. This particular week, they were showing Stop Making Sense.</p> <p>Now, it may have been the copious amounts of booze sloshing around my system, but I was completely mesmerized. I must have come across as a rude sumbitch because I think I spent most of the night ignoring all attempts at conversation. I was completely transfixed by these bunch of complete&hellip; well, there&rsquo;s no other way to put this&hellip; <em>geeks</em> doing the coolest things I&rsquo;d ever seen on stage.</p> <p>Throughout the entire thing, David Byrne moves his gangly body in strange, hypnotic ways. And the entire band puts out enough energy to power the show themselves. For example, the entire band jogs its way through <em>Life During Wartime</em>. During the guitar solo, David Byrne jogs around the entire stage, again and again and at the end, goes back to singing without being even slightly out of breath.</p> <p>There are set changes, costume changes, instrument changes, but none of it seems forced. It seems progressive. It gradually, sensibly builds up. Rather than blowing its load right at the very start (like U2&rsquo;s technically impressive Zooropa and Popmart tours), <em>Stop Making Sense</em> has a structure. It starts off with David Byrne coming out to a bare stage in a suit, with an acoustic guitar and boombox, and announcing to the crowd that he&rsquo;d like to play a song. He launches into a version of <em>Psycho Killer</em> that is so different from the album version as to be almost unrecognisable.</p> <p>For the next song, part of the band comes out. For the next, the backing singers come out. And so on. By the end of the show, there&rsquo;s a small country on the stage.</p> <p>And, like <em>Psycho Killer</em>, each song on <em>Stop Making Sense</em> is radically different from the album versions which makes them instantly compelling. And more significantly, they&rsquo;re arguably better than the album version. When it came to producing a &ldquo;Best of&rdquo;, Talking Heads chose to present two songs from <em>Stop Making Sense</em> instead of their album versions, <em>that&rsquo;s</em> the kind of quality we&rsquo;re talking here.</p> <p>It&rsquo;s easy to understate just how amazing this movie is. Even if you&rsquo;re only a casual fan of Talking Heads, I&rsquo;d encourage you to hunt down this movie and be won over for yourself.</p> <h4 id="resources">Resources:</h4> <ul> <li><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088178/">IMDB</a></li> <li><a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00004RCLW/qid=1118402426/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i1_xgl/026-3052175-1194857">Buy &ldquo;Stop Making Sense&rdquo; on DVD</a></li> </ul> The state of Irish Open Source https://lowbrowculture.com/post/the-state-of-irish-open-source/ Tue, 07 Jun 2005 16:22:06 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/the-state-of-irish-open-source/ <p>Reading an article about how <a href="http://www.cbronline.com/article_news.asp?guid=B3785019-0E71-44C3-93E7-5014648CE313">Europe is falling behind on open-source</a>, I can&rsquo;t help but think of the recent ICT Expo, which took it on itself to dish out &ldquo;Industry Excellence&rdquo; awards. Except it got so much wrong, it wasn&rsquo;t even funny. It looked more like a bunch of old boys meeting together to congratulate each other than an actual representation of the Irish IT industry.</p> <p>Ignoring all of the other categories and just focusing on the &ldquo;Open Source Project of the Year&rdquo;, we can instantly see that there&rsquo;s something very wrong here. The two nominations were</p> <ol> <li>Soft Telecom</li> <li>Enovation</li> </ol> <h3 id="soft-telecom">Soft Telecom</h3> <p>I have no idea what these guys do. Or did, since currently their website <a href="https://softtelecom.com:19638/webhost/rollout/site">redirects to their Ensim administrator page</a>. So, regardless of exactly what kind of open-source project they&rsquo;re undertaking, this hardly reflects any kind of &ldquo;Industry Excellence&rdquo; so far.</p> <h3 id="enovation">Enovation</h3> <p>When the winners were first announced, I looked very hard, but couldn&rsquo;t see what exactly Enovation actually <em>did</em>. If they provided open-source software, <a href="http://www.enovation.ie/">their site</a> certainly didn&rsquo;t mention it. Now they&rsquo;ve got a large banner which explains <a href="http://www.enovation.ie/index.php?option=com_content&amp;task;=view&amp;id;=125&amp;Itemid;=89">exactly what they did to win the award</a> - they set up Moodle for a college.</p> <p>That&rsquo;s it.</p> <p>I mean, Jesus. This is frightening.</p> <p>But thinking about it, what else is there? <a href="http://www.linux.ie">ILUG</a> is a useful resource, but not particularly pro-active. Likewise, <a href="http://ie.bsd.net/">BUGI</a> has been spluttering its way into actual usefulness for the past few years. <a href="http://eirepreneur.blogs.com/eirepreneur/openeir/">OpenEir</a> has potential, but is still in its infancy.</p> <p>Are there any significant Irish Open Source projects?</p> blender3d.org :: Blender 2.37 → http://blender3d.org/cms/Blender_2_37.496.0.html Tue, 07 Jun 2005 14:30:00 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/blender3dorg-blender-237/ <p>Soft bodies and force fields and widgets? Oh my!</p> Minor update https://lowbrowculture.com/post/minor-update/ Tue, 07 Jun 2005 10:26:16 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/minor-update/ <p>I&rsquo;m still waiting for Irish Broadband to contact me about an installation date, so I&rsquo;ve had four days away from a computer. And so much has happened.</p> <p><a href="http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2005/jun/06intel.html">Apple to use Intel Microprocessors beginning in 2006</a> Christ. This had been rumoured for a couple of weeks now (and a couple of years before then), but still&hellip; wow. John Gruber suggests that <a href="http://daringfireball.net/2005/06/see_you_intel">Apple may not transition to x86 chips</a>. But then again, he also <a href="http://daringfireball.net/2004/12/flash_gordon">discounted the possibility of Apple releasing the iPod Shuffle</a> and last week attempted to <a href="http://daringfireball.net/2005/05/intelmania">debunk the rumours of Apple switching to Intel</a>. But this is so completely <em>huge</em> that it&rsquo;s easy to understand why he was a litle skeptical. Apple say they&rsquo;re looking at completing the transition to the Intel chips by the end of 2007.</p> <p><a href="http://www.joystiq.com/entry/1234000843045537/">Nintendo Revolution&rsquo;s classic Nintendo games will be free</a> Nintendo, who have been keeping quiet in this round of &ldquo;Our console will have hi-def&rdquo; &ldquo;Ours will massage your feet while you play!&rdquo; have dropped a bombshell in the form of massive amount of backward-compatibility for free! They will be releasing almost every game they published for their previous consoles as a free download, available from the launch of their new console, the Revolution. This includes things like <em>Ocarina of Time</em>, <em>GoldenEye</em>, <em>Perfect Dark</em>, <em>Zelda II</em> and one of my favourite games, <em>Uniracers</em> (<em>Unirally</em> over here). Miyamoto (the creator of Mario and Zelda) has said that he&rsquo;s tired of sprawling epic games and is appealing to developers to create something unique and fun (but not neccessarily <em>huge</em> or <em>big-budget</em>) for the Revolution. I guess this is Nintendo paying attention. <strong>Update</strong>: <a href="http://www.cubed3.com/viewnews.php?storyid=3958">Full list of games available for download</a></p> <p>My copy of <a href="http://www.publicbeta.org/dqav/">Difficult Questions about Videogames</a> was waiting for me when I arrived in work today. This should give me plenty to chew through for the next couple of days, at least until <a href="http://www.rockstargames.com/sanandreas/">GTA:SA</a> and <a href="http://us.playstation.com/Content/OGS/SCUS-97399/Site/main.asp">God of War</a> arrive and start soaking up all my free time. <strong>Update</strong>: A few pages in, and I&rsquo;m convinced of something that I&rsquo;d always suspected - <a href="http://www.kierongillen.com/">Kieron Gillen</a> needs to find himself an editor.</p> Everything Bad is Good for You https://lowbrowculture.com/post/everything-bad-is-good-for-you/ Tue, 31 May 2005 11:03:54 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/everything-bad-is-good-for-you/ <p>I&rsquo;m almost finished moving to my new apartment. It&rsquo;s not quite time to crack open a beer and relax, but almost. In the meantime, I&rsquo;ve taken my pastimes out of their temporary hiatus and once again started playing games (the beautiful, memorable <a href="http://www.the-underdogs.org/game.php?id=252">Cruise for a Corpse</a> via the wonders of <a href="http://dosbox.sourceforge.net/">Dosbox</a>) and reading (Steven Johnson&rsquo;s <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0713998024/qid=1117535500/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i1_xgl/202-3786381-6615801">Everything Bad is Good for You</a>). Although I&rsquo;ll probably end up writing something about Cruise for a Corpse later, I&rsquo;ve got a couple of things I&rsquo;d like to say about Everything Bad is Good for You.</p> <p>The last book I read before the move was Kevin Lynch&rsquo;s <a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0262620014/ref=pd_sxp_f/102-4206398-0567330?v=glance&amp;s;=books">Image of the City</a>, a book about the theory of town planning. Most of that book is spent teaching us new ways to look at cities and helping us develop a new vocabulary for describing cities and town planning - most memorably, it introduces the idea of a city&rsquo;s <a href="http://interconnected.org/home/2003/12/19/in_the_image_of_the_city">imageability</a>. Dan Hill took this concept and applied it to videogames in his amazing essay <a href="http://www.cityofsound.com/blog/2004/12/los_angeles_gra.html">Los Angeles: Grand Theft Reality</a> - I would encourage everyone to read this, regardless of whether or not you are interested in videogames.</p> <p>Stephen Johnson does something similar in Everything Bad is Good for You (EBIGFY). Like Lynch, Johnson also tries to teach us to look at videogames in a new way and give us the vocabulary to describe video game concepts. Johnson accurately and eloquently sums up the positive aspects of videogames beyond the oft-repeated &ldquo;improves hand/eye co-ordination&rdquo; nonsense, such as teaching us the art of making sense of chaos in order to achieve a game&rsquo;s objectives (he calls this practice &ldquo;telescoping&rdquo;). He also describes, on a physiological level, why we enjoy playing games in spite of the fact that they tend to frustrate us for 90% of the time.</p> <p>Although his section on videogames is barely 35 pages long, it provides a more succinct and lucid essay about the merits of video games than I&rsquo;ve yet seen from actual <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/1841151203/202-3786381-6615801">videogame</a> <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0349107238/qid=1117540158/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_2_1/202-3786381-6615801">commentators</a>.</p> UK Resistance -- Video Game Truth: FRAG DOLLS -- EXCLUSIVE REVIEW https://lowbrowculture.com/video/uk-resistance-video-game-truth-frag-dolls-exclusive-review/ Mon, 30 May 2005 11:03:00 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/video/uk-resistance-video-game-truth-frag-dolls-exclusive-review/ <p><a href="http://www.ukresistance.co.uk/2005/05/frag-dolls-exclusive-review.html">UK Resistance &ndash; Video Game Truth: FRAG DOLLS &ndash; EXCLUSIVE REVIEW</a><br> &ldquo;Wouldn&rsquo;t, would, wouldn&rsquo;t, would, would, would, might.&rdquo;</p> WWW.TWOWIRESTHIN.COM - DVD Storage → http://www.twowiresthin.com/dvd/storage/all.html Mon, 30 May 2005 10:47:00 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/wwwtwowiresthincom-dvd-storage/ <p>(Dialup Beware) Growth of a collection - 5 years of photos of some guy&rsquo;s DVD collection. Wish I&rsquo;d done this with mine.</p> Real-World Half Life 2 → http://forum.e46fanatics.com/showthread.php?t=258889&highlight=half-life Mon, 30 May 2005 10:16:05 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/real-world-half-life-2/ <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/05/05/thumb-OnBed1.jpg" alt=""></p> <p>Some boffins have started playing with a bunch of consumer-level tools (well&hellip; 3DS Max is <em>sort</em> of consumer-level) to create photo-realistic images of Half Life 2 characters in real-world situations.</p> <p>The result is something extremely creepy and amusing at the same time, and strangely reminscent of <a href="http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.02/white.html">Charlie White&rsquo;s Photography</a>. There&rsquo;s a tutorial for anyone who wishes to give this a go for themselves.</p> Rexona deoderant commercial: "Stunt City" → http://www.beam.tv/beamreels/reel_player.php?XkNbYWSwTr Mon, 23 May 2005 18:11:00 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/rexona-deoderant-commercial-stunt-city/ <p>Everyone is a stuntman in this city. Sometimes Dublin looks like this.</p> Lazyweb: Broadband options https://lowbrowculture.com/post/lazyweb-broadband-options/ Sun, 15 May 2005 09:41:53 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/lazyweb-broadband-options/ <p>My girlfriend and I have been apartment-hunting for the past couple of weeks. We saw a fantastic apartment yesterday up in Stoneybatter that ticked all of our boxes (and a few we didn&rsquo;t even know we had, like a <a href="http://www.smeguk.com/Inglese/FAB30R4.asp">Smeg fridge</a>). Possibly the only thing I didn&rsquo;t like about the apartment was the lack of a phone line.</p> <p>We just got word today that the landlord is offering the apartment to us. Hooray! There&rsquo;s a two-week overlap between our current place and the new place, so this gives us plenty of time to move our stuff up there and get everything ready. Since my girlfriend and I are both nerds, I figure it might be a clever idea to use these two weeks to arrange for some form of internet connection to be installed.</p> <p>I was thinking of checking out <a href="http://www.irishbroadband.ie/index.htm">Irish Broadband first</a>, because it elimates the need for a phone line. But does anyone know what IBB&rsquo;s service is like? Any horror stories?</p> <p>When we moved into our current place, I asking IBB if they could provide service for us. The guy actually laughed down the phone as he gleefully told us &ldquo;We&rsquo;re not taking any more customers on that node! We&rsquo;ve got enough! haha!&rdquo; So, if IBB isn&rsquo;t a goer, we&rsquo;ll just have to bite the bullet; get a new phone line installed and go with one of the &rsquo;traditional&rsquo; providers. Any recommendations? Smart? Esat?</p> <p>Please, Lazyweb. I need your advice.</p> Creating Graphs in PHP - B. Adam (Howell) → http://www.benjaminadam.com/archives/2005/05/13/creating-graphs-in-php Sat, 14 May 2005 10:20:00 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/creating-graphs-in-php-b-adam-howell/ <p>Amazingly useful tutorial on drawing graphs with PHP</p> Meatballs https://lowbrowculture.com/post/meatballs/ Fri, 13 May 2005 18:53:18 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/meatballs/ <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/05/05/meatballs.jpg" alt=""></p> <p>There is something intrinsically <em>fun</em> about playing with your food. Children understand this. And we tell them not to do it because.. well.. we were taught not to do it and, goddammit, if we can&rsquo;t do it, we won&rsquo;t let anyone else do it either. So there.</p> <p>This is why I love meal-making with mince. Making mince mushy. Alliteration aside, when I&rsquo;m preparing a meal out of paste that was once recognisable as meat, I&rsquo;m instantly transported back to my youth: I&rsquo;m 5 years old again, creating a mess with <a href="http://www.corkslang.com/mla.html">mala</a>. Except my meat creations taste marginally better than my mala ones.</p> <p>I&rsquo;ve made a couple of batches of meatballs now, but the ones I made during the week were the first ones where the ingredients felt right. And best of all, it was thrown together in less than a half an hour when I got home late and wasn&rsquo;t really in the mood for anything too complicated.</p> <hr> <ul> <li>450g pork mince</li> <li>kielbasa sausage (or any smoked/spicy meat)</li> <li>clove garlic</li> <li>wholegrain mustard</li> <li>half an onion</li> <li>1 teaspoon tabasco sauce</li> <li>lime leaves</li> <li>salt &amp; pepper</li> </ul> <p>Chop the onion really, really, <strong>really</strong> fine. It doesn&rsquo;t have to be evenly chopped, a few larger bits here and there add to the texture. But it still needs to be thin.</p> <p>Similarly, chop the sausage into really, really, <strong>really</strong> small cubes. As small as you can. A good handful should do you.</p> <p>Crush the garlic with the side of your knife and then chop it fine.</p> <p>Throw the onion, sausage and garlic into a bowl with the pork mince along with two teaspons of the wholegrain mustard and about a teaspoon of the tabasco sauce.</p> <p>Roll the lime leaves in your fingers to crush it, then chop it to make sure it&rsquo;s extra-fine and add it to the bowl. Season the mix generously.</p> <p>Now the fun part - mush the whole thing around until you get a consistent paste. All the ingredients should be roughly spread throughout the entire thing. Roll the whole thing up into little balls. There&rsquo;s no rule as to the size of these, but I&rsquo;ve found that they should fit <em>in</em> the palm of my hand, not <em>on</em> the palm of my hand. Does this make sense? Bear in mind, the size of the balls will affect the cooking time.</p> <p>Pour a good amount of oil (olive oil won&rsquo;t splash, vegetable oil will) into a decent non-stick pan and get it good and hot. When it&rsquo;s ready, start adding the meatballs. You&rsquo;ll never have a completely round ball, so I&rsquo;ve found it&rsquo;s best to cook these on one side, until they&rsquo;re on the point of burning, then flip them onto another side. When they&rsquo;re a dark brown on most sides, you can start turning them more regularly, to cook the inside.</p> <p>Serve in some noodles with some chicken stock (Knorr do my favourite store-bought chicken stock right now).</p> Marc Ecko's 1UP Blog → http://people.1up.com/do/blogEntry?bId=4888617&publicUserId=5613073 Fri, 13 May 2005 11:44:00 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/marc-eckos-1up-blog/ <p>A while ago, I drafted a post titled &ldquo;Marc Ecko is a Fucking Tool&rdquo;. Now he&rsquo;s got a blog, my post is slightly redundant</p> Movie release calendar https://lowbrowculture.com/post/movie-release-calendar/ Thu, 12 May 2005 22:39:53 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/movie-release-calendar/ <p>Warning!</p> <p>This is still very much beta - use at your own risk</p> <p>Today, I set about teaching myself the basics of web scraping, with the intention of putting it to some good use. Coincidence or providence, I read Kottke&rsquo;s post about <a href="http://www.kottke.org/05/05/summer-movies-calendar">creating an ical for summer movie releases</a>, and immediately thought of a personal itch I could scratch.</p> <p>The Irish Film and Television Network provide a list of <a href="http://iftn.ie/diary/index.htm">Irish Theatrical Releases</a>, but this is just one big flat HTML file that is only marginally helpful. It still relies on me to remember to go to their page and see what&rsquo;s out and when. It would be much more useful if this information was somewhere I tend to spend a lot of my day looking - say, my calendar program - and even more helpful if it was somewhere I could carry it around with me - say, my phone.</p> <p>Well, now I can. Using various combinations of bash, sgrep, awk and sed, I created a script that will automatically grab the &lsquo;releases&rsquo; page of IFTN.ie and export it as an .ics file, which can be read through iCal/Sunbird, and from there, synched to my phone.</p> <p>You can grab the .ics file here: <a href="http://www.fuckcuntandbollocks.com/dorkus/irish_releases.ics">http://www.fuckcuntandbollocks.com/dorkus/irish_releases.ics</a></p> <p>If you find this useful, <a href="mailto:johnke@gmail.com">please let me know</a>.</p> <p>And now the caveats:</p> <ol> <li>IFTN&rsquo;s listing page is braindead. I can&rsquo;t help this, and my script can&rsquo;t predict its unusual behaviour. For example, why does it have two release dates for &ldquo;Kicking and Screaming&rdquo;, one on June 3rd, the second on July 29th? And why does it randomly have two &ldquo;2005&quot;s after &ldquo;Fever Pitch&rdquo;?</li> <li>This is my first real time creating a .ics file. I ploughed through <a href="http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2445.txt">RFC 2445</a> for pointers, but I might have commited some mortal vcalendar sin without knowing it.</li> <li>Bug reports to the <a href="mailto:johnke@gmail.com">usual address</a></li> </ol> <p><em>Update</em> For my next trick, I did the same for videogames using <a href="http://www.eurogamer.net/releases.php">Eurogamer&rsquo;s release dates</a>. Grab the calendar file here: <a href="http://www.fuckcuntandbollocks.com/dorkus/irish_game_releases.ics">http://www.fuckcuntandbollocks.com/dorkus/irish_game_releases.ics</a></p> BBC Backstage https://lowbrowculture.com/post/bbc-backstage/ Thu, 12 May 2005 12:31:00 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/bbc-backstage/ <p>Tim O&rsquo;Reilly suggests that at least part of the reason for Amazon and Google&rsquo;s success comes from their open API. This allows people to access their information in ways that fit people&rsquo;s individual needs (&ldquo;rip, mix, burn&rdquo;), giving them a massive advantage over monolithic proprietary apps. He gives the example of their own use in O&rsquo;Reilly - they monitor the &rsquo;technology&rsquo; section of Amazon&rsquo;s books for how well their books are doing, their prices vs. their competitor&rsquo;s prices, what new books have been released and so on. With Google, we&rsquo;re seeing this <em>as it happens</em> as people continue to extend maps.google.com to tie in with other services, such as Flickr, producing <a href="http://brainoff.com/worldkit/flickr/">Geotagging</a>.</p> <p>Well, the BBC must have been listening. Yesterday, they launched <a href="http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/">BBC Backstage</a>, which is set to provide a one-stop-shop for all of the BBC&rsquo;s web content, from their RSS feeds to their Search API (not available yet). Most interestingly for the casual user (read: <em>non-developer</em>), they&rsquo;re also using this as a way to track the ways in which people are using the BBC website, such as providing a way for people to provide their own &ldquo;external links&rdquo; for stories, or giving stories <a href="http://del.icio.us">del.icio.us</a>-style tags.</p> <p>I look forward to seeing what sorts of things people come up with.</p> YOTOPHOTO: The Free Stock Photo Search Engine → http://yotophoto.com/ Tue, 10 May 2005 18:54:00 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/yotophoto-the-free-stock-photo-search-engine/ <p>Yotophoto is a neat way of searching a bunch of finding free stock photography from a bunch of sources</p> Retrospective: THX-1138 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/thx-1138/ Tue, 10 May 2005 11:24:12 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/thx-1138/ <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/05/05/THX1138.jpg" alt=""></p> <p>There are, perhaps, a handful of &lsquo;hard&rsquo; science fiction movies in the world. By this, I mean movies whose primary goal is to challenge the viewer rather than to entertain. Movies like Kubrick&rsquo;s &ldquo;2001: A Space Odyssey&rdquo; and Tarkovsky&rsquo;s &ldquo;Stalker&rdquo; ask more questions than they answer, and this is part of their appeal. Strange, then, that one of the finest examples of a &lsquo;hard&rsquo; science fiction movie should come from the same man who defined the family-friendly summer sci-fi blockbuster extravaganza - George Lucas.</p> <p>The history of THX-1138 is a fascinating one, but one which I&rsquo;m not going to go into detail about here (for a concise history, check out the <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/B0002IBJQE/qid=1115727021/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i1_xgl/202-3883426-7198219">THX-1138 DVD</a> or Peter Biskind&rsquo;s &ldquo;<a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0747544212/qid=1115727055/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i1_xgl/202-3883426-7198219">Easy Riders, Raging Bulls</a>&rdquo;). But a quick summary: THX-1138 started life as a studen film, becomes the first finished piece of Francis Ford Coppola&rsquo;s &ldquo;American Zoetrope&rdquo; hippy commune/production company - other films on their &ldquo;to do&rdquo; list included &ldquo;The Conversation&rdquo; and &ldquo;Apocalypse Now&rdquo;. Warners, the distributors took a look at it and balked, yanking all of American Zoetrope&rsquo;s funding, re-editing THX-1138 to make it more audience-friendly (&quot;<a href="http://www.hotellounge.com/songs/putthefreaksupfront.htm">Put the freaks up front</a>&quot; was their suggestion for improving this movie). Lucas bought the rights back and re-released it the way he wanted it.</p> <p>Phew.</p> <p>I first saw THX-1138 when I was a teenager on a dodgy VHS copy that got passed around my nerd friends like a holy relic. And to be honest, I didn&rsquo;t know what to make of it. I could understand the dystopian themes, but couldn&rsquo;t understand why there wasn&rsquo;t an actual story - where was the needless exposition? The convenient explanations for viewers? To tell the truth, I wasn&rsquo;t all that impressed. Things like &ldquo;<em>Brazil</em>&rdquo; and, of course, &ldquo;<em>Nineteen Eighty-Four</em>&rdquo;, were much much more my cup of tea. Dystopian world-views with bleak endings. THX-1138&rsquo;s ending was so vague as to be unintelligible.</p> <p>So I completely forgot about THX-1138, except for spotting the references in other Lucas movies. To me, the film itself was more a curio for fans of Star Wars than an enjoyable movie in its own right.</p> <p>When it was released on DVD last year, I decided to check it out again. This time, it was the version Lucas originally wanted to see, and more. Lucas, master of revisionism, had decided to add more bits to this movie. After killing a lot of what made Star Wars enjoyable, I wasn&rsquo;t hopeful. But still, one Saturday morning, I decided to watch it.</p> <p>And it started to make sense.</p> <p>First of all, 99% of Lucas&rsquo; digital additions are worthwhile. They serve to enhance the movie, flawlessly working their way into the background, where you barely notice them, but help give the entire film a greater sense of scale. The major changes, for the most part, also work well. For example, they turn the completely underwhelming &ldquo;<a href="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/05/05/THX_Changes_02_OV.jpg">corridor of people</a>&rdquo; into a truly terrifying &ldquo;<a href="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/05/05/THX_Changes_02_2004.jpg">tsunami of people</a>&rdquo;. So, in terms of not completely ruining the film with his boner for extraneous CGI, I think Lucas deserves a little respect.</p> <p>But as well as these cosmetic changes to the movie, something changed within me. I finally &lsquo;got&rsquo; the movie. I remember a similar experience with &lsquo;2001&rsquo;; years of seeing it and thinking &ldquo;What&rsquo;s all the fuss about?&rdquo; finally gave way to &ldquo;Holy shit! This is amazing!&rdquo; I could finally look at THX-1138 and see exactly <em>why</em> there&rsquo;s no actual story. <em>Why</em> there is no needless exposition. I&rsquo;m completely enamoured with this film. I love the look of the movie, the style of the movie. The sound design is incredible and unrelenting.</p> <p>And now, the ending makes perfect sense to me. And it&rsquo;s easily as sinister and bleak as Brazil or Nineteen Eighty-Four. Perhaps more so: he finally does escape, but to what?</p> <p>It seems that THX-1138 will never really get out of Star Wars&rsquo; enormous shadow but for me, I&rsquo;m glad I finally found that it is an enjoyable movie in its own right.</p> <p>Resources</p> <ul> <li><a href="http://willow.club.fr/THX_Changes/THX_Changes.htm">Sam Davatchi&rsquo;s list of changes to THX-1138</a></li> </ul> Manners for Men https://lowbrowculture.com/post/manners-for-men/ Mon, 09 May 2005 01:54:53 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/manners-for-men/ <p>Cleaning out some old books, I came across something I&rsquo;d completely forgotten I&rsquo;d bought. &ldquo;<em>Manners for Men</em>&rdquo; by <em>Mrs. Humphry</em>, published 1897.</p> <p>From the chapter &ldquo;In the Street&rdquo;:</p> <p>In meeting acquaintences a nod is sufficient for a male friend, unless his age or position is such as to render it advisable to raise the hat. Should a lady be with the acquaintance, any man meeting them must raise his hat. So must the individual walking with the lady. The etiquette of bowing is a simple one. Male acquaintances always wait for acknowledgement on the part of the female, as well as from those men who are their superiors in age or position. But this does not mean that they are shyly to look away from them and to ignore them. On the contrary, they must show clearly by their manner that they are on the look-out for some sign of recognition and are ready to reply to it. Shyness often interferes with this and makes a young man look away, and this is occasionally misconstrued as indifference and resented as such. The calm, quiet, collected expression of face that suits the occasion is not achieved at once. Sometimes the over-anxiety to make a good impression defeats itself, producing a blushing eagerness better suited to a girlish than a manly countenance. This, however, is a youthful fault that is not without its ingratiating side, though young men view it in themselves and each other with unbounded scorn. This sentiment of self-contempt is a frequent one in young people of both sexes. Their valuation of themselves varies as much as the barometer and is as much affected by outward causes. After a &ldquo;snub&rdquo;, real or fancied, it goes down to zero, but as a rule it speedily recovers itself and in most young men enjoys an agreeable thermometer of 85° or so in the shade!</p> Nathan Sawaya | The Art of the Brick? | Han Solo in Carbonite → http://www.nathanbrickartist.com/han_solo_in_carbonite.html Sun, 08 May 2005 22:17:00 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/nathan-sawaya-the-art-of-the-brick-han-solo-in-carbonite/ <p>&ldquo;Because, like most people, I like to take large sculptures of people frozen in carbonite with me whenever I travel.&rdquo;</p> Pongmechanik → http://www.cyberniklas.de/pongmechanik/ Fri, 06 May 2005 17:19:18 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/pongmechanik/ <p>As part of the exhibition going on in the Digital Hub, there are a bunch of games set up in the old Medialab building - for example, Eyetoy hooked up to a large projector screen, World of Warcraft and Halo 2. But the star of the show, for me, was a mechanical version of Pong, which seems to be doing the rounds among the game festivals in Europe.</p> <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/05/05/pongmechanik.jpg" alt="pongmechanik"></p> Talk Digital: Censorship in the Gaming Sector https://lowbrowculture.com/post/talk-digital-censorship-in-the-gaming-sector/ Fri, 06 May 2005 17:13:41 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/talk-digital-censorship-in-the-gaming-sector/ <p>The Digital Hub is once again throwing an elaborate, <a href="http://www.thedigitalhub.ie/learning/events.asp">extravagant exhibition</a>, and once again, they&rsquo;re focusing on video games. Ordinarily, the Digital Hub&rsquo;s exhibitions are of little interest to me. They remind me of the time during the the dot-com boom when the company I worked for threw large cocktail parties every week, inviting all their friends around to come and get drunk for free. Everyone seems to be enjoying themselves as much as they can without drawing attention to the fact that the emperor is stark bollock naked.</p> <p>However, their talk about censorship caught my eye for a number of reasons, not least of which the fact that I was invited along by one of the panelists. The first, and hopefully last time I&rsquo;ll ever be on an email distribution list with Ryan Tubridy.</p> <p>The talk was actually quite interesting, in spite of the fact that not a whole lot was actually <em>said</em>. Well, there were a lot of words thrown about, but not a lot of points were actually made. This is especially true of the speaker from Trinity College who spoke for ten minutes without saying anything that hadn&rsquo;t already been said. There was a lot of roundabout talk about self-regulation and the importance of classification, but one of the key issues &ndash; the one of &ldquo;what have we got to protect the children <em>from</em>&rdquo; &ndash; seemed to get lost in the discussion.</p> <p>Most astounding were the comparisons being made. <a href="http://weblog.techno-culture.com/">Karlin Lillington</a>, a fairly tech-savvy young lady, made the comparison between parents letting kids play violent video games and parents letting kids drink alcohol. Likewise, someone else made a comparison to physical/sexual abuse of children.</p> <p>I mean, let&rsquo;s not get carried away here, guys.</p> <p>Although, in the case of alcohol, it seems like an obvious link (giving children access to something they&rsquo;re not supposed to have), neither of these comparisons hold up to any kind of critical thinking, and only serve to further confuse an already-complicated and emotionally charged issue.</p> <p>Another thing that came up was <a href="http://www.americasarmy.com/">America&rsquo;s Army</a>, one of the most-quoted examples of the dangers of videogames because of its primary use as a &lsquo;recruiting tool&rsquo; for the U.S. Army. Although it certainly is a recruiting tool, it is <em>not</em> used to help show people how much fun it is to kill things in the army - if you weren&rsquo;t already inclined towards joining the army, this game would most certainly not persuade you. Instead, the U.S. Army hope that people who are already predisposed towards this kind of behaviour will play the game, and when they finally do sign up, the recruitment office can instantly call up the player&rsquo;s stats, to see how well their potential recruit did.</p> <p>Towards the end, I think everyone was in agreement that censorship was the wrong way to approach this issue, and that classification and education were the way to go. A particularly funny moment came when one of the organisers found out that GTA gives you the ability to have sex with prostitutes, then beat them up and get your money back. &ldquo;My teenage boys play that game, and I never knew about that.&rdquo; Cue many sheepish looks when it was pointed out that this game was rated &ldquo;18&rdquo;, and her boys shouldn&rsquo;t have been playing it in the first place. But how does one classify a game like <a href="http://www.gamespy.com/articles/595/595975p1.html">Spore</a>, for example, which is so completely open-ended that virtually anything is possible?</p> <p>The debate about regulation raised an interesting question, and one that I&rsquo;ll be thinking about for quite a while&hellip; how exactly does one educate parents? Point of sale education isn&rsquo;t good enough. Part of the problem comes from the perception that &ldquo;games&rdquo; are the same as &ldquo;toys&rdquo; and, as such, all acceptable for kids. How do we convince parents that there are games made explicitly for adults?</p> EVIL DEAD REGENERATION → http://www.evildeadregeneration.com/ Tue, 03 May 2005 17:33:00 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/evil-dead-regeneration/ <p>Official site of the new Evil Dead videogame. This appeals to so many of my nerd instincts.</p> Domestic Instiki https://lowbrowculture.com/post/domestic-instiki/ Tue, 03 May 2005 12:10:13 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/domestic-instiki/ <p>Since we&rsquo;ve got broadband again, I&rsquo;m finally getting to play with all the nifty things I&rsquo;d had ideas about, but no way of executing. The first of these is a local <a href="http://instiki.org/show/HomePage">Instiki</a> server at home.</p> <p>I use this all the time in work for note keeping and simple project management. At home, I&rsquo;m finding a hundred different ways to use it.</p> <p>Like keeping track of recipes.</p> <p>I like to try out a whole bunch of different recipes. Nothing too fancy - I don&rsquo;t make my own chicken stock or anything like that - but I do try to go beyond the simple food strategy of meat-and-a-tin-of-sauce. This doesn&rsquo;t always go to plan. The most recent food-related disaster was my attempt at making a chicken maryland, which turned out squishy and odd-tasting. Live and learn.</p> <p>Using instiki, I threw together a &lsquo;web&rsquo; called &ldquo;FoodWeLike&rdquo;, where I&rsquo;m keeping track of the ingredients of the recipes that work for us, as well as simple cooking instructions. This is mainly useful because we have a central repository of ingredients and recipes (instead of trying to remember which cookery book had what), but any web server (or file server) could do this. Instikis is particularly useful because as well as a way to easily edit these, it gives us the ability to easily categorise the recipes any way we like - for example, &ldquo;We really like&rdquo;, &ldquo;We occasionally like&rdquo;, and &ldquo;We don&rsquo;t like&rdquo;. We&rsquo;re also able to organise these into weekly meal plans. And, most usefully, plan our weekly shopping run using a page called &ldquo;ShoppingList&rdquo; where we can just paste the ingredients from other pages, or update as we run out of something.</p> <p>And this is just one a hundred ways Instiki is useful in a domestic environment. Well, <em>our</em> domestic environment.</p> <p>(By the way, I know this could probably be achieved using <em>any</em> wiki software, but I&rsquo;m specifically choosing Instiki because of its simplicity of installation and also because, right now, I have a major boner for apps built with <a href="http://www.rubyonrails.org/">Ruby on Rails</a>)</p> Backpack is coming soon - it'll be better, not beta → http://www.backpackit.com/ Tue, 03 May 2005 11:58:00 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/backpack-is-coming-soon-itll-be-better-not-beta/ <p>Backpack launches today at 15.00GMT</p> Silence of the Lambs « posterwire.com → http://www.posterwire.com/archives/2005/04/30/silence-of-the-lambs/ Tue, 03 May 2005 11:49:00 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/silence-of-the-lambs-posterwirecom-2/ <p>Posterwire discusses the &lsquo;hidden&rsquo; dali picture in the poster for &ldquo;Silence of the Lambs&rdquo;</p> Silence of the Lambs @ posterwire.com → http://www.posterwire.com/archives/2005/04/30/silence-of-the-lambs/ Tue, 03 May 2005 11:49:00 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/silence-of-the-lambs-posterwirecom/ <p>Posterwire discusses the &lsquo;hidden&rsquo; dali picture in the poster for &ldquo;Silence of the Lambs&rdquo;</p> Star Wars https://lowbrowculture.com/post/star-wars/ Sat, 30 Apr 2005 18:33:51 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/star-wars/ <p>While I was in UGC, getting tickets for <em>Hitchhiker&rsquo;s Guide to the Galaxy</em>, I figured - what the hell&hellip;</p> <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/05/04/starwars.jpg" alt=""></p> Bleedin' Spyware https://lowbrowculture.com/post/bleedin-spyware/ Sat, 30 Apr 2005 11:52:26 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/bleedin-spyware/ <p>I&rsquo;m putting it down to a momentary lapse in concentration.</p> <p>Esat told us our line went &rsquo;live&rsquo; on Friday, so I spent a while trying to remember what my username and password was. I must have spent a good half hour trying various combinations (It turns out the username goes in the form of <em>$username</em>@iolbb, not @iolbb.ie as the salesman told me).</p> <p>So when I finally did get the right combination, I was so thrilled at having broadband at home again that I left the laptop for a few minutes to go bop around the room. I must have bopped for less than 10 minutes before I realised I&rsquo;d left a Windows machine connected directly to the internet.</p> <p>Too late.</p> <p>And so, my first few hours of broadband are being spent de-fucking my laptop. It must have five different types of spyware on there, and no one tool is catching it all. Although, loathe as I am to admit it, Microsoft&rsquo;s Antispyware has, so far, been the best, having already caught four things. There are still a couple of other things left on there, if I&rsquo;m reading windump and &rsquo;netstat -ao&rsquo; right.</p> <p>I hate the internet.</p> Land of the Dead → http://www.landofthedeadmovie.net/ Thu, 28 Apr 2005 10:13:46 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/land-of-the-dead/ <p>Being a huge fan of <em>Dawn of the Dead</em> and <em>Day of the Dead</em> (not so keen on the original <em>Night of the Living Dead</em>, but I love the remake. Go figure), I have to thank 28 Days Later and the Dawn of the Dead remake for bringing zombie films back into vogue. It&rsquo;s questionable that without those films to lay the groundwork, George Romero&rsquo;s long-awaited <em>Land of the Dead</em> would have been made.</p> <p>The official site of Land of the Dead went live last night, including the first trailer for the movie. First impressions suggest that it&rsquo;s heavily influenced by the remake of Dawn of the Dead. Very kinetic, and very nu-metal. It still looks fantastic though.</p> <p>Roll on June 24th.</p> Pirates of the Caribbean Online → http://disney.go.com/pirates/online/press/ Wed, 27 Apr 2005 11:56:00 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/pirates-of-the-caribbean-online/ <p>Disney are planning a massively-multiplayer online game based on Pirates of the Caribbean. Yaar sweet.</p> "Revenge of the Brick": LEGO Star Wars Mini-Movie Coming Soon → http://www.starwars.com/collecting/news/lego/news20050411.html Tue, 26 Apr 2005 14:07:00 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/revenge-of-the-brick-lego-star-wars-mini-movie-coming-soon/ <p>The movie of the game of the toy of the movie. My head hurts.</p> First steps in Blender https://lowbrowculture.com/post/first-steps-in-blender/ Tue, 26 Apr 2005 12:29:24 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/first-steps-in-blender/ <p>I&rsquo;ve been playing with Blender on and off for a couple of years now, and have only recently become confident enough to use it for showing things to other people. I&rsquo;ve found it&rsquo;s an amazingly useful tool to have around, if only for the amount of design work I get asked to do. Recently, I used it to create a pretty swish rocket ship logo, which was eventually scrapped because it was too similar to something a competitor used. (As a side-note, I often wonder if our competitor&rsquo;s rocket was also created as a result of an <a href="http://www.play.com/play247.asp?pa=srmr&amp;page;=title&amp;r;=R2&amp;title;=163423">over-indulgence in Tintin</a>. I guess we&rsquo;ll never know).</p> <p>Here&rsquo;s the first things I&rsquo;ve posted over on Blender&rsquo;s community website <a href="http://www.elysiun.com">elysiun</a>. It&rsquo;s part of a series I&rsquo;ve been working on, rendering NES characters in 3D pixels.</p> <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/05/04/mushroom-1280.png" alt="mushroom"></p> Processing 1.0 (BETA) → http://processing.org/ Thu, 21 Apr 2005 18:03:00 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/processing-10-beta/ <p>Processing - the visual programming language - is finally into Beta. Well worth checking out.</p> Everything Sysadmin → http://www.everythingsysadmin.com/ Thu, 21 Apr 2005 13:33:00 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/everything-sysadmin/ <p>Weblog by the authors of &ldquo;The Practice of System and Network Administration&rdquo; - the finest sysadmin book I own</p> Daring Fireball: Translation From PR-Speak to English of Selected Portions of Adobe's 'FAQ' Regarding Their Acquisition of Macromedia → http://daringfireball.net/2005/04/adobe_translation Thu, 21 Apr 2005 11:49:00 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/daring-fireball-translation-from-pr-speak-to-english-of-selected-portions-of-adobes-faq-regarding-their-acquisition-of-macromedia/ <p>I love John Gruber : &ldquo;Dude, we just bought the only significant competitor to several of our flagship applications. We didn?t buy Macromedia, we bought the market.&rdquo;</p> Tomb Raider: Legend https://lowbrowculture.com/post/tomb-raider-legend/ Thu, 21 Apr 2005 11:41:39 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/tomb-raider-legend/ <p>Eidos recently unveiled the <a href="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/05/04/tr3.jpg">&rsquo;new look&rsquo; Lara Croft</a>, which was greeted with a mixed response in the gaming community. Some cried &ldquo;WHERE ARE HER BIG TITS GONE?!!&rdquo; while others said &ldquo;Okay, we like where you&rsquo;re going with this. You&rsquo;ve got our attention.&rdquo; I think I was somewhere in the latter camp.</p> <p>My interest in the Tomb Raider Franchise dropped off around the time they made the move to the Playstation 2. The games had lost their way, moving from a &lsquo;Tomb Raider&rsquo; to &lsquo;Generic Action Girl&rsquo;. &ldquo;Run around the streets of Paris!&rdquo; the press-release for <em>Tomb Raider: Angel of Darkness</em> cried, &ldquo;Chase across roofs!&rdquo;, &ldquo;Use stealth!&rdquo;. Well, yes. That&rsquo;s all well and good, but there are a hundred games out there, doing the running-shooting action and stealth thing a whole lot better than a game that was famously <a href="http://palgn.com.au/article.php?id=695">rushed by the publisher</a>.</p> <p>I first played Tomb Raider on the Saturn. One of the few advantages to owning a European Saturn (since we missed out on all the hundreds of fantastic 2D shoot-em-ups released in Japan) was the release of Tomb Raider a full six months before the Playstation version. And it was breathtaking. Even without a lot of the graphical lushness of other platforms, it was still jaw-droppingly gorgeous. Vast levels gave a fantastic feeling of space. The action was spot-on (even if the story wasn&rsquo;t), and the music was unlike anything else in video games at the time.</p> <p>The recent iterations have been either a diluted mix of the things that made the first game so magical or an unmitigated disaster stemming from the developers try to &rsquo;re-invent&rsquo; the &lsquo;brand&rsquo;. Ultimately, the original developers&rsquo; complete failure to do anything spectacular with the franchise led to the publisher (Eidos) yanking the game from them and giving the task of developing Tomb Raider 7 to Crystal Dynamics - previously known for Project Snowblind and uh.. uh.. The videogame of <em>102 Dalmations</em>?</p> <p>Thankfully Crystal Dynamics seem to understand what went wrong with recent Tomb Raider games and are bringing the franchise &lsquo;back to its roots&rsquo; in <em>Tomb Raider Legend</em> by taking the focus off Lara and putting it back on the gameplay. So, Lara&rsquo;s tits are smaller and the levels (looking suitable Tomb-y) are apparently huge and magnificent, and very reminiscent of the early games. And even more reassuringly, they have brought back the music from the original game (if the background music on <a href="http://www.tombraider.com">tombraider.com</a> is anything to go by).</p> <p>She won&rsquo;t be making the <a href="http://www.cubeit.com/ctimes/images/facefc_o.jpg">cover of The Face</a> again (because the magazine is gone, but that&rsquo;s beside the point), but there&rsquo;s definitely still life in the old girl yet.</p> <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/05/04/tr1.jpg" alt=""></p> <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/05/04/tr2.jpg" alt=""></p> Upcoming.org: Metros: Dublin → http://upcoming.org/metro/ir/du/du/ Thu, 21 Apr 2005 10:52:00 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/upcomingorg-metros-dublin/ <p>&ldquo;Upcoming.org is a collaborative event calendar, completely driven by people like you&rdquo;</p> Dogs in cars: does exactly what it says on the tin → http://www.dogsincars.co.uk/ Thu, 21 Apr 2005 10:32:00 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/dogs-in-cars-does-exactly-what-it-says-on-the-tin/ <p>A load of pictures of dogs.. in cars. I really don&rsquo;t know how else to put it</p> Eurogamer.net - Release Dates (All) → http://www.eurogamer.net/release-dates.php Tue, 19 Apr 2005 16:33:00 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/eurogamernet-release-dates-all/ <p>Eurogamer finally get their shit together and start offering reliable game release dates</p> Gamestop to buy Electronics Boutique https://lowbrowculture.com/post/gamestop-to-buy-electronics-boutique/ Mon, 18 Apr 2005 17:42:50 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/gamestop-to-buy-electronics-boutique/ <p>According to Yahoo!, <a href="http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&amp;u=/nm/20050418/bs_nm/retail_electronicsboutique_gamestop_dc">GameStop are buying Electronics Boutique</a>, for &ldquo;only&rdquo; $1.44 billion (compared to Adobe&rsquo;s purchase of Macromedia for $3 billion, this doesn&rsquo;t seem like a lot).</p> <p>I can&rsquo;t say I&rsquo;m thrilled at this. The level of competition in Dublin&rsquo;s retail video game market is already virtually nil. GameStop&rsquo;s arrival last year through the purchaseof Gamezone killed one of the few independent retailers left in the country. Now, since Electronics Boutique own Game, and now GameStop owns Electronics Boutique, it means that GameStop has control of 95% of retail video game outlets in Dublin.</p> <p>The few places left to buy games (with some value - meaning Dixons and Argos are out) are:</p> <ul> <li>Smyths</li> <li>Xtravision</li> <li>GameXchange on Talbot Street (mainly second hand stuff - snes/megadrive)</li> <li>??</li> </ul> <p>I generally don&rsquo;t like buying games over the internet. I&rsquo;d like to say it&rsquo;s because of the hassle of sorting out returns if the game is damaged in any way, but the truth is that it&rsquo;s just because I&rsquo;m an impatient little shit who can&rsquo;t wait a week for delivery when he could pay just a couple of euro more to get it <em>today</em>.</p> <p>But with GameStop&rsquo;s mark-up fast reaching epic proportions, it&rsquo;s looking like there&rsquo;ll be no choice soon.</p> <p><strong>UPDATE</strong></p> <p>After a bit of hunting around, I found <a href="http://biz.yahoo.com/e/050407/elbo10-k.html">this on Yahoo</a>:</p> <p>&ldquo;On January 30, 2004, [Electronics Boutique] terminated our services agreement with Game Group initially established in fiscal 1996&rdquo;</p> <p>So it looks like there is still a little bit of competition left after all.</p> ni9e blog: Explicit Content Only.... → http://www.blog.ni9e.com/archives/2005/03/explicit_conten_1.html Mon, 18 Apr 2005 12:11:00 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/ni9e-blog-explicit-content-only/ <p>NWA&rsquo;s Straight Outta Compton edited to only contain the swear words</p> ReadyMade: Feature - How did you get your f*&%ing awesome job? - Brad Bird → http://www.readymademag.com/feature_16_bbird.php Mon, 18 Apr 2005 10:05:00 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/readymade-feature-how-did-you-get-your-fing-awesome-job-brad-bird/ <p>The amazing &lsquo;ReadyMade&rsquo; interviews the director of the Incredibles</p> Movie making manual - Wikibooks → http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Movie_making_manual Tue, 12 Apr 2005 18:38:00 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/movie-making-manual-wikibooks/ <p>An open-source, user-contributed book about movie-making</p> Buy A Car For Ron Gilbert → http://car4ron.com/news.php Tue, 12 Apr 2005 10:53:00 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/buy-a-car-for-ron-gilbert/ <p>Some grateful gamers want to buy the Monkey Island creator a car, as a thank-you</p> Ubuntu https://lowbrowculture.com/post/ubuntu/ Mon, 11 Apr 2005 16:58:32 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/ubuntu/ <p>Every couple of days, the hard drive of the G4 I use in work starts &lsquo;clicking&rsquo;. Well, more like &lsquo;ke-CHUNK&rsquo;ing. If I&rsquo;m lucky, my computer freezes for a few minutes and comes back to life. If I&rsquo;m not, I spend the next half hour or so rebooting until it goes away.</p> <p>Finally, I&rsquo;m facing up to the fact that my hard disk is dying and until I can get a replacement, I&rsquo;m without a Mac to work on. So I&rsquo;m giving <a href="http://www.ubuntu.com/">Ubuntu</a> a whirl.</p> <p>One of the biggest complains thrown around about &lsquo;free&rsquo; software is that it&rsquo;s only free if your time is worthless. The hours wasted getting things configured <em>just</em> the way you like them <strong>do</strong> add up. It&rsquo;s very easy to spend an entire day tweaking your desktop instead of just acccepting what you have and getting on with your job.</p> <p>The guys in Ubuntu seem to understand this - they&rsquo;ve packed Debian (the smart choice of a Linux distribution) in such a way that they take all the pain out of the installation and day-to-day administration.</p> <p>My personal experience is that Ubuntu has detected almost everything I&rsquo;ve thrown at it - sound and video were auto-configured (and in a nice way too, any previous attempt at auto-configuring my video in the past has left me with a headache-inducing 60hz refresh rate and no obvious way to change it). Bluetooth setup was relatively painless (gnome-bluetooth and gnome-phone-manager took care of this). Today, it even auto-detected my USB keyring and auto-mounted it, putting a link to it on my desktop.</p> <p>But there are also some things I dislike about Ubuntu. For example, the default behaviour for nautilus (the file manager) is a variation on the new &lsquo;spatial&rsquo; nautilus. When you go into a child directory, nautilus closes the parent window automatically. I love spatial nautilus, but hate this behaviour. After a little bit of playing around, I found that it could be changed with the following:</p> <p><code>gconftool-2 --type bool --set /apps/nautilus/preferences/no_ubuntu-spatial true</code></p> <p>Matthew Thomas recently provided a fantastic round-up of <a href="http://mpt.net.nz/archive/2005/04/11/ubuntu">other outstanding issues with Ubuntu</a>.</p> <p>Other nice things:</p> <ul> <li><strong><a href="http://www.novell.com/products/desktop/features/evolution.html">evolution</a></strong> has some really nice new features aimed at increasing productivity, including an ability to create a task from a message with one click</li> <li><strong><a href="http://liferea.sourceforge.net/">liferea</a></strong> has a &lsquo;condensed view&rsquo; option for feeds, a feature I&rsquo;d <a href="http://www.fuckcuntandbollocks.com/dorkus/2005/03/11/five-applications-i-couldnt-live-without/">previously praised</a> in <a href="http://www.pheed.com/pheeder/">Pheeder</a>. Even better, this is feed-configurable, so you can set only certain feeds to use the &lsquo;condensed view&rsquo;. Liferea is still my favourite RSS reader on any platform.</li> <li><strong><a href="http://www.gnome.org/projects/beagle/">beagle</a></strong> is amazing - I know that something similar is going to be available in Tiger, but&hellip; wow.</li> </ul> <p>But I still miss Quicksilver. <a href="http://micke.hallendal.net/gnome-launch-box/">Gnome Launch Box</a> just doesn&rsquo;t cut it.</p> ESR gives sex tips → http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/sextips/bedplay.html Thu, 07 Apr 2005 12:47:00 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/esr-gives-sex-tips/ <p>Noted without comment.</p> Idle Words - Dabblers and Blowhards → http://www.idlewords.com/2005/04/dabblers_and_blowhards.htm Thu, 07 Apr 2005 12:43:00 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/idle-words-dabblers-and-blowhards/ <p>Maciej Ceglowski talks about the nonsense put across by Paul Graham&rsquo;s book &ldquo;Hackers and Painters&rdquo;</p> Cooking https://lowbrowculture.com/post/cooking/ Wed, 06 Apr 2005 15:24:46 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/cooking/ <p>A couple of weeks ago, on the recommendation of a couple of food blogs (<a href="http://www.101cookbooks.com/">101 cookbooks</a> being the big one), I picked up a copy of Nigel Slater&rsquo;s &lsquo;Appetite&rsquo;.</p> <p>I think I&rsquo;m in love.</p> <p>I already own a few cookbooks. Standard fare like Jamie Oliver and Nigella Lawson. Then things like &ldquo;1000 Quick and Easy Recipes&rdquo;. And &ldquo;Good Mood Food&rdquo;. And they have all, without exception, bored me rigid.</p> <p>You see, I&rsquo;m not much for following instructions. I was brought up by people who were quite happy to boil/roast the shit out of every meal. This taught me that not everyone&rsquo;s palette was the same. And from this, it taught me that slavishly following recipes is no way to create a meal. Especially when you&rsquo;re just cooking for yourself - how do I know my tastes are going to be the same as Jamie&rsquo;s? (For the record, they&rsquo;re not. His recipe for Chicken Maryland made me quite ill).</p> <p>In comes Nigel Slater.</p> <p>His book explains everything I knew instictively about cooking but had never heard from someone who actually <em>knew</em> how to cook: recipes are not gospel and should be used only as a guide. He reminds us that recipes were originally used by chefs to keep track of where the housekeeping money was spent. And as he so correctly points out, being told to &ldquo;put it in the oven for 35 minutes&rdquo; will not give the same result for everyone, since everyone&rsquo;s setup is different, everyone&rsquo;s meal is different. Everyone&rsquo;s palette is different.</p> <p>Another thing I love about Nigel Slater&rsquo;s book is the straightforward way he presents his food. There is no trace of snobbery in his writing. In fact, he writes as elegantly about the delights of a Big Mac as he does of any of his other recipes. Lines like &ldquo;there is nothing wrong with using a stock cube, not all stock has to be home-made&rdquo; have led my girlfriend to refer to the book as &ldquo;vidication&rdquo; for all the frilly &lsquo;domestic goddess&rsquo; nonsense being thrown about by other food writers that make us normal people who can&rsquo;t spend all day reducing stock feel slightly boorish for turning to Knorr for some help.</p> <p>Also unusual about Nigel Slater&rsquo;s book is the way the writing lends itself to casual reading. Unlike the other cookbooks in my collection which have a brief introduction and go straight to the recipies, Slater&rsquo;s book has a conversational tone, and almost half the book is given over to best practices - how to best cook a steak, how to best store food, and how to best enjoy your food. This leads to &lsquo;Appetite&rsquo; being the kind of book you can pick up and read at any time, not just when you&rsquo;re looking for ideas for something to cook.</p> <p>I also can&rsquo;t argue with anyone who extols the beauty of a simple sausage and mash done well.</p> <p>And with that, my first attempt at a homemade ragu.</p> <h3 id="a-simple-ragu">A Simple Ragu*</h3> <p>*&ldquo;Simple&rdquo; in this case meaning &ldquo;made with things we had lying around in our kitchen&rdquo;.</p> <p>If you&rsquo;re like me, you probably buy a load of ingredients with good intentions and never get around to using them before they go off. The three main culprits for me are tomatoes, mushrooms and cheese. So last night, I decided to do something about this. I decided to make my own ragu.</p> <p>For this, you will need</p> <ul> <li>Plenty of tomatoes (12 or so small ones)</li> <li>A large onion (or a couple of small ones)</li> <li>Balsamic Vinegar</li> <li>Garlic</li> <li>Basil</li> <li>Dijon Mustard</li> <li>Dried Chillis</li> </ul> <p>Get a few cloves of garlic (I&rsquo;m fond of garlic and used 3 large cloves, which didn&rsquo;t overpower the flavour of the rest of the ingredients), and slice them very thin. As thin as you can.</p> <p>Then cut the onion, as thin as you can. If you&rsquo;re no good at cutting onions, or want to improve your onion-cutting skills, you could do a whole lot worse than checking out <a href="http://www.hertzmann.com/articles/2005/fables/">Peter Hertzmann&rsquo;s article on &ldquo;How to cut&hellip;&rdquo;</a>.</p> <p>Finally, cut the tomatoes into small chunks about the size of a jellybean. Keep every part of the tomato, don&rsquo;t try getting all fancy and de-seeding it. We&rsquo;ll need everything.</p> <p>Warm a good, solid non-stick pan and in it, melt some butter with a little olive oil to keep the butter from burning. When it starts to warm up, throw in the garlic and fry until it starts to brown. Then add the tomatoes and onions.</p> <p>You&rsquo;ll need to keep stirring the tomatoes until they start to get really mushy. This should take about 20 minutes. Then season well with plenty of salt and black pepper.</p> <p>Right now, you have a very basic ragu. From here, it&rsquo;s up to your individual taste. Personally, I was in the mood for something with a little kick, so I put in a bit of balsamic vinegar, basil and a heap of dijon mustard. I also put in a good helping of red wine. To spice it up, I crushed some dried chillies and put them in too. Once you&rsquo;ve added your last incredients, you should leave it for another 10 minutes or so before it gets really sticky.</p> <p>This is perfect for putting over your favourite pasta. If you want to mix in some mince, you should put your ragu through a blender first, and cook it with the meat for about 20 minutes until the meat soaks up all of the flavour.</p> <p>If you <em>do</em> decide to try this, comment and let me know how you got on. Although don&rsquo;t worry, I&rsquo;m under no illusions as to how many people are going to try cooking something they found on a random website.</p> Changes to THX-1138 → http://willow.club.fr/THX_Changes/THX_Changes.htm Wed, 06 Apr 2005 13:43:00 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/changes-to-thx-1138/ <p>A side-by-side comparison of the original and director&rsquo;s cut of THX-1138</p> Behind the scenes at Penny Arcade → http://www.penny-arcade.com/#2504 Tue, 05 Apr 2005 12:07:00 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/behind-the-scenes-at-penny-arcade/ <p>Gabe gives a quick rundown of how he works</p> Amazon.com: DVD: Nothing So Strange → http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B0001CWH3K/unsharp-20/103-7927985-4572647 Fri, 01 Apr 2005 14:17:00 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/amazoncom-dvd-nothing-so-strange/ <p>Nothing So Strange is a mockumentary dealing with the assassination of Bill Gates in 1999</p> ZeldaClassic.com - The Offical Home Of Zelda Classic → http://www.zeldaclassic.com/ Fri, 01 Apr 2005 14:08:00 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/zeldaclassiccom-the-offical-home-of-zelda-classic/ <p>&ldquo;Zelda Classic is a tribute to the greatest video game of all time: Nintendo&rsquo;s The Legend of Zelda. It has been developed into an exact replica of the NES version and allows the development of new quests that can use either the traditional graphics or enh</p> FILM ROTATION: SIN CITY Comparisons → http://www.filmrot.com/images/sincity-comparisons/sincity.html Thu, 31 Mar 2005 17:57:00 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/film-rotation-sin-city-comparisons/ <p>Side-by-side comparisons of the Sin City comic and movie. The attention to detail is staggering.</p> Wordpress spam https://lowbrowculture.com/post/wordpress-spam/ Thu, 31 Mar 2005 13:37:29 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/wordpress-spam/ <p>There&rsquo;s trouble a-brewing with <a href="http://www.wordpress.org">Wordpress</a>.</p> <p>Right now, the <a href="http://www.wordpress.org">Wordpress site</a> is unavailable, and I&rsquo;ll bet cash money it has a lot to do the recent <a href="http://www.waxy.org/archive/2005/03/30/wordpres.shtml">kerfluffle</a> over the seedy business practices Wordpress has begun engaging in.</p> <p>Since my blog is powered by Wordpress, I&rsquo;m slightly disappointed in this. I chose Wordpress as much for the quality of their politics as the quality of their software. Even more disappointing is Wordpress&rsquo; <a href="http://www.jluster.org/2005/03/spam-matt-wordpressorg-and-i-am-exhausted-bad-mix">unconvincing response</a> to the criticism.</p> <p>I sincerely hope this gets sorted soon.</p> BBC NEWS | Entertainment | TV and Radio | Eccleston quits Doctor Who role → http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/tv_and_radio/4395849.stm Thu, 31 Mar 2005 11:23:00 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/bbc-news-entertainment-tv-and-radio-eccleston-quits-doctor-who-role/ <p>Christopher Eccleston has quit as the new Doctor Who after just one season. Shame - I thought he made a fantastic doctor</p> Wired 13.04: La Vida Robot → http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.04/robot_pr.html Wed, 30 Mar 2005 16:28:00 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/wired-1304-la-vida-robot/ <p>Four illegal immigrants, a bunch of bling and a robot named stinky take on the boffins at MIT. This story actually gave me a lump in my throat.</p> Joystiq review: X-Arcade 2-Player controller → http://www.joystiq.com/entry/1234000037036775/ Tue, 29 Mar 2005 09:47:00 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/joystiq-review-x-arcade-2-player-controller/ <p>Affordable arcade controller for XBox, PS2 and Dreamcast. I want this so bad, it hurts.</p> del.icio.us/THRILLHO → http://del.icio.us/new/THRILLHO Fri, 25 Mar 2005 16:26:00 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/deliciousthrillho/ <p>A new way of looking at your del.icio.us stats - del.icio.us/new/</p> A Coder in Courierland || kuro5hin.org → http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2005/3/19/133129/548 Fri, 25 Mar 2005 16:24:00 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/a-coder-in-courierland-kuro5hinorg/ <p>An ex-programmer documents their transition to being a bike courier - <em>sigh</em></p> ChangeThis → http://www.changethis.com Fri, 25 Mar 2005 15:13:53 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/changethis/ <p>One of the reasons I can&rsquo;t wait for our DSL to be reconnected at home is so that I can spend even <em>more</em> time at <a href="http://www.changethis.com">ChangeThis</a>. As it is, there just aren&rsquo;t enough hours in the day for me to be able to read everything I would like to over there.</p> <p>My current favourites: <a href="http://www.changethis.com/11.TheHughtrain">The Hughtrain Manifesto</a> - Hugh MacCleod <a href="http://www.changethis.com/sp-4.SlackerAtWork">Slacker @ Work</a> - Brendon Connelly <a href="http://www.changethis.com/sp-4.SlackerAtWork">The Corporate Weblog Manifesto</a> - Robert Scoble</p> DSL Update https://lowbrowculture.com/post/dsl-update/ Fri, 25 Mar 2005 15:04:28 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/dsl-update/ <p>A couple of months ago, I posted that our DSL went kablooie. And now, a couple of months later, it&rsquo;s still down. Here&rsquo;s the story of what happened.</p> <p><strong>Early February</strong> - Get home to discover that although our DSL modem is connecting and giving solid green lights all the way, when we try to actually log into UTV, we get a &ldquo;remote host not responding&rdquo;. Phoned UTV immediately, and they reckoned it was a modem problem, and that I should try out a few things and then report the modem as &lsquo;broken&rsquo; to receive a replacement</p> <p><strong>next day</strong> - modem can&rsquo;t even connect any more. Permanent state of flashing green lights. Phone UTV support and they tell me that it&rsquo;s something more than that. I should ring back in a couple of days.</p> <p><strong>A couple of days later</strong> - I phone back and they say they&rsquo;re going to get Eircom to test our line. This should take 5-8 working days.</p> <p><strong>two weeks later, around the end of February</strong> - I phone UTV back, and they say that the line check revealed that Eircom had disconnected our DSL line. Why? I don&rsquo;t know. UTV support guy says that this sometimes happens by accident, and sometimes it&rsquo;s an accounts issue. Our account was fine, so it wasn&rsquo;t that. Advises me that I should ring Eircom to find out why we were disconnected.</p> <p><strong>Next day</strong> - Phone Eircom to find out why we were disconnected. Person on the other end was most unhelpful and wouldn&rsquo;t tell me why. I asked if I could speak to someone else to find out why. They assure me that noone would be able to tell me why I was disconnected.</p> <p>So I phone UTV and tell them that Eircom won&rsquo;t tell me why. They say they won&rsquo;t arrange a reconnection until they know why we were disconnected, so that they can be sure it won&rsquo;t happen again. I explain that Eircom won&rsquo;t tell me why. UTV&rsquo;s response (paraphrasing here): &ldquo;Not my problem.&rdquo;</p> <p><strong>A couple of days later</strong> - Phone UTV again. No movement. Told that even if UTV were to reconnect me, it would take fully 10-14 <em>working days</em> to reconnect me.</p> <p><strong>A week later</strong> - I flip out at the lack of help from either side and email <a href="mailto:sales@u.tv">sales@u.tv</a> to ask them to sort this mess out (if you&rsquo;re wondering why I emailed <a href="mailto:sales@u.tv">sales@u.tv</a> - I was informed that the UTV accounts department is the exact same as the support department. Since they were spectacularly unhelpful, I thought sales might be more interested).</p> <p><strong>5 days later</strong> - No response at all, so I have a minor panic attack and tell UTV that their lack of cooperation or understanding on this matter was completely unacceptable and that they should cancel my account immediately. I get a reply within the hour telling me my account was disconnected.</p> <p><strong>yesterday</strong> - Since Smart aren&rsquo;t going to be launching their broadband in my area until early may, I&rsquo;ve signed up for Esat&rsquo;s three-month broadband trial. This is initially 1MB, but will be increased to 2MB come April 4th (with no increase in the cap - but we&rsquo;re only going to be using this for a month or so). I botched my application and decided to try again some other time.</p> <p><strong>today</strong> - Got a phone call from Esat saying they saw that I&rsquo;d been trying to apply for their broadband, and if I&rsquo;d like to go through the application over the phone with them. After all the fucking around with UTV, I was genuinely taken aback by the friendly, helpful service from Esat.</p> <p>Hopefully, we should have broadband in the next 8-10 working days.</p> Play.com (UK) : Lemony Snicket's A Series Of Unfortunate Events: Special Edition : DVD → http://www.play.com/play247.asp?pa=hpo&page=title&r=R2&title=619408&p=57&g=72 Fri, 25 Mar 2005 12:50:00 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/playcom-uk-lemony-snickets-a-series-of-unfortunate-events-special-edition-dvd/ <p>The DVD of &ldquo;Series of Unfortunate Events&rdquo; looks amazing - jam-packed with extra features.</p> Stephen Tobolowsky's Birthday Party https://lowbrowculture.com/post/stephen-tobolowskys-birthday-party/ Thu, 24 Mar 2005 18:11:18 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/stephen-tobolowskys-birthday-party/ <p>A while ago, someone asked me who my favourite actors were. I started rattling off some names &ndash; Ron Perlman, Bruce Campbell, William H. Macy &ndash; and I was stopped, and asked who my favourite <em>big name</em> actors were.</p> <p>And I don&rsquo;t really have any. I love character actors.</p> <p>I think I love them because they can pop up in all sorts of unsuspecting places. Rather than watching a movie almost exclusively because it has <em>Johnny Depp</em> in it, it&rsquo;s nice to watch a movie and suddenly have a bunch of people go &ldquo;Hey, no way! It&rsquo;s that guy from&hellip; oh, what was it?&rdquo;</p> <p>An unsung hero among character actors is Stephen Tobolowsky. A &ldquo;hero&rdquo; because he is so incredibly prolific: I believe he holds the record for starring in the most movies in the 1990s. Unsung because almost noone remembers his name, and he&rsquo;s doomed to be forever known as &ldquo;that guy from.. uh.. Groundhog Day!&rdquo;.</p> <p>Hopefully, <a href="http://www.apple.com/trailers/independent/stephentobolowskysbirthdayparty.html">Stephen Tobolowsky&rsquo;s Birthday Party</a> will change that. The trailer makes light of his relative anonymity - Stephen Tobolowsky asking various punters who they think &ldquo;Stephen Tobolowsky&rdquo; is. The answers range from &ldquo;A Russian Scientist&rdquo; to &ldquo;Serial Killer&rdquo; by way of &ldquo;Porn Star&rdquo;.</p> The Incredibles https://lowbrowculture.com/post/the-incredibles/ Wed, 23 Mar 2005 13:40:45 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/the-incredibles/ <p>I loved The Incredibles.</p> <p>It was completely unlike all of the other Pixar movies - it was grown up, had something resembling an original plot (Watchmen comparisons aside) and its production design was beautiful.</p> <p>I picked up the DVD over the weekend. I still haven&rsquo;t gotten around to watching the movie, because I&rsquo;ve been spending my time over on the second disk, watching the &lsquo;making of&rsquo; featurettes.</p> <p>Even these are completely unlike the other Pixar &lsquo;making of&rsquo; featurettes. &lsquo;Finding Nemo&rsquo; gave us fluff - people like Lee Unkrich and Andrew Stanton telling us how fantastic it was to make this movie, and gee whizz, isn&rsquo;t Pixar just great? On The Incredibles DVD, Brad Bird and various other Pixarians explaining how hard it was to make this movie. At one stage, they even show a fight between Brad Bird fighting with a producer to justify the cost of a particular scene: something I&rsquo;d never seen on a DVD, let alone a Pixar DVD.</p> <p>It&rsquo;s a fascinating set of featurettes, but the highlight for me came in the form of a closeup of their tools. The idea of building a rampantly successful motion pictures using Makefiles makes my tiny nerd heart flutter.</p> <p><img src="http://www.fuckcuntandbollocks.com/pictures/thumb-0503_incredibles.jpg" alt=""></p> BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Lab fireball 'may be black hole' → http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4357613.stm Mon, 21 Mar 2005 15:32:00 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/bbc-news-sciencenature-lab-fireball-may-be-black-hole/ <p>Does someone have a phone number for these guys so I can call them and ask them to knock it off? I have enough trouble sleeping as it is.</p> Digital Ireland https://lowbrowculture.com/post/digital-ireland/ Mon, 21 Mar 2005 12:15:39 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/digital-ireland/ <p>The BBC are reporting that <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/northern_ireland/4365875.stm">Irish cinema is set to go digital</a> with the announcement that all cinemas in Ireland are to have their traditional film projectors replaced with digital projectors.</p> <p>I would love to have some dates on the rollout of these kinds of things. Major directors like Michael Mann and George Lucas aside, &lsquo;digital filmmaking&rsquo; has been relatively slow on the uptake. Perhaps this is the kind of kick in the ass it needs.</p> <p>Personally, I&rsquo;m thrilled at this. Aside from the technical issues, such as flickering and scratches and disjointed sound (which happened at the screening of Hotel Rwanda I saw in UGC - completely jarred me out of the movie), the major improvement I&rsquo;m hoping this will bring is a quicker turnaround on movie releases here. Ireland traditionally has to wait in line to receive film reels as they do the rounds. For large films, such as the recent <em>Hellboy</em> or <em>Incredibles</em>, this wait can be as long as six months.</p> <p>With digital filmmaking eliminating the needs for individual reels to be printed up, it eliminates that excuse.</p> <p>Although I&rsquo;m sure we&rsquo;ll still have to wait in line to download the 1TB that will make up the movie.</p> Zelda: A Cautionary Tale https://lowbrowculture.com/post/zelda-a-cautionary-tale/ Mon, 21 Mar 2005 11:23:50 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/zelda-a-cautionary-tale/ <p>&ldquo;Yes&rdquo; or &ldquo;no&rdquo;?</p> <p>Two years of sitting on a shelf with a mental note of &ldquo;must complete, someday&rdquo;, I finally got around to playing Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker. And for two weeks, every spare half hour was spent playing that game, beating various bosses, sailing the seas digging up treasure, talking to everyone I met, amassing a veritable horde of spoils.</p> <p>Now, after a long day in work, I&rsquo;ve turned on the Gamecube and dragged my favourite chair closer to the TV only to find the game asking me &ldquo;yes&rdquo; or &ldquo;no&rdquo;?</p> <p>It didn&rsquo;t say what the question was. What could it be? Load the game?</p> <p>I choose &ldquo;yes&rdquo;.</p> <p>&ldquo;Please wait&hellip;&rdquo;</p> <p>Hmm. My muscle memory spasms a little, telling me that this isn&rsquo;t the way I load my game in Wind Waker. Flash of panic. What have I done?!</p> <p>&ldquo;Done!&rdquo;</p> <p>And I&rsquo;m taken to the quest screen.</p> <p>Three empty slots. Three &ldquo;New quest&rdquo; buttons, empty as the day they left the Nintendo factory.</p> <p>My game is gone. All my hard work. All my emotional attachment is gone. As if to pour some salt on the wounds, I checked gamefaqs, to see how far I had to go to the end of the game. Not far. A couple more shards of the Triforce and I&rsquo;d be fighting Ganondorf once and for all. All gone.</p> <p>Now.. I don&rsquo;t know what to do. I tried launching straight back into it, but there&rsquo;s so much to do. My sea chart is empty, my spoils bag is.. hang on, I don&rsquo;t even <em>have</em> a spoils bag yet. I resent every conversation with every character, so I don&rsquo;t talk to anyone. Even more, I resent conversations that I <em>must have</em> to progress in the game. The unskippable nature of them grates over me. Things that were beautiful and magical, even the cute little cut-scene where you change the direction of the wind and Link whips his head around - all these things are like nails across a blackboard.</p> <p>And so it&rsquo;s going back on the shelf for another two years.</p> <p>This time, without the mental note.</p> ONE: A SPACE ODYSSEY → http://www.spiteyourface.com/one/ Fri, 18 Mar 2005 18:34:00 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/one-a-space-odyssey/ <p>2001: A Space Odyssey, retold in lego (via edge magazine)</p> Simpler side of gaming https://lowbrowculture.com/post/simpler-side-of-gaming/ Fri, 18 Mar 2005 17:31:26 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/simpler-side-of-gaming/ <blockquote> <p>&ldquo;Iwata-san has the heart of a gamer” and my question is, what poor bastard&rsquo;s chest did he carve it from, and how often do they perform human sacrifices at Nintendo HQ?&rdquo;<br> &ndash; Greg Castikyan</p> </blockquote> <p>Greg Costikyan recently posted a <a href="http://www.costik.com/weblog/2005_03_01_blogchive.html#111069190589189590">transcript of a rant he gave</a> at a GDC roundtable talk on the topic of game production. The panel were speaking about how the cost of game production has risen to the stage where it is actually prohibitory for publishers to fund developers that aren&rsquo;t working on licensed or recognisable IP. In it, Greg talks about how J Allard&rsquo;s GDC keynote filled him with dread - the idea of welcoming in an era of HD video games with massive production costs, increased workload for developers and no additional profit for anyone but the games publishers?</p> <p>He&rsquo;s right to be afraid.</p> <p>But there seems to be a bit of hope, from an unlikely source.</p> <p>Flash gaming.</p> <p>No, hear me out.</p> <p>Although it&rsquo;s never going to take over the world, we&rsquo;ve reached the stage where people have had enough of creating silly games based around hitting/pissing on/killing celebrities and have begun exploring the medium&rsquo;s creative possibilities. And although they&rsquo;re just short, 5-minute bursts of gaming, they&rsquo;ve been creating a bit of a buzz on among the internet community.</p> <h3 id="helicopter-gamehttpwwwseethrucoukgameshelicopterhtm"><a href="http://www.seethru.co.uk/games/helicopter.htm">Helicopter game</a></h3> <p>This was the first truly addictive flash game I can think of. Although it&rsquo;s almost 4 years old at this stage, it&rsquo;s still a lot of fun to play. Simple premise - fly your helicopter, don&rsquo;t crash. I doubt a lot of people would pay a lot of money for this, but just think how many hours were lost to this game in offices around the world.</p> <h3 id="treasure-boxhttpwwwnanahirocomcompemainhtml"><a href="http://www.nanahiro.com/compe/main.html">Treasure Box</a></h3> <p>Beautifully introduced by Metafilter as &ldquo;If Rube Goldberg and Terry Gilliam made flash games, they might go like this&rdquo;, Treasure Box showed that Flash games didn&rsquo;t have to just simple affairs. Although there isn&rsquo;t actually much gameplay in this to keep people <em>entertained</em>, there&rsquo;s enough eccentric beauty to keep people <em>fascinated</em>.</p> <h2 id="skills-to-pay-the-bills">Skills to pay the bills</h2> <p>Okay, so we&rsquo;ve got some good flash games out there, so what? Well, some bright sparks out there have figured out a way to make money out of very good flash games and because of this, we&rsquo;re seeing the beginnings of a resurgence in the shareware games scene.</p> <p>Some examples:</p> <h3 id="gishhttpwwwchroniclogiccomindexhtmgishhtm"><a href="http://www.chroniclogic.com/index.htm?gish.htm">Gish</a></h3> <p>Gish is a platform game where you control a ball of tar. Using Newtonian physics (and some physics-cheating constructs), you guide your ball of tar through various obstacles to reach the end of the level. Because of its unique and superbly crafted nature, it has won all sorts of praise. But here&rsquo;s the rub - the developers of this game are actually making money from it because of its shareware nature (play the basic levels online, pay $20 for the full game). I don&rsquo;t know how much, but I&rsquo;m sure it&rsquo;s nothing to be sneezed at.</p> <h3 id="codename-gordonhttpwwwhalflife2dcom-site-down-right-now"><a href="http://www.halflife2d.com/">Codename Gordon</a> (site down right now)</h3> <p>What started out as a flash &rsquo;tribute&rsquo; to Half Life 2 (or a way to stave off the boredom until the game was actually released, depending on who you ask) is now available for purchase through Steam. Codename Gordon: Half Life 2D is a beautiful thing - embracing the limitations of flash gaming and turning them into a feature.</p> <h3 id="alien-hominidhttpwwwalienhominidcom"><a href="http://www.alienhominid.com">Alien Hominid</a></h3> <p>Like Codename Gordon, Alien Hominid started off as a way for a group of friends to create a simple game and hopefully sell it. It started off as one of a hundred games on popular flash site Newgrounds (<a href="http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view.php?id=59593">play the original</a>) is now being released on the Xbox, PS2 and Gamecube. And what&rsquo;s more, it hasn&rsquo;t been significantly changed during the transition - it still retains the same look and play mechanics.</p> <p>Of course, none of these are ever likely to compete with the likes of Resident Evil 4 or Gran Turismo 4 in the battle for the hearts and minds of the casual gamer, but they do go some way to showing that there <em>is</em> a distribution channel for these simple flash games and, providing your game is good enough, that money <em>can</em> be made from them.</p> <p><em>How much</em> money? Well, that remains to be seen. Certainly not enough to retire and live the rest of your life with cocaine and champagne enemas. But enough to keep your games sustainable?</p> <p>Maybe.</p> <p>Like these flash games? Want to get some more examples? Do yourself a favour and check out <a href="http://www.gotoandplay.it/">gotoAndPlay.it</a></p> <hr> <h2 id="update">Update</h2> <p><a href="http://terranova.blogs.com/terra_nova/2005/03/burn_baby_burn.html#more">Ren Reynolds posts a rebuttal</a> to the GDC roundtable. His conclusions are similar to mine - for all of those who are bemoaning the death of innovation in games, there <em>are</em> other options.</p> Cookin' With Google → http://www.researchbuzz.org/cookin_with_google.shtml Wed, 16 Mar 2005 17:26:00 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/cookin-with-google/ <p>Neat way of using google to search for recipes from a list of ingredients</p> Wonderland: Burn The House Down → http://crystaltips.typepad.com/wonderland/2005/03/burn_the_house_.html Wed, 16 Mar 2005 14:11:00 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/wonderland-burn-the-house-down/ <p>GDC: Round-table debate about a video games industry without a &lsquo;studio&rsquo; system</p> Brandon Bird: Sketchbook → http://www.brandonbird.com/yubnub.html Wed, 16 Mar 2005 11:27:00 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/brandon-bird-sketchbook/ <p>&ldquo;Yub Nub&rdquo; painting - I want this on my wall</p> I Pirate Hollywood Black T-shirt → http://yque.com/ipirholblact.html Tue, 15 Mar 2005 16:32:00 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/i-pirate-hollywood-black-t-shirt/ <p>Sweet.</p> Random Nerdings https://lowbrowculture.com/post/random-nerdings/ Tue, 15 Mar 2005 11:00:16 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/random-nerdings/ <p>Too busy in work to find time to write anything of substance, so here&rsquo;s a quick list of the most nerdy things I&rsquo;ve been doing over the past couple of days</p> <ul> <li> <p><strong>Installed GeekTool</strong> After hearing so many people praise GeekTool, I finally installed it last week. Then I configured the MySQL access list on our RT database in work. Now I have a list of my open issues on my desktop - cool! I wonder if there&rsquo;s any (easy) way of colour-coding this list.</p> </li> <li> <p><strong>New DVD Player</strong> Dixons are selling a Philips DVP630 for a measly EUR99. This is a fantastic player that will play just about anything you throw at it (VCD, SVCD, MP3s, JPGs, DivX and DVDs). It comes locked to Region 2, but Amazon kindly provide a <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/tg/feature/-/548873/202-2718332-8751812#DVP630">guide to unlocking this player</a>.</p> </li> <li> <p><strong>GDC 2005</strong> Interesting things from GDC this year include</p> </li> <li> <p>A <a href="http://www.gametrailers.com/player.php?id=5130&amp;type;=mov">trailer for the new Zelda</a> (link goes to HD version), sporting a heavy Lord of the Rings influence.</p> </li> <li> <p>Some videos of <em><a href="http://www.gametrailers.com/player.php?id=5171&amp;type;=mov">Stubbs the Zombie in Rebel Without a Pulse</a></em></p> </li> <li> <p><a href="http://www.gamesarefun.com/news.php?newsid=4507">J Allard&rsquo;s keynote</a> about HD and the next Xbox</p> </li> <li> <p><a href="http://crystaltips.typepad.com/wonderland/2005/03/raphs_keynote.html">Ralph Koster&rsquo;s keynote</a> about &lsquo;fun&rsquo; in videogames</p> </li> <li> <p><a href="http://www.contact-center-today.com/ccttechbrief/story.xhtml?story_title=Next-Xbox-To-Keep-Money-Rolling-In&amp;story;_id=31126&amp;category;=ccttechbrief#story-start">Microsoft&rsquo;s announcement</a> of &ldquo;pay-for-download-able content&rdquo; on the next Xbox. Puerile armchair opinion: Fuck that.</p> </li> <li> <p><strong>Episode III</strong> Went to see the preview of Constantine over the weekend. I thought the film itself was a disgrace to the big-dumb-blockbuster name, but never mind that. During the trailers, they showed the trailer for Episode III. This trailer has me salivating, and seeing it on the big screen had me giddy for hours.</p> </li> </ul> MOXIE { blog } → http://blog.moxiecinema.com/ Mon, 14 Mar 2005 14:22:00 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/moxie-blog/ <p>The next logical step in the home cinema experience: building an entire cinema</p> Creating Passionate Users: What's in your wake? → http://headrush.typepad.com/creating_passionate_users/2005/03/whats_in_your_w.html Mon, 14 Mar 2005 12:58:00 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/creating-passionate-users-whats-in-your-wake/ <blockquote> <p>Whoever competes with the iPod has to compete with a lot more than Apple&rsquo;s device&ndash;it has to compete with this great wall of stuff riding in the iPod wake. And these things all make the iPod a lot more appealing and flexible.</p> </blockquote> 43 Folders: Remainders: Sick box, subject lines, phone hacks, and 6 months of 43F → http://www.43folders.com/2005/03/remainders_sick.html Mon, 14 Mar 2005 10:56:00 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/43-folders-remainders-sick-box-subject-lines-phone-hacks-and-6-months-of-43f/ <p>The always-effervescent Merlin Mann comes up with yet another clever productivity hack: using your phone&rsquo;s camera to keep a wishlist while on the move</p> kaboom - a short film by pes → http://www.eatpes.com/kaboom.html Mon, 14 Mar 2005 10:56:00 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/kaboom-a-short-film-by-pes/ <p>A stop-motion movie made of toys, matches, peanuts and christmas decorations</p> Amazon.co.uk: Make Your Philips DVD Player/Recorder Multi-region Capable → http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/tg/feature/-/548873/026-4852836-5573245#DVP630 Mon, 14 Mar 2005 09:21:00 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/amazoncouk-make-your-philips-dvd-playerrecorder-multi-region-capable/ <p>How to region-hack most Philips DVD players</p> Five applications I couldn't live without https://lowbrowculture.com/post/five-applications-i-couldnt-live-without/ Fri, 11 Mar 2005 15:58:58 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/five-applications-i-couldnt-live-without/ <p>Okay, so maybe the title of this post is just a little melodramatic. I could certainly live without them. In my fits of whimsy, I sometimes imagine a life where I got rid of <em>all</em> my software and <em>all</em> my computers and went to live in a cabin in the woods with a typewriter, only peeking my head out long enough to release some bone-crunchingly beautiful prose like <a href="http://anniedillard.com/">Annie Dillard</a> or something.</p> <p>Until that day, here&rsquo;s the five pieces of software I couldn&rsquo;t live without</p> <p>(In no order)</p> <h2 id="instikihttpwwwinstikiorg"><a href="http://www.instiki.org">Instiki</a></h2> <p>I don&rsquo;t like Word documents because they&rsquo;re mean and nasty and hard to access and I tend to get so bogged down in making my documents look pretty, I never get anything actually written. At the same time, I don&rsquo;t like text files because they&rsquo;re so plain and isolated and static. Yet I need some way to keep track of a lot of things.</p> <p>Enter Instiki.</p> <p>Just a small personal wiki site that lets you keep all of your documents together. It has all of the advantages of a full website such as links to other places and documents, and the ability to view it from anywhere but with more like an easier markup language (I am fluent in MarkDown) and an easier management interface.</p> <p>I use my Instiki to keep track of work projects, personal tasks (e.g. &ldquo;Move bank account&rdquo;) and various other notes that I want to keep in a local place, such as my personal &lsquo;wishlist&rsquo; of all the fancy stuff I want to buy myself.</p> <h2 id="quicksilverhttpquicksilverblacktreecom"><a href="http://quicksilver.blacktree.com">Quicksilver</a></h2> <p>Quicksilver is like a remote control for my Mac. It has cut the amount of time I spend doing noddy things like finding the application I want to launch or browsing to files to append a word to the end of them.</p> <p>And I&rsquo;m constantly finding out new cool things to do with Quicksilver. Browse over to Merlin Mann&rsquo;s <a href="http://www.43folders.com">43 folders</a> if you want some <em>real</em> Quicksilver evangelism.</p> <h2 id="synergyhttpsynergy2sourceforgenet"><a href="http://synergy2.sourceforge.net">Synergy</a></h2> <p>Like many people working in the IT community, I need to have a Windows machine on my desktop in work for all the proprietary applications that we use and that I can&rsquo;t get a Mac version of. Using Synergy, I am able to control both my PC and my Mac from the same keyboard and mouse. Without it, my desktop would be a mess of cables, keyboards and mice. With it, my desktop is empty and zen-like beautiful.</p> <h2 id="virtuehttpvirtuedesktopssourceforgenet-or-desktop-managerhttpwsmanagersourceforgenet"><a href="http://virtuedesktops.sourceforge.net/">Virtue</a> or <a href="http://wsmanager.sourceforge.net/">Desktop Manager</a></h2> <p>Coming from Linux, I learned the amount of joy that virtual desktops can bring. Now, it&rsquo;s hard for me to imagine working without them. You might as well ask me to work with one hand tied behind my back: they&rsquo;re <em>that</em> essential* to me (Microsoft has finally picked up on the importance of Virtual Desktops and included it as part of the &lsquo;Power Tools&rsquo; for Windows XP and then went on to try and <a href="http://yro.slashdot.org/yro/04/02/25/1346201.shtml">patent the idea</a>).</p> <p>Both Virtue and Desktop Manager are fine, free Virtual Desktop managers. I have yet to see someone fail to be impressed by Virtue&rsquo;s window-switching animations (if you&rsquo;ve seen Panther&rsquo;s <a href="http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/fastuserswitching/">fast user switching</a> in action then you know what I&rsquo;m talking about), but it doesn&rsquo;t seem to be written as well as Desktop Manager, so you will end up fighting with it a little bit more.</p> <p>But it&rsquo;s <em>so</em> pretty, it&rsquo;s almost worth it.</p> <h2 id="pheederhttpwwwpheedcompheeder"><a href="http://www.pheed.com/pheeder/">Pheeder</a></h2> <p>I&rsquo;ve tried a lot of RSS readers on the Mac, and until Pheeder, I wasn&rsquo;t blown away by any of them. They either try out some fancy interface tricks and end up looking just plain dumb, or else they just lack basic features (how can we have an RSS reader in 2005 without a &ldquo;Mark all as read&rdquo; button?!).</p> <p>Pheeder is by far the best RSS reader I&rsquo;ve found on the Mac.</p> <p>I love its simplicity and its power and even the elegant choice of colours and fonts. What I especially like is the ability to click on a feed name and get a one-page overview of all the articles in that feed. This way, when I&rsquo;m in a rush, I can scan over a feed quickly without lots of clicking.</p> <p>I only have two complaints. It <em>is</em> expensive, for what it is. At $25, it&rsquo;s roughly a quarter of the price of Panther but with only a fraction of the functionality. And I don&rsquo;t know how relevant it will be after Tiger launches with its <a href="http://www.apple.com/macosx/tiger/safari.html">built-in RSS support</a>.</p> <hr> <p>There was loads of other stuff that deserves a mention, so quick shouts to <a href="http://www.blender3d.org">blender</a>, <a href="http://xtralean.com/IW.html">ImageWell</a>, <a href="http://del.icio.us">del.icio.us</a> and <a href="http://www.irowan.com/romeo/">Romeo</a></p> Kevin Kelly -- Cool Tools → http://www.kk.org/cooltools/archives/000679.php Thu, 10 Mar 2005 17:24:00 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/kevin-kelly-cool-tools/ <p>Building a cheap whiteboard wall.</p> The Fine Art of Sampling https://lowbrowculture.com/post/the-fine-art-of-sampling/ Thu, 10 Mar 2005 16:49:28 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/the-fine-art-of-sampling/ <p>I still say that the bottom dropping out of advertising revenues at the end of the dot-com &lsquo;bubble&rsquo; was the best thing to ever happen to Wired Magazine. It gave them a kick up the ass and forced them to go back to producing material that was both relevant and interesting to their readers.</p> <p>For example, before christmas they gave away a CD with every copy of their magazine. The CD was filled with tracks from artists like David Byrne, the Beastie Boys and Le Tigre. Nothing unusual there - magazines give away CDs of music all the time. The major difference being that this was all music licensed under a <a href="http://www.creativecommons.org">Creative Commons</a> license. Titled &ldquo;<strong>The Wired CD &ndash; Rip. Mix. Sample. Mash. Share.</strong>&rdquo;, they (the artists and Wired) not only allowed people to do whatever they wanted with these tunes, they positively encouraged it. As part of this encouragement, Wired ran a competition where people would send in their mixes of the songs on this CD and the best ones would be put on <em>another</em> Wired cover CD, which they are going to title &ldquo;<strong>The Wired CD &ndash; Ripped. Mixed. Sampled. Mashed. Shared.</strong>&rdquo; (which is such a fantastic idea, it actually sends shivers down my spine).</p> <p>Well, the <a href="http://ccmixter.org/contests/wired/winners">winners were announced</a>, and some of them are really good. I&rsquo;ve got the original CD in my pc in work (although it barely touched, what with the amount of Philip Glass I end up playing during work) and it&rsquo;s impressive to listen to the amount of variation, epsecially when you consider that they&rsquo;re all coming from the same set of source tracks.</p> <p>A remarkable response to the &ldquo;sampling is not <em>creating</em>&rdquo; argument.</p> Star Wars: Republic Commando https://lowbrowculture.com/post/star-wars-republic-commando/ Tue, 08 Mar 2005 15:36:08 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/star-wars-republic-commando/ <p>I have a couple of confessions to make.</p> <p>The first one is easy: I didn&rsquo;t like Halo. I finished it and all, but that was mostly just because I wanted to see what all the fuss was about. The first couple of hours were exciting and new and the sense of adventure was enormous, but everything beyond that felt dull and monotonous. I couldn&rsquo;t wait for it to be over.</p> <p>Yet, for all its comparisons to Halo, I&rsquo;m enjoying <em>Star Wars: Republic Commando</em> immensely.</p> <p>This is mostly because of the Star Wars connection, I suppose. The thought of being a no-name clone in charge of a troop of no-name clones is slightly appealing. It&rsquo;s welcoming after years of Star Wars games where you play Some New Hero, set to single-handedly save the universe. And especially so seeing the clone troopers kick oh so much ass in the <em>Clone Wars</em> cartoon.</p> <p>But it&rsquo;s more than this. It addresses so many problems I have with these types of games, and this makes me love it beyond simple fanboyism.</p> <p>It plays like Halo. But a better Halo. Like Halo taking place in a familiar universe. Instead of running down a generic corridor blasting generic alien enemies, I&rsquo;m running down a corridor on a <em>Star Destroyer</em>, blasting characters I&rsquo;ve seen in movies. It&rsquo;s a minor, cosmetic difference, but one that provides enough of a hook to keep me entertained for hours.</p> <p>And the squad-based action enhances the differences. Makes it slightly better. I loved Full Spectrum Warrior. In my mind, the only way you could top FSW is by throwing it into the Star Wars universe and putting me in direct control of one of the guys. Just like Republic Commando.</p> <p>You&rsquo;re no longer one man against an empire - you&rsquo;ve got a bunch of squaddies behind you. And, when things get tough, in front of you too. At first it can feel a little unintuitive, giving orders in the heat of battle, but it as you grow more familiar with the controls, it becomes second nature, and you start taking a back seat in the action. You start dishing out orders and watching your men obey you completely.</p> <p>Which brings me to my other confession. This is a little more shameful, seeing as how I&rsquo;ve been playing video games for years: I can&rsquo;t stand losing lives in video games.</p> <p>I know that noone particularly likes this. It&rsquo;s a demeaning, yet integral part of videogames. But I can&rsquo;t <em>stand</em> it. If I start getting &lsquo;killed&rsquo; in a game I&rsquo;m playing, it takes something spectacular in the game to stop me turning it off and never playing it again.</p> <p>And this is another thing that Star Wars: Republic Commando addresses.</p> <p>As I said, I loved Full Spectrum Warrior. Mostly because of the forgiving way it dished out death. If one of your men died, you could carry him the rest of the way, to get him patched up at the nearest medical station. Not only did this help appease my particular problem, it also made the game feel more &lsquo;real&rsquo;; rather than presenting you with an overpowering &ldquo;GAME OVER (ps - you suck)&rdquo; screen, it let you continue on, slightly weakened. Never leave a man behind - isn&rsquo;t that what all those war films taught us? Republic Commando does something similar. When a comrade dies, you can &lsquo;revive&rsquo; him, providing him with a couple of bars of energy, enough to reach the next medical station. Likewise, when you die yourself, your visor blurs over in a red hue, and you can issue one last order to your men: &ldquo;Continue fighting, then come revive me&rdquo;, &ldquo;Revive me now&rdquo; or something else. I say &ldquo;Something else&rdquo; because I really haven&rsquo;t been paying much attention to any option other than &ldquo;Revive me now&rdquo;.</p> <p>There are a couple of complaints, of course. A few graphical glitches, for one. Why implement shadows at all, if you&rsquo;re only going to half-implement them? Your men cast shadows, moving platforms do not, making lift sequences slightly alarming. The shortness of the game is another. I&rsquo;ve played it for about a weekend-and-a-bit and I&rsquo;m apparently more than half way through the game already. On games that are dependent on story (Like Resident Evil 4), this is forgivable, but in an action-based FPS, this is just plain lazy.</p> <p>But then again, as <a href="http://www.i-c-o.net/">Ico</a> taught us, it&rsquo;s not the quality of the destination, it&rsquo;s the quality of the journey, right?</p> CBS News | GameSpeak: Jack Thompson | February 25, 2005 20:00:16 → http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/02/24/tech/gamecore/main676446.shtml Fri, 04 Mar 2005 18:56:00 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/cbs-news-gamespeak-jack-thompson-february-25-2005-200016/ <p>Jack Thompson on violent video games.</p> kaboom! a short film by pes → http://www.eatpes.com/kaboom.html Fri, 04 Mar 2005 16:49:19 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/kaboom-short-film-by-pes/ <p>A stop-motion movie made of toys, matches, peanuts and christmas decorations</p> Phonecam Wishlisting → http://www.43folders.com/2005/03/remainders_sick.html Fri, 04 Mar 2005 16:49:19 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/phonecam-wishlisting/ <p>The always-effervescent Merlin Mann comes up with yet another ingenious productivity hack: using your phone&rsquo;s camera to keep a wishlist while on the move.</p> ? by Ste Curran → http://www.thetriforce.com/ste/ Fri, 04 Mar 2005 16:42:00 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/by-ste-curran/ <p>Homepage of Redeye, Edge columnist</p> Happy 10th Birthday! https://lowbrowculture.com/post/happy-10th-birthday/ Fri, 04 Mar 2005 11:49:51 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/happy-10th-birthday/ <p>Yahoo is 10 years old this year, and is celebrating with a <a href="http://birthday.yahoo.com/netrospective/">Netrospective</a> - 100 moments from the past 10 years on the internet. For shits and giggles, they also put up their <a href="http://promo.yahoo.com/birthday10/incorporation/">front page from 10 years ago</a>. Like everyone else, I&rsquo;m sure, this is making me feel very, very old. I can remember when I first saw Yahoo like that. And yet, at the same time, it feels like it must have been very, very long ago - surely things weren&rsquo;t that shitty in 1995? Surely we&rsquo;ve always had flash and animated gifs, and <a href="http://www.perkigoth.com/home/kermit/stuff/thedancingjakob/index.php">Jakob Nielsen</a> telling us these things were bad?</p> <p>But this isn&rsquo;t the only 10-year birthday we&rsquo;ve got this year. Public Enemy&rsquo;s &lsquo;Fear of a Black Planet&rsquo; is 10 years old in July. And it still sounds fantastic.</p> <p>Happy Birthday, Fear of a Black Planet (and Yahoo).</p> Head in Vice → http://www.foliomag.com/index.php?id=396&backPID=392&tt_news=563 Tue, 01 Mar 2005 22:12:38 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/head-in-vice/ <p>Fascinating article about the business end of running Vice Magazine</p> Unhappy Birthday → http://www.unhappybirthday.com/ Tue, 01 Mar 2005 22:12:38 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/unhappy-birthday/ <p>Did you know the song &ldquo;<em>Happy Birthday</em>&rdquo; is copyrighted? Neither did I. At least now you party-poopers have a good excuse not to sing.</p> X vs XP → http://www.xvsxp.com Tue, 01 Mar 2005 18:09:24 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/x-vs-xp/ <p>As a recent Mac convert, I&rsquo;d like to throw some google-juice in the direction of X vs. XP, a well-researched and well-presented site comparing OS X and Windows XP. As well as presenting a modestly unbiased opinion, it&rsquo;s also amazing resource for learning about some of the things I&rsquo;ve been wrestling with on OS X, such as &ldquo;how do I tab into drop-down menus?&rdquo; (impossible to navigate <a href="http://www.xe.com">xe.com</a> without this ability).</p> War of the Worlds https://lowbrowculture.com/post/war-of-the-worlds/ Tue, 01 Mar 2005 16:28:46 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/war-of-the-worlds/ <p>This probably isn&rsquo;t a particularly popular opinion, but I&rsquo;ll state it anyway. I love Spielberg&rsquo;s movies. I think that they&rsquo;ve got a wonderful magical quality few directors have managed to recreate (although Shyamalan comes close). And besides, how could I not love the person responsible for <em>Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom</em>.</p> <p>And so I&rsquo;m tickled pink by the prospect of his remake of <a href="http://www.waroftheworlds.com">War of the Worlds</a>. If it&rsquo;s even half as good as Close Encounters of the Third Kind, I&rsquo;m still going to be blown away.</p> <p>But there&rsquo;s so much more going on. <a href="http://www.pendragonpictures.com">Pendragon Pictures</a> have been working on a more faithful, low-budget version of War of the Worlds. They recently made a &rsquo;theatrical trailer&rsquo; available on their website. This is the first time they&rsquo;ve revealed any of their effects. And oh.. oh dear. But regardless of the quality of the final picture, it will be a refreshing companion to Spielberg&rsquo;s blockbuster.</p> <p>But we&rsquo;re so lucky, there&rsquo;s still more. Jeff Wayne is working on a CGI version of his <a href="http://www.thewaroftheworlds.com/">Musical of War of the Worlds</a>, intended for a release in 2007. They recently released some animation tests of this movie - <a href="http://www.waroftheworldsonline.com/movies/clip.htm">clip one</a>, <a href="http://www.waroftheworldsonline.com/movies/clip2.htm">clip 2</a>. Being a huge fan of the musical and a 3D animation dork, I think this is the version I&rsquo;m looking to the most.</p> Free Software Magazine - Free issues of Free Software Magazine → http://www.freesoftwaremagazine.com/free_issues/ Tue, 01 Mar 2005 10:28:00 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/free-software-magazine-free-issues-of-free-software-magazine/ <p>Bunch of articles about Free Software - better written than Linux Journal</p> 200 worst-reviewed movies on Metacritic → http://www.metacritic.com/film/lowscores.shtml Thu, 17 Feb 2005 13:07:45 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/200-worst-reviewed-movies-on-metacritic/ <p>It&rsquo;s worrying to think how many of these I&rsquo;ve seen.<br> It&rsquo;s <em>terrifying</em> to think how many of these I <em>like</em>.</p> A9.com on The O.C. → http://www.waxy.org/archive/2005/01/29/a9com_on.shtml Thu, 17 Feb 2005 13:07:45 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/a9com-on-the-oc/ <p>Did amazon pay for the cringe-inducing &ldquo;A9.com&rdquo; mention on the O.C.?</p> Action Figures @ Kidrobot.com → http://www.kidrobot.com/index.html Thu, 17 Feb 2005 13:07:45 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/action-figures--kidrobotcom/ <p>In my dream house, every inch of space is covered in these</p> Milton Glazer on Design → http://av.adobe.com/studio/miltonglaser/miltonglaser.html Thu, 17 Feb 2005 13:07:45 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/milton-glazer-on-design/ <p>A beautiful short film about the designer of &ldquo;I love NY&rdquo;</p> Paris Hilton's Blackberry hacked, address book posted online → http://pad.au.com/~ms/book.html Thu, 17 Feb 2005 13:07:45 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/paris-hiltons-blackberry-hacked-address-book-posted-online/ <p>Fancy calling Pharrell?</p> Resistance is Futile → http://www.whatisdeepfried.com/zogg/zogg1.html Thu, 17 Feb 2005 13:07:45 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/resistance-is-futile/ <p>&ldquo;My little golden book about God&rdquo;, remixed.</p> Dead DSL https://lowbrowculture.com/post/dead-dsl/ Mon, 14 Feb 2005 12:51:02 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/dead-dsl/ <p>Our DSL has been on the fritz since Wednesday. This is probably a good thing, since it&rsquo;s giving me a good reason to ditch our current provider and take advantage of the <a href="http://www.smarttelecom.ie/products/broadband/">Smart Telecom Offer</a> of 2MB for EUR35/mon.</p> <p>Updates will probably be more sporadic than usual until we&rsquo;re back up and running.</p> Scribbling.net by Gina Trapani → http://scribbling.net/ Tue, 08 Feb 2005 18:00:00 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/scribblingnet-by-gina-trapani/ <p>Inspirational, prolific writer/coder/documentarian</p> MediaMan Central: Home → http://www.imediaman.com/home.html Wed, 02 Feb 2005 08:48:00 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/mediaman-central-home/ <p>Application for organising DVD/CD/game/book collections - nifty</p> The great game-movie divide https://lowbrowculture.com/post/the-great-game-movie-divide/ Tue, 01 Feb 2005 17:17:33 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/the-great-game-movie-divide/ <p>I don&rsquo;t know if it was out of morbid curiosity, or if it was simply because the trailer makes it look so cheesy, but I went to see <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0398712/">Assault on Precinct 13</a> over the weekend. At one point during the show, my companion turned to me and said &ldquo;It&rsquo;s like a cop <em>Counter-Strike</em>!&rdquo;. Which was pretty much spot-on. Games had been feeding off movies for so long that they&rsquo;ve gotten pretty good at copying the look and style of exactly this kind of film - the big, raucous, no-brainer, filled-with-explosions kind of film.</p> <p>When I got home, I came across an article claiming that <a href="http://www.worthplaying.com/article.php?sid=22818">Uwe Boll was working on a film of Counter-Strike</a> (which later <a href="http://www.gamespot.com/pc/action/counterstrikesource/news_6117482.html">turned out to be false</a>). My brief flash of panic prompted me to check the <a href="http://www.imdb.com">IMDB</a> to see what movies based on videogames we have to look forward to in the foreseeable future.</p> <p>The list isn&rsquo;t pretty.</p> <p>Alone in the Dark (2005)<br> Bloodrayne (2005)<br> Crazy Taxi (2005)<br> Deus Ex (2006)<br> Doom (2005)<br> Driver (2006)<br> Far Cry (2006)<br> Metroid (2006)<br> Mortal Kombat: Devastation (2005)<br> Silent Hill (2006)<br> Spy Hunter (2005)<br> Tekken (2006)</p> <p>As well as this, we have already had the mediocre Resident Evil: Apocapyse and the truly abysmal Alien Versus Predator.</p> <p>As I said before, games have been copying off Hollywood for years. Some of the first games were based on themes that were very popular around that time. The interstellar dogfighting of Star Wars came to life in Space Invaders. As games got more sophisticated, they began using other, slightly different films for their inspiration. Games such as Rolling Thunder imitated the spy movies of James Bond. Chase HQ came along roughly around the time cop &ldquo;buddy&rdquo; action-thrillers came into vogue. For a while, the videogame tie-in &ndash; invariably a platform/shooter-by-the-numbers &ndash; was an inevitable part of every movie&rsquo;s marketing strategy.</p> <p>But now things are different. It seems that now games are getting their movie tie-in. If we compare the business done by both the film and videogame versions of &ldquo;Chronicles of Riddick&rdquo;, it&rsquo;s hard to see which was the main feature and which was the tie-in (although, if were to use &lsquo;critical acclaim&rsquo; as our metric, there would be a clear winner).</p> <p>Some of these are absolutely dreadful ideas for movies, and really make me worry. Crazy Taxi? Doom? Driver? <em>Tekken</em>? But Deus Ex and Silent Hill on that list give me hope. And this Hope is further strengthened by the fact that Rogery Avery is set to direct Silent Hill. I&rsquo;ve been saying for the longest time that I&rsquo;ve been waiting for a movie to deliver the same kind of visceral scares provided by Silent Hill.</p> <p>For the most part, there&rsquo;s a hidden &lsquo;sophistication ratio&rsquo; when we look at games to movies. It goes like this: <code>sophistication of the movie: sophistication of game = a constant</code> This used to say that the more sophisticated a movie is, the more unsophisticated the game would be. Take, for example, the Mario Brothers movie - an extremely unsophisticated idea which the filmmakers ruined by trying to make it something it&rsquo;s not: sophisticated. But with this shift toward games being the dominant media, we&rsquo;re seeing that these very sophisticated games (Alone in the Dark, Resident Evil) are given extremely crude and unsophisticated movies.</p> <p>Having said all this, things are looking up, at least in the short term. I could probably sleep a whole lot better if I knew that Paul W. S. Anderson and Ube Boll had given up directing altogether, but until that day comes, I&rsquo;ll take a lot of comfort in knowing that games have become so sophisticated and compelling that they&rsquo;re beginning to surpass movies in the stories that they tell and the way in which they tell them.</p> Tracks and Ruby on Rails https://lowbrowculture.com/post/tracks-and-ruby-on-rails/ Mon, 24 Jan 2005 11:39:12 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/tracks-and-ruby-on-rails/ <p>After sitting in my del.icio.us inbox for a couple of weeks, I finally found the time to start playing about with <a href="http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/onlamp/2005/01/20/rails.html">Ruby on Rails</a>. I&rsquo;ve heard a lot of good things about Rails-based applications, and I&rsquo;ve started using them heavily (notable <a href="http://del.icio.us/THRILLHO">del.icio.us</a> and <a href="http://www.43things.com/people/view/THRILLHO">43 things</a>). However, the real reason I wanted to check out Rails was so I could understand But She&rsquo;s A Girl&rsquo;s <a href="http://www.rousette.org.uk/projects/">Tracks</a>.</p> <p>I first gave Tracks a go a couple of weeks ago, but found that it was missing too many things that I rely on from a task-list planner, such as an ability to view completed tasks on a day-to-day basis (essential for my morning meetings) and the ability to output the task list as an iCal feed (I use iCal to sync with my phone, which doubles as my PDA). I took a look at the source for Tracks, but having absolutely no knowledge of Ruby whatsoever, I couldn&rsquo;t really understand it (Where on earth is this being called from? Are all these files <em>really</em> necessary?), so immediately set about re-implementing it in PHP, the language I&rsquo;m more familiar with. I got bored with that project after a couple of hours.</p> <p>After reading the excellent O&rsquo;Reilly article (and David Allen&rsquo;s superb &ldquo;<a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0142000280/104-8927479-6039122">Getting Things Done</a>&rdquo;, whose methods Tracks seeks to enhance), I decided it was time to revisit the source of Tracks. Now it makes much more sense, and I&rsquo;ve already hacked together the &ldquo;report view&rdquo; that I needed, and I&rsquo;m working on the iCal exporter as we speak.</p> ONLamp.com: Rolling with Ruby on Rails → http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/onlamp/2005/01/20/rails.html Fri, 21 Jan 2005 18:38:00 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/onlampcom-rolling-with-ruby-on-rails/ <p>A quick-start guide to Ruby on Rails</p> Mac Mini https://lowbrowculture.com/post/mac-mini/ Mon, 17 Jan 2005 14:18:31 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/mac-mini/ <p>Poor Apple.</p> <p>There wasn&rsquo;t one thing mentioned at Macworld that wasn&rsquo;t already revealed on the internet already. By way of &lsquo;punishment&rsquo;, Apple decided not to show the webcast live, but rather only offer it after a couple of hours. This is completely understandable, since there were a couple of major announcements which had been completely ruined by over-zealous fans who have now crossed the line into breaking the law to find out what the announcements would be ahead of time.</p> <p>Having watched the Macworld speech, I&rsquo;m fully convinced that Apple are one of the few technology companies in the world that &ldquo;get it&rdquo;. I remember someone describing Tim O&rsquo;Reilly as a visionary, because since it takes 18 months to write and publish a book, he has to be constantly thinking &ldquo;What will people want to read about in 18 months time?&rdquo;. I think the same could be said of Apple - they are thinking ahead of time, to think &ldquo;What will people want to be doing with their computers in 18 months?&rdquo; rather than reacting to current fads.</p> <h2 id="introducing-the-mac-mini">Introducing the Mac Mini</h2> <p>I&rsquo;ve taken to using our G4 in work as my main workstation. Initially, I just wanted it because it looked neat and would finally make my desktop look classy. But recently, I&rsquo;ve fallen in love with the power and the flexibility it provides. To make matters worse for my bank account, I&rsquo;ve started toying with the idea of buying myself a Mac for home.</p> <p>Previously, the two offerings I could afford (eMac and iMac) have been, well, slightly out of my taste range. The previous generation of the iMac was beautiful, and I would gladly have bought one of those, but the current version hasn&rsquo;t blown me away.</p> <p>I don&rsquo;t think that my situation is that uncommon. Which is why the Mac Mini is the smartest move I&rsquo;ve ever seen Apple make.</p> <p>The Mac Mini retails for EUR519 (but you can get it for EUR378 if you know someone who works for Apple who will help you out with their massive 27% discount). Let&rsquo;s just think about this for a second: EUR519 for a powerful, small, quiet computer? Before Christmas, I paid over that for an iPod and iSkin for my girlfriend. An iPod with the exact same amount of storage! This alone is an amazing feat, but there&rsquo;s more.</p> <p>##Beauty is not caused. It is.</p> <p>No other technology makes people coo quite like Apple products. And not just engineers or techies either - ordinary people. My mom took a look at an iPod and understood the intrinsic value of the design that went into it. If <em>my mom</em> can appreciate the design and craftsmanship, that they can work so hard to create something that looks so simple, then you know they&rsquo;ve won out.</p> <p>And there&rsquo;s not a single person I&rsquo;ve spoken to that hasn&rsquo;t been absolutely <em>bowled over</em> by the Mac Mini.</p> <p>First, there&rsquo;s the size of the thing. I think Apple invented a new size rating: &ldquo;Bewilderingly tiny&rdquo;. Add to this Apple&rsquo;s traditional clean lines and uncluttered interface, and you&rsquo;ve got something to leave people impressed and design aficionados <em>breathless</em>.</p> <p>Add to this the power of that little box - more powerful than my main workstation, a silver G4.</p> <p>But the really amazing part is the versatility. At that kind of price range, it&rsquo;s become less a case of &ldquo;Can I really justify buying a Mac&rdquo; to &ldquo;Where in my life could I use this Mac I just bought?&rdquo;</p> <h2 id="a-mac-for-the-living-room-a-mac-for-the-kitchen">A Mac for the Living Room, a Mac for the kitchen&hellip;</h2> <p>Personally speaking, I&rsquo;m most interested in using the Mac Mini in the Living Room - as a Home Entertainment Centre, and &ndash; providing I can find the right kind of Firewire/USB TV-in card &ndash; PVR. And I find it hard to believe that Apple didn&rsquo;t have this use specifically in mind for the Mac Mini. The size comparisons are right: roughly around the same height as a video or DVD player.</p> <p>I had been thinking about doing something similar with my XBox, chipping it to allow it to run one of the many homebrew Media Centre solutions, which would allow it to play DVDs of any region, DivXs, all my MP3s and so on. My main reluctance to this comes because of two important factors:</p> <ol> <li><strong>I have real trouble with the idea of an XBox as anything other than a &ldquo;games station&rdquo;</strong> As much as Sony and Microsoft try to reposition their products as the all-in-one home entertainment solution, I have real trouble accepting this. The idea of navigating my files with a controller seems completely alien to me. This probably reveals more of my rapidly-oncoming middle-age than I&rsquo;d like.</li> <li><strong>The XBox is too damn noisy for anything other than playing games</strong></li> </ol> <p>Enter the Mac Mini.</p> <p>It&rsquo;s small, &ldquo;Whisper quiet&rdquo; and doesn&rsquo;t look out of place beside my video and DVD player, and offers an array of features unmatched by any of the other offerings.</p> <p>Oh, and it&rsquo;s a kick-ass computer too.</p> On the Nintendo DS https://lowbrowculture.com/post/on-the-nintendo-ds/ Thu, 30 Dec 2004 16:18:06 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/on-the-nintendo-ds/ <p>Okay, so maybe I was a tad harsh in my dismissal of the Nintendo DS. Both have been launched recently and of the two, the DS appears to be doing better. There are a couple of factors relating to this.</p> <p>First is that Sony have only launched the DS in Japan while Nintendo have launched in Japan and the US. When Nintendo started selling their DS in Japan, Sony &ndash; bold as you like &ndash; teased gamers by taking over Subway stations and having functioning PSPs presented behind reinforced plastic with armed guards. When Nintendo furiously churned out DSes for sale in the US, Sony sat on their Laurels and insisted that they were manufacturing 500,000 units, no more, no less. This number barely managed to cover all of the internet pre-orders, with retail units barely getting a slice of the action.</p> <p>Then of course, you have the battle of the launch titles. In this case, Nintendo have Sony licked. They launched with an update of their most successful and most celebrated titles to date, Mario 64, as well as numerous other first-party titles. To further pile on the pressure, they even resorted to giving out a &ldquo;demo cartridge&rdquo; of what was coming with the new Metroid Prime (which immediatley conjured memories of the <a href="http://www.toysrgus.com/index.php?action=disp_item&amp;item;_id=39696">Kenner Star Wars &ldquo;Early Bird&rdquo; certificate</a>). Sony could merely present people with a handful of games.</p> <p>Finally, there are the other factors, such as the much-reported battery status of the PSP. Apparently, despite all best promises, the PSP can still only manage roughly 45 minutes of battery power when playing Ridge Racers, whereas Nintendo with its years of experience of creating handheld gaming hardware, can squeeze something ridiculous out of the DS.</p> <p>Any or all of these could lead to keeping people away from the PSP.</p> <p>I recently had the opportunity to play with a DS brought back from the US. I had a mixed bag of first impressions. First was the aesthetics of the thing &ndash; it&rsquo;s big, and ugly. And I mean <em>really</em> big and <em>really</em> ugly. Close enough to two Gameboy Advances sellotaped together to make me want to open it quickly to find something to like. Opening it up, it feels plasticky, but the interface is nice. Starting up Metroid, I got to see what the touchscreen was all about. It works well in Metroid. It feels natural to move your thumb to the place you want to look. It also makes for some logical, intuitive menu options.</p> <p>But I really wanted to try out Mario 64 in it.</p> <p>Let me just say this&hellip; I play a <em>lot</em> of videogames. Right now, I&rsquo;m switching between four different games. In spite of this, or rather <em>because</em> of this, I rarely finish games. I finished Mario 64, and it remains the largest game I&rsquo;ve ever finished. This is because, more than any other game, Mario 64 was able to hold my attention for all the time it took for me to want to finish it. So the DS&rsquo;s Mario 64 had a lot to live up to.</p> <p>It&rsquo;s playful and interesting to use the touchscreen to control it, but ultimately frustrating. I immediately went swimming and found that this wasn&rsquo;t as obvious or as well-thought-out as the N64 version. Controlling Mario in general had an air of concentration about it, whereas with the N64 controller, it was something that came naturally. I didn&rsquo;t play much of Mario 64, but from what I saw, it seemed more frustrating than I would have liked.</p> <p>It might seem like I&rsquo;m still bad-mouthing the DS, and I&rsquo;m sorry if it comes across that way. There&rsquo;s a lot to like about the DS, and most impressively, the forthcoming titles look <strong>fun</strong>. Who couldn&rsquo;t love a game where you have to shout &ldquo;I LOVE YOU&rdquo; as loud as you can to win the level? (The microphone is another feature I&rsquo;m sure many games developers will have a lot of fun developing with). I&rsquo;ll buy one, because they&rsquo;re cheap and I have a special place in my heart for Nintendo games. I&rsquo;ll wait until its European release in March 2005.</p> <p>But I&rsquo;m importing my PSP.</p> PlayStation Portable https://lowbrowculture.com/post/playstation-portable/ Thu, 30 Dec 2004 15:28:57 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/playstation-portable/ <p><strong>Note: This was originally posted in my Livejournal, but should probably appear here as well</strong></p> <p>A lot has been said about the new Sony PSP since the launch was announced yesterday. So I thought I&rsquo;d throw my own hat into the ring here.</p> <p>I&rsquo;m thrilled to hear the final launch specs of the PSP. Sony have been pushing grown-up gaming since they entered the videogame market with the PlayStation. And they seem to have a firm understanding of what adults want from videogames. Compare this to Nintendo, whose new DS reeks of &ldquo;Well, uh.. we&rsquo;ve got a successful platform in the Gameboy Advance.. let&rsquo;s add another screen! And make it a touch screen! Who wouldn&rsquo;t want one of them? And uh.. uh.. ah, we&rsquo;ll just figure it out as we go along&rdquo;. [In fact, it would seem this feature was added purely to give Nintendo something to use as the cornerstone of their new &lsquo;adult&rsquo; marketing campaign - &ldquo;<a href="http://www.geedorah.com/img/upl/8df3b4b8_NDS.jpg">touching</a> <a href="http://www.cube-europe.com/movies/dscommercial01.wmv">is</a> <a href="http://www.cube-europe.com/newsgfx/nintendotouch.jpg">good</a>&rdquo; (which, quite frankly, is a little embarassing)].</p> <p>Adults want:</p> <ul> <li><strong>Something Pretty</strong> The PSP is an incredibly pretty piece of consumer technology. It&rsquo;s small, has sleek lines and stands out from all other handhelds on the market (although sometimes smacks of the Atari Lynx, depending on the light). Sony demonstrated the kind of peerage they&rsquo;re placing the PSP with in their decision to provide white headphones with the PSP.</li> <li><strong>Something Functional</strong> The PSP will be able to play games, music, and videos, as well as connect to wireless networks (whether you&rsquo;ll be able to browse the internet or collect email from it remains to be seen). On the music side, they had originally planned not to support .mp3 in favour of their own proprietary ATRAC3 format, but finally gave in to consumer pressure.</li> <li><strong>Something Entertaining</strong> Sony aren&rsquo;t taking any chances and have encouraged developers to port their biggest-selling Playstation games to the PSP. Within the first year, we will have titles from the following series on the PSP: <ul> <li>Burnout</li> <li>Bust-a-move</li> <li>Dynasty Warriors</li> <li>Formula 1</li> <li>Gran Turismo</li> <li>Metal Gear Solid</li> <li>Ridge Racer</li> <li>Tony Hawk Underground 2</li> <li>Wipeout</li> </ul> </li> </ul> <p>Each of these will be of a quality roughly equivalent to their PS2 counterparts.</p> <p>On a personal level, I&rsquo;m looking forward to the PSP for two reasons.</p> <p>First is the wireless connectivity. There was some debate as to whether or not this would make it into the final specs of the machine, and I&rsquo;m glad to see it has. This means that content can be downloaded directly to the machine, as we&rsquo;re beginning to see with XBox Live. It also provides the means for true opportunistic gaming. For example, say I&rsquo;m playing with a PSP on a bus, and I see that someone else is also playing with a PSP, we can instantly join our games and play against each other. A beautifully simple idea that, if you&rsquo;ll excuse the gushing hyperbole, could revolutionise the way the general public views multi-player games*.</p> <p>The second reason I&rsquo;m looking forward to the PSP stems from my sense of self-preservation. I live in a house of non-gamers who, I feel, sometimes resent my occasional gaming and accompanying misappropriation of the TV. There was once a threat that my XBox could go out the window if I didn&rsquo;t turn it off. A PSP could be the answer to this, or at least a happy medium - a non-intrusive way for me to play games without having to lock myself away in my room.</p> <p>Right now, the Japanese launch price is 20,790 yen (approximately EUR150). MCV are reporting that the European launch price could be around the EUR300 mark.</p> <p><em>Yes, I know the n-gage already has wireless gaming just like the PSP is proposing, but I have yet to meet one person who will even admit to wanting an n-gage, let alone meet someone who actually owns one. Compare this to everyone I&rsquo;ve spoken to saying how they&rsquo;re lusting after a PSP</em></p> EFF: The Patent Busting Project → http://www.eff.org/patent/ Wed, 29 Dec 2004 08:53:00 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/eff-the-patent-busting-project/ gapingvoid: how to be creative (book outline) → http://www.gapingvoid.com/Moveable_Type/archives/001207.html Wed, 29 Dec 2004 08:48:00 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/gapingvoid-how-to-be-creative-book-outline/ <p>Gapingvoid are writing a book on creativity! This is good news!</p> Recording Windows Media Streams https://lowbrowculture.com/post/recording-windows-media-streams/ Sun, 24 Oct 2004 11:09:20 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/recording-windows-media-streams/ <p>Yesterday, my housemate was on <a href="http://www.newstalk106.ie">Newstalk 106</a>, a national radio station, to talk about <a href="http://www.ladyfestdublin.org">Ladyfest Dublin</a>, which she&rsquo;s involved in. Being the naive-yet-helpful type, I offered to record this for her and mp3 it, so Ladyfest could offer it as a download on their website. In the process of doing this, I downloaded 16 different pieces of software, most of which were completely useless for the job I was trying to do. That&rsquo;s why I&rsquo;ve written this, to help anyone else trying to do something similar.</p> <p>By the way, if anyone has a simpler way, please let me know.</p> <h2 id="once-bitten-twice-shy">Once bitten, twice shy</h2> <p>My previous experience of mp3&rsquo;ing a radio show involved recording it to tape (yes, I still use tapes), connecting from the headphone jack on my stereo to the &rsquo;line in&rsquo; jack on my laptop, and recording that. Unfortunately, this resulted in a really crackly mp3, full of static. So I figured, this is the 21st Century, there has to be an easier way to do this.</p> <p>And being cheap, the easier way had better be free.</p> <h2 id="a-thoroughly-modern-convoluted-solution">A thoroughly modern, convoluted solution</h2> <p>Newstalk offer a Windows Media stream of their live broadcasts. I used the shareware <a href="http://www.xi-soft.com/default.htm">Net Transport</a> to record the stream. I believe the shareware version will only record 15 minutes of a stream, but I didn&rsquo;t check this out. Once it had recorded the stream, I exported it as a 2.14MB <em>.asf</em> file.</p> <p>Next, I used <a href="http://www.geocities.com/myasftools/">asftools</a> to create a .wav of the stream. However, the .wav it created was only 2.12MB, while the actual recording was approximately 14 minutes long. Clearly asftools uses some weird codec that, despite downloading 20MBs of codec packs, I just couldn&rsquo;t find. Their website wasn&rsquo;t much help either. It addressed the problems with the .wav files asftools creates, but suggests it&rsquo;s <em>&ldquo;a codec problem&rdquo;</em>. So I&rsquo;d have to find something else.</p> <p>After searching for a good hour or so, I finally stumbled across [http://www.dbpoweramp.com/](DB Power Amp Music Converter). This was able to read the busted wav, and export it as whatever I liked; a .wav or a .mp3. I was finally getting somewhere. Since I still had some editing to do on the source before I put it up as an mp3, I exported it as a &ldquo;proper&rdquo;, 145MB .wav.</p> <p>I opened the .wav file in <a href="http://audacity.sourceforge.net/">audacity</a> and from there, was able to trim off the useless bit I&rsquo;d recorded at the beginning. I also added a nice little fade-out, for good measure. Audacity was able to export this as either a .ogg or a .mp3 file. As much as my nerd side wanted to put this out as a .ogg file, my sensible side told me that we were going for as much cross-compatibility as possible, so I exported it as a 12MB .mp3 file.</p> <p>You can hear the mp3 on the <a href="http://www.ladyfestdublin.org">Ladyfest website</a></p> del.icio.us https://lowbrowculture.com/post/delicious/ Tue, 05 Oct 2004 07:45:17 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/delicious/ <p>For the past few months, I&rsquo;ve become increasingly fond of <a href="http://del.icio.us/">del.icio.us</a>. Plugged into any half-decent RSS reader (<a href="http://liferea.sourceforge.net/">liferea</a> being my RSS-reader of choice), it becomes an invaluable tool to help me stay on top of my game, exposing me to tools and advice I probably wouldn&rsquo;t normally have stumbled upon.</p> <p>But until recently, I never saw the point of signing up for an account. To me, it was a link exchange - whoop-di-doo. I don&rsquo;t really have enough to contribute to something like this, I don&rsquo;t tend to come across things by chance that other people would find interesting. Finally, in the depths of last night, I realised its true purpose and how I could help make it better whilst simultaneously scratching many of my own personal itches.</p> <p>When I browse around on the internet at home, there&rsquo;s a lot of stuff that I just don&rsquo;t have time to check out on anything but a &lsquo;high&rsquo; level. I&rsquo;m generally up until 1am, winding down by chewing email for a while and seeing what&rsquo;s happening in the world, but it&rsquo;s absolutely impossible for me to keep my concentration levels high for some of the things I come across. For instance, last night I came across a link that explains the <a href="http://www.holtuncensored.com/ten_mistakes.html">Ten Mistakes Writers Don&rsquo;t See (But Can Easily Fix When They Do)</a>, but it being almost 1am, I couldn&rsquo;t really digest the information. Since it&rsquo;s nigh-on impossible (or at least, a whole bunch of work) to synchronise my bookmarks list at home with my workstation in the office, I began the process of emailing the URL to myself, to check it when I got into work today.</p> <p>I stopped before hitting the &ldquo;send&rdquo; button as it finally dawned on me. I realised that I was completely ignoring the fact that I&rsquo;d just gotten this link from del.icio.us - it would always be there. If only some bright spark could come up with a way for me to keep a track of all the stuff I liked on <a href="http://del.icio.us/">del.icio.us</a> &ndash; one giant all-encompassing bookmark &ndash; where I wouldn&rsquo;t need to maintain a file on a number of seperate machines.</p> <p>But wait! Some bright spark already set this up! If I set up my own <a href="http://del.icio.us/">del.icio.us</a> account, I could add the link to it, and have it available no matter where it was. I&rsquo;m almost certainly pointing out the obvious to some of you here, but to me, it was like someone had finally removed the forest and I was able to say <em>&ldquo;Oh, there are the trees&rdquo;</em>.</p> <p>This also has a number of other knock-on effects. Now, when I want to show someone something cool I&rsquo;d seen that they might be interested, I don&rsquo;t have to go digging through all the various machines I use, I can just point them at my <a href="http://del.icio.us/">del.icio.us</a> account.</p> <p>It also has the added advantage of making my bookmarks infinitely sortable. In Firefox, I have a &ldquo;useful stuff&rdquo; folder, where I dump, well.. useful stuff. This is to stop me getting confused <em>&ldquo;hmm.. where is that useful linux drum sequencer program I found? Is it in &rsquo;linux&rsquo; or &lsquo;music&rsquo;?&rdquo;</em>. Now I can have it appear in a filter for &lsquo;useful&rsquo;, &rsquo;linux&rsquo; <em>and</em> &lsquo;sound&rsquo;.</p> <p>Like I said, this might all just sound like the most obvious thing in the world to you all, but I&rsquo;m glad I finally caught up.</p> Getting Things Done with Ecco https://lowbrowculture.com/post/getting-things-done-with-ecco/ Mon, 04 Oct 2004 07:52:15 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/getting-things-done-with-ecco/ <p>Inspired by Merlin Mann&rsquo;s amazing <a href="http://43folders.com">43 folders</a>, I&rsquo;ve recently become more and more obsessed with Getting Things Done. This is at least partly due to the fact that circumstances have changed, leaving me with an increased workload and the increased possibility of spreading myself too thin. Using the basic principles of Getting Things Done (or at least, the ones I can pick up from around the place, because it&rsquo;s absolutely impossible to get my hands on this book in Dublin), I&rsquo;ve managed to ensure that I&rsquo;m consistently more productive. And even times when I&rsquo;m not so productive, I&rsquo;m still completely focused on what needs to be done.</p> <p>To this end, I&rsquo;ve found some pieces of software very useful. First is the Vim Outliner (nice, but too basic for my needs - I feel as if I&rsquo;m wasting a small-but-significant amount of time wrestling with the software), then there&rsquo;s TomBoy (will be an indispensible piece of software (especially now that it&rsquo;s been hooked into Gnome&rsquo;s new finder-lite), but is still too early a release to be useful for me), and now finally, Ecco.</p> <p>I read about Ecco on various posts about Getting Things Done. People were saying that they still can&rsquo;t live without it, despite the fact that it hasn&rsquo;t been updated in enough years for it to fall into the &ldquo;ancient history&rdquo; category, in internet-years. I downloaded it and gave it a go, and found that it almost perfectly suited my needs.</p> <p>It manages to present the things I like about the Vim Outliner (the ability to &ldquo;outline&rdquo; my goals, obviously) in an well-structured way. You can easily throw a goal together, give it a &ldquo;todo&rdquo; date (which combines with its built-in calendar to give you a quick overview of your day&rsquo;s tasks) and easily mark things as done. Once something has been marked as done, it then moves into your &ldquo;completed tasks&rdquo; tab, so you can take it out of your TODO list.</p> <p>It could almost be the perfect piece of software for my needs.</p> <p>Almost.</p> <p>My setup here is strange. My primary workstation is a Debian Linux machine, but since a large part of my job includes supporting Windows clients, I also have a Windows 2000 machine on my desk. I have a monitor for each, and thanks to Synergy, I can control both using one keyboard (stolen from an old iMac, because I love the action of the keys) and mouse (a Logitech optical mouse). And this causes problems with Ecc</p> <p>Because Ecco is quite old, and isn&rsquo;t quite optimised for today&rsquo;s operating systems (and kick-ass TCP keyboard/mouse controllers), it barfs every so often. When I give it a date for the TODO, the mouse and keyboard go unresponsive for a couple of seconds. When I click somewhere I shouldn&rsquo;t, same deal. It&rsquo;s like Ecco prevents my Windows machine from accessing the network while it&rsquo;s performing some task. And perhaps that&rsquo;s the problem - a misconfiguration somewhere that&rsquo;s causing Ecco to try and access a network share or something.. I&rsquo;ll try to look into it.</p> <p>For now, it&rsquo;s a nasty problem that&rsquo;s driving me away from Ecco.</p> <p>Today, as a last resort (and maybe some over-optimism), I tried running Ecco on Linux using Wine. It went well, despite missing some of the features I liked about Ecco on Windows (like the ability to pull in highlighted text from <em>any</em> application), and I would have been happy to live with it, if it hadn&rsquo;t been for the fact that Ecco crashes each time I try to access the address book in Linux. Since my Inbox is my address book, I rarely use this feature. It&rsquo;s just knowing that simply clicking on that link would be enough to crash the application I&rsquo;d rely on most.</p> <p>Like Chinese Water Torture, it&rsquo;s enough to drive a man insane.</p> <p>If you want to try out Ecco, it&rsquo;s available for free download from <a href="http://www.compusol.org/ecco/">compusol</a></p> TomBoy https://lowbrowculture.com/post/tomboy/ Tue, 21 Sep 2004 16:23:43 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/tomboy/ <p>Following on from <a href="https://lowbrowculture.com/2004/09/21/43-folders.html">my previous post</a> about the principle of dorks <em>Getting Things Done</em> (and hoping, desperately hoping that this doesn&rsquo;t turn into yet another self-help website), comes <a href="http://www.beatniksoftware.com/tomboy/index.html">TomBoy</a>, a simple note-taking application that combines elements of post-it notes and a Wiki.</p> <p>Although this description belies the power underneath such an application. Simply highlight a portion of text, right-click, and you can create a new note about that particular piece of information.</p> <p>How well it will fare in the long term remains to be seen. Of all the proposed changes, the only one I can actually see being of any actual use to me would be the plugging into Evolution (even though I&rsquo;m edging more and more towards Thunderbird and Enigmail as my primary mail client &ndash; something I hope to touch on at a later date).</p> <p>For anyone that cares, TomBoy compiles cleanly on Debian Unstable providing you have the following packages:<br> <strong>gcc<br> libstdc++6-dev<br> g++-3.3<br> libgtk2.0-dev<br> libgtkspell-dev<br> make<br> mono-mcs</strong></p> 43 Folders https://lowbrowculture.com/post/43-folders/ Tue, 21 Sep 2004 11:02:55 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/43-folders/ <p>Listening to <a href="http://www.itconversations.com/shows/detail197.html">Tim O&rsquo;Reilly&rsquo;s talk on Alpha Geeks</a>, he mentions something that I found very interesting: he says he got started on his long, strange journey by simply documenting something that was largely an oral tradition - what it meant to be &lsquo;root&rsquo; on a Unix system. By simply <em>writing down</em> what had been passed on verbally from one admin to the next, he started the ball rolling on what has become one of the largest, most successful and best-respected tech publishing houses in the world.</p> <p>It&rsquo;s hard to read Merlin Mann&rsquo;s <a href="http://merlin.blogs.com/43folders/">43 folders</a> and not think of the same thing. Here, Merlin is simply <em>writing down</em> what others have taken for granted &ndash; their productivity habits &ndash; and sharing them with others. In most cases, people don&rsquo;t really appreciate just how effective their habits can be. Or perhaps they just don&rsquo;t see them as significant enough to share with others. Whatever the case, I can only voice my support for 43 folders (and Danny O&rsquo;Brien&rsquo;s slow-coming <a href="http://www.lifehacks.org/">life hacks</a>), and hope that my self-discipline allows at least some of these habits they are suggesting to seep into my daily routine.</p> <p>Right now, my routine in work is this:</p> <ul> <li>Each day, we have a team &lsquo;huddle&rsquo; which, as sexual as it sounds, is remarkably useful, we remind each other of what we were supposed to do yesterday, and announce our plans for today</li> <li>Once the huddle is over, I immediately open up <em>~/work/TODO.otl</em> in Vim</li> <li><em>.otl</em> files are Outline files, which work well with <a href="http://bike-nomad.com/vim/vimoutliner.html">the Vim Outliner</a>.</li> <li>I give each actionable item a topic by itself, and each sub-action gets another sub-topic</li> <li>I try to give each action at least one line of a description as to what is involved</li> <li>Once an action is completed, I update it with what was done (e.g. text from an email I sent, a snippet of code I wrote), and &lsquo;collapse&rsquo; that item. Because I&rsquo;ve set Vim to give &lsquo;collapsed&rsquo; items a different background, I can quickly scan over it and see what still needs to be done.</li> </ul> <p>Here&rsquo;s what an entry from last week looks like:</p> <p>`2004-09-14 Machines for Customer Conference | handed off to JohnB Asset Register for Eamon Service Pack 2 screenshots from Ouzo Mailman archives for Andrew | MHonArc: <a href="http://www.mhonarc.org/archive/html/">http://www.mhonarc.org/archive/html/</a> | Smart Archiver: <a href="http://smartarchiver.sourceforge.net/">http://smartarchiver.sourceforge.net/</a> | Mailman2rss: <a href="http://taint.org/mmrss/%60">http://taint.org/mmrss/`</a></p> <p>Within the Vim Outliner, this is displayed in a easy-to-follow, colour-coordinated format, and makes a lot more sense.</p> <p>This still needs a lot of work, but thanks to people like Merlin Mann and Danny O&rsquo;Brien actually <em>writing down</em> all these things most people take for granted, I&rsquo;m coming up with all sorts of new ideas as to how I can make myself more productive.</p> <hr> <p><strong>Update October 4th</strong></p> <p>Okay, so it&rsquo;s been a couple of weeks. And in those couple of weeks, I&rsquo;ve been playing about with a few different systems for Getting Things Done. Things like <a href="http://www.fuckcuntandbollocks.com/dorkus/index.php/archives/2004/09/21/tomboy/">TomBoy</a> and <a href="http://www.fuckcuntandbollocks.com/dorkus/index.php/archives/2004/09/21/tomboy/">Ecco</a> have both grabbed my attention in a big way (Ecco is so nice, I&rsquo;m thinking of writing a post about it). But still I keep coming back to my Vim Outliner.</p> <h2 id="what-ive-discovered">What I&rsquo;ve discovered</h2> <p>I really only started using Vim since I started my current job. Before then, I used nano, because I mainly wrote text instead of config files and large, unweildy shell scripts. So I&rsquo;m starting to discover and harness some of its power.</p> <h2 id="linking-files">Linking files</h2> <p>My TODO.otl still follows the same format (although I&rsquo;ve written a shell script to &ldquo;archive&rdquo; off the top few entries, so I&rsquo;m not left with a gigantic text file. However, I&rsquo;ve found that I can link to external files by wrapping them in square brackets. This has proved remarkably useful for larger projects, ones that go on for a while, with a set of tasks so long that I can&rsquo;t really keep importing them into my current day&rsquo;s worklist.</p> <p>So now, it looks something like this 2004-09-22 Finish Asset Register [AssetRegister.otl] Install laptop for John Doe [JohnDoeLaptop.otl] Remove machines from domain | use PHPLdapAdmin - http://xxxxx Investigate LDAP password policies</p> <p>To get to the external documents, I simply place the cursor between the square brackets and press Ctrl+], which opens it. Once inside the new external document, I put a [TODO.otl] at the top, so I&rsquo;ve got an easy route back to my TODO list. This way, I never really have to leave my task list.</p> Back to Debian https://lowbrowculture.com/post/back-to-debian/ Wed, 15 Sep 2004 04:57:14 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/back-to-debian/ <p>A couple of weeks ago, my main workstation went insane. I put this down to the fact that I was running Debian unstable, which made it, well&hellip; unstable. I&rsquo;d always had a lot of trouble with it. Occasionally, files would become corrupt (mostly apt&rsquo;s <em>status</em> file), or programs would randomly segfault. The most hilarious instance being where <code>fsck</code> segfaulted on startup. Finally, after putting it off for too long and an hour or two of repeated crashes, I decided to force a full <code>fsck</code>.</p> <p>I wish I hadn&rsquo;t.</p> <p>There were so many tragic errors. My <code>/bin</code> directory got wiped and replaced with a single shell script I&rsquo;d written myself. My <code>/home</code> directory also got wiped and replaced with a 415-bit text file.</p> <p>I wept and wept. And then went about the process of getting it back on-line.</p> <p>The reason I chose to run Debian Unstable as opposed to, say, Debian <em>Stable</em> is because I liked the better choice of packages. Debian Stable is stuck with Gnome 2.4, whereas Debian Unstable is up to Gnome 2.6 (2.7 if you include the stuff from Experimental). But not wanting to risk killing my machine again, I decided to look elsewhere. The first thing that came to mind was [fedora][1]. I grabbed the isos from bittorrent and started installing.</p> <p>Initially, I loved Fedora. Its crisp interface (much nicer than Debian thanks to the improvements in the Xorg that Fedora use) was very easy on the eyes, and the fact that everything just worked really scored big points with me. Between you and me, even the graphical boot screen made me go &ldquo;Ooh&rdquo;. For a while, I was pretty happy.</p> <p>Until, that is, I tried to get it working the way I was comfortable, with the software I like.</p> <p>It was then that I realised the simple beauty of Debian. For example, I compose my entries into this blog using BloGTK. To install it on Fedora was a matter of</p> <ul> <li>Fire up a web browser</li> <li>go to google</li> <li>search for <em>fedora blogtk</em></li> <li>check a few false-hits</li> <li>download the package</li> <li><em>rpm -Uvh fedora_package.rpm</em></li> <li>find out it was missing a few depencies</li> <li>go to google</li> <li>search for <em>fedora dependcyname</em></li> <li>download the package</li> <li>&hellip;</li> </ul> <p>Here&rsquo;s me installing BloGTK on Debian:</p> <pre tabindex="0"><code class="language-oasis:/home/johnke#" data-lang="oasis:/home/johnke#">Reading Package Lists... Done Building Dependency Tree... Done The following extra packages will be installed:   libzvt2.0-0 python-glade2 python-gnome2 python2.3-glade2 python2.3-gnome2   python2.3-pyorbit Recommended packages:   aspell The following NEW packages will be installed:   blogtk libzvt2.0-0 python-glade2 python-gnome2 python2.3-glade2   python2.3-gnome2 python2.3-pyorbit 0 upgraded, 7 newly installed, 0 to remove and 10 not upgraded. Need to get 477kB of archives. After unpacking 2048kB of additional disk space will be used. Do you want to continue? \[Y/n] y``` Do you see how simple that is? I read somewhere that Fedora has its own apt-alike, called Yum, but I disliked this intensely. I asked it to install a particular piece of software, something trivial and without too many dependencies, and I watched as the machine sat there for a good ten minutes, calculating its depencies. Clearly this would not do. So on Monday, I decided to switch back to Debian. This time, I swore I would be more careful, I would stay on _stable_ for as long as I could. I think I lasted an hour or two before I was upgrading to _unstable_. And almost immediately, I was back to where I began - my `apt` was crashing randomly, programs were segfaulting for no reason. I went home on Monday night an unhappy bunny. Yesterday, before I did anything else, I made sure I had all the latest packages, especially `e2fsprogs` and forced a full fsck on reboot with `shutdown -F now` It took a while (full fsck on a 120GB disk is about 10 minutes). But since then, I haven&#39;t had an ounce of trouble. Of course, I&#39;m touching wood with every part of me that isn&#39;t needed for working right now, but I&#39;m pretty hopeful about the stability of my _unstable_ box. I&#39;m not much for morals, but I&#39;d say that if there had to be a moral to this story, it would be: fsck regularly. Especially if you&#39;ve just upgraded from _stable_ to \_unstable. [1]: http://fedora.redhat.com/ </code></pre> Helpdesk Systems: Eventum https://lowbrowculture.com/post/helpdesk-systems-eventum/ Sun, 12 Sep 2004 12:21:18 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/helpdesk-systems-eventum/ <p>For the last two years, our IT helpdesk has been &ldquo;powerered&rdquo; by Zope&rsquo;s &lsquo;Tracker&rsquo; Product. I laughingly refer to it as &lsquo;powered&rsquo; because it&rsquo;s anything but. Right now, we&rsquo;ve managed to create an ad-hoc system based around Tracker but at the same which tries to avoid it at every step, because Tracker is just plain nasty.</p> <p>We&rsquo;re trying to make things better, so for the past couple of weeks, we&rsquo;ve been trying out a few different products, such as Footprints (good, fully-featured, very expensive) and Auscomp&rsquo;s IT Commander (cheap, bizarre feature-set). We still haven&rsquo;t had success finding something that&rsquo;s suited to our needs, but we&rsquo;re still looking.</p> <p>Since I had nothing better to do all weekend, I went looking for other replacement candidates. I stumbled across <a href="http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/other/eventum/index.html">eventum</a>. Eventum is currently in use by the boys in <a href="http://www.mysql.com/">MySQL AB</a> to handle their technical support. I liked the look of the screenshots, so I installed it on a linux machine at home and tried it out. Here&rsquo;s what I learned:</p> <ul> <li><strong>Very simple install</strong> Just unpack the .tar.gz file into a web-accessibly directory on a server with Apache and MySQL</li> <li><strong>Very fast</strong> It&rsquo;s doing a lot, but seems to be pulling the data out pretty quick. And the server I&rsquo;m running it on isn&rsquo;t beefy.</li> <li><strong>Intuitive workflow</strong> No faffing about trying to figure out how to do certain things.</li> <li><strong>Powerful report generator</strong> Provides many different views of your data, which is useful for say, weekly summaries.</li> <li><strong>Multiple projects</strong> Create a different eventum tracker for different tasks (IT Helpdesk, Mail Server Upgrade Project etc.)</li> <li><strong>Role-based accounts</strong> Unlike ITCommander, these roles are actually useful and tied into your account, so you&rsquo;re never confused as to what you can do.</li> <li><strong>Anonymous posting</strong> No need to sign in to report a problem.</li> <li><strong>Email integration</strong> Didn&rsquo;t get this working at home (because.. well.. I really don&rsquo;t have a mail server set up at home), but this is tied heavily into the issues. You have the option to notify the person who opened the issue at every change (and also change the list of people who get notified)</li> <li><strong>Time tracking</strong> Complete time-tracking integration for proper project management.</li> <li><strong>Phone call tracking</strong> There&rsquo;s an option to update an issue with details of phone calls you&rsquo;ve made/received regarding this issue. I really like this idea. No more (&ldquo;Hey, did you ring John Doe about buying that software?&rdquo;). This is also nicely tied into the time tracking system.</li> <li><strong>Easy to configure/tinker with</strong> It provides a powerful administration interface, but it&rsquo;s also written in really simple PHP. I was able to get my head around the code in an hour or so.</li> </ul> <p>Here are the things I didn&rsquo;t get to configure and play with, but sounded really bloody nifty from the INSTALL file:</p> <ul> <li><strong>Reminder System</strong> The reminder system was designed with the objective as serving as a safe net for issues that need attention.</li> <li><strong>Heartbeat Monitor</strong> The heartbeat monitor is a feature designed for the administrator that wants to be alerted whenever a common problem in Eventum is detected, like the database server not being available anymore.</li> <li><strong>Command-line interface</strong> The Eventum command-line interface allows you to access most of the features of the web interface straight from your command shell. From a personal perspective, this means I can easily automate many things without having to write some custom web-scraping script.</li> </ul> <p>Now, it&rsquo;s not all roses. Here are the problems I&rsquo;ve noticed:</p> <ul> <li><strong>Possible bugs</strong> When I go to close an issue, it will sometimes not budge, and look like it&rsquo;s not done anything. But it has, it just hasn&rsquo;t told me. Similarly, when I put in an anonymous issue, it didn&rsquo;t move. I hit submit five or six times, then finally checked the issue list, and there were five or six anonymous issues. Although this COULD just be the fact that I&rsquo;ve configured email integration without a working email setup. I&rsquo;ll have to check this out.</li> <li><strong>Very developer-centric</strong> Out of the box, it looks as if it&rsquo;s geared towards software developers rather than IT helpdesk. However, after an hour or so of changing options in the Admin interface, I managed to make it look and feel more like what we&rsquo;d need.</li> <li><strong>Open source project</strong> As an open-source project, you&rsquo;re pretty much on your own with very little documentation to guide you. Although there is an active <a href="http://lists.mysql.com/eventum-users">eventum-users mailing list</a>, which could be a pretty good source of support for.</li> </ul> Mini-hops https://lowbrowculture.com/post/mini-hops/ Thu, 09 Sep 2004 06:53:26 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/mini-hops/ <p>We&rsquo;re switching our network provider. Before we did, we decided to do some speed tests, to find out which was faster. We did this by pinging <a href="http://www.ireland.com">ireland.com</a>. Strangely, we found that our old provider was <em>faster</em>, in spite of the fact they&rsquo;re supposed to be a slower link, with antiquated technology.</p> <p>So, we dug about a bit more. Using our old provider:</p> <div class="highlight"><pre tabindex="0" style="color:#f8f8f2;background-color:#272822;-moz-tab-size:4;-o-tab-size:4;tab-size:4;"><code class="language-bash" data-lang="bash"><span style="display:flex;"><span><span style="color:#f92672">[</span>johnke@oasis johnke<span style="color:#f92672">]</span>$ traceroute www.ireland.com </span></span><span style="display:flex;"><span>traceroute to www.ireland.com <span style="color:#f92672">(</span>195.7.33.37<span style="color:#f92672">)</span>, <span style="color:#ae81ff">30</span> hops max, <span style="color:#ae81ff">38</span> byte packets </span></span><span style="display:flex;"><span> <span style="color:#ae81ff">1</span> www.ireland.com <span style="color:#f92672">(</span>195.7.33.37<span style="color:#f92672">)</span> 256.913 ms 4.886 ms 9.690 ms </span></span></code></pre></div><p>No wonder we it was faster. We&rsquo;re on the same subnet.</p> <p>Anyway, I was just amused by this. I&rsquo;ve never seen a one-hop traceroute to a major site before.</p> Wario Ware Inc. https://lowbrowculture.com/post/wario-ware-inc/ Tue, 07 Sep 2004 21:31:45 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/wario-ware-inc/ <p>Strip the flashy graphics, DTS surround sound and heavy production costs from most of today&rsquo;s best-selling video games. Strip them right down to their bare-bones essentials and what are you left with? A truly interesting game will manage to maintain its element of &ldquo;fun&rdquo; without these things. Nintendo understand this and this is why, pound for pound, they&rsquo;re producing the most fun of the next-generation giants.</p> <p><em>Wario Ware Inc.</em> is a perfect demonstration of this understanding. There are no flashy graphics. The few glimpses of 3D come in the form of static menu screens or non-interactive FMV. What they have produced is stripped-down, bare-bones fun in the form of 200 mini-games. Since most of the first video games were also stripped-down, bare-bones fun, Nintendo have decided to emulate this for their graphical style. Many of the mini-games achieve a visual aesthetic similar to classic Atari games. With a knowing grin, Nintendo acknowledge this, having you play all of these games through an on-screen GameBoy Advance.</p> <p>In keeping with the faux-GBA interface, this is perfect opportunity gaming. Waiting for a kettle to boil? No problem. Turn on your GameCube and bash about for a couple of minutes - if you can put it down, that is. As well as being opportunity gaming, it&rsquo;s also a perfect example of just-one-more-go gaming. You fly through the mini-games at such a furious rate that it&rsquo;s hard to put down. And as your gaming pride kicks in at being beaten by something so simple as glorified &ldquo;wack-a-mole&rdquo;, it becomes even more difficult to say no at the &ldquo;play again&rdquo; screen.</p> <p>Also entertaining is watching its effect on non-gamers. I live in a house of non-gamers, and each of my housemates&rsquo; reactions to the game has been the same:</p> <p>&ldquo;What&rsquo;s this?&rdquo;<br> &ldquo;Haha, this looks insane&rdquo;<br> &ldquo;Wow, they&rsquo;re really going for the old-school graphics&rdquo;</p> <p>At this point, I usually step out for a cup of coffee or something to keep me twitching like a ten-year old who ate too much sugar (the essential state of being for many of the mini-games) and come back in to find them playing my game.</p> Project Idea no. 5629 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/project-idea-no-5629/ Sun, 05 Sep 2004 12:16:25 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/project-idea-no-5629/ <p>Another idea for a project I may or may never get around to completing (or in this case, starting):</p> <ul> <li>list of configuration files/binaries to &lsquo;check&rsquo;</li> <li>in the case of text-based configuration files, read the file into the database</li> <li>nightly, check the files to see if they&rsquo;ve been modified (MD5sum)</li> <li>if the configuration file has been modified, <em>diff</em> it and the file already in the database</li> <li>put the output of <em>diff</em> into a database</li> </ul> <p>This would allow an admin quick and easy access to view any changes made to the configuration structure of their machine.</p> <h3 id="advantages-over-using-cvs-for-monitoring">Advantages over using CVS for monitoring</h3> <ul> <li>automated, no chance of &lsquo;forgetting&rsquo; to check a change into CVS</li> <li>non-intrusive</li> <li>easy to view changes</li> <li>easier configuration, easier to roll out onto multiple servers</li> <li>&ldquo;server roles&rdquo; automatically selecting default packages - eg &ldquo;Apache web server&rdquo; would automatically add /etc/apache/httpd.conf, /usr/sbin/httpd, etc.</li> <li>all done via a central database, eg <em>select samba_config from db_machinename;</em></li> </ul> <h3 id="update"><strong>update</strong></h3> <p>I&rsquo;ve been doing some more thinking about this. Here&rsquo;s one proposed database structure and what each column should store:</p> <blockquote> <p><em>db_machinename</em></p> <ul> <li>file_name <em>(name of the config file we&rsquo;re backing up)</em></li> <li>config_orig <em>(config file as it was originally)</em></li> <li>date_orig <em>(date the config file was read in)</em></li> <li>config_cur <em>(config file as it is today)</em></li> </ul> </blockquote> <blockquote> <p><em>db_machinename_diffs</em></p> <ul> <li>file_id <em>(id of the config file we&rsquo;re dealing with)</em></li> <li>diff_date <em>(date we took the diff)</em></li> <li>diff_text <em>(text of the actual diff)</em></li> </ul> </blockquote> LookOut 1.2 → http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=09b835ee-16e5-4961-91b8-2200ba31ea37&displaylang;=en Wed, 01 Sep 2004 14:24:29 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/lookout-12/ <p>It seems Microsoft has made LookOut available as a free download on their site. LookOut was a pretty fancy plugin for Outlook that made it possible to search a giant mailbox in a couple of seconds. Word on the street says that Microsoft bought LookOut to get at the search algorithm, which they intend to use on <a href="http://www.msn.com/">msn.com</a> to compete with <a href="http://www.google.com">google</a>.</p> 404 Cheat https://lowbrowculture.com/post/404-cheat/ Wed, 01 Sep 2004 13:09:56 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/404-cheat/ <p>When our CEO came to me and told me that I had two weeks to design and implement a new website, I knew I was in trouble. In the years since our site first went live, it had grown a lot of &lsquo;cruft&rsquo;, information that was now completely useless. I started by going to our head of marketing and discussing what didn&rsquo;t need to be transitioned across to the new website.</p> <p>Although the CEO was happy with the look of the new site and liked the way we&rsquo;d trimmed it down, he still insisted that all content be available. So I cheated a little.</p> <p>I moved the old website to another directory (called &lsquo;oldsite&rsquo;), and set up a new virtualhost for &lsquo;oldsite.ourdomain.com&rsquo;. I gave this its own 404 page saying &ldquo;Your page could not be found&rdquo;. In the new site, I also gave it a custom 404 page - actually, a PHP script, which would redirect to <em>oldsite.ourdomain.com</em></p> <p>So, someone requesting a document we hadn&rsquo;t transitioned to the new site:</p> <ul> <li> <p>browser requests <a href="http://www.ourdomain.com/somepage.html">http://www.ourdomain.com/somepage.html</a></p> </li> <li> <p>Server 404&rsquo;s, goes to custom 404.php page</p> </li> <li> <p>404.php redirects the request to <a href="http://oldsite.ourdomain.com/somepage.html">http://oldsite.ourdomain.com/somepage.html</a></p> </li> </ul> <p>It&rsquo;s a simple procedure, but one which saved my neck. In the hopes of saving someone else&rsquo;s neck, here&rsquo;s that simple 404.php page</p> <pre><code>&lt;?php $uri=getenv(&quot;REQUEST_URI&quot;); header(&quot;Location: http://oldsite.ourdomain.com$uri&quot;); echo $uri; ?&gt;</code></pre> Outlook Quotefix → http://home.in.tum.de/~jain/software/outlook-quotefix/ Wed, 01 Sep 2004 11:07:00 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/outlook-quotefix/ <p>Outlook Quotefix is a standalone module that &lsquo;fixes&rsquo; many of the problems people have with Outlook - specifically the way it handles quoting. Goodbye top-quoting! Goodbye shoddy line-breaks!</p> <p>From their site:</p> <blockquote> <p>Outlook-QuoteFix can modify MS Outlook&rsquo;s message composition windows on-the-fly to allow for correct quoting and to change the appearance of your plain-text replies and forwards in general: move your signature, use compressed indentation, customize your quote header, etc.</p> </blockquote> On Why We Don't Use Challenge-Response https://lowbrowculture.com/post/challenge-response-anti-spam-tools/ Tue, 31 Aug 2004 10:34:42 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/challenge-response-anti-spam-tools/ <p>I was recently sent an email from one of our users, evidently impressed by a challenge/response mechanism set up by one of our clients on their mail server (even more impressed by the client&rsquo;s claim that he received &ldquo;no spam, ever&rdquo;). He asked us why we didn&rsquo;t implement something like this.</p> <blockquote> <p>Hi Luke,</p> </blockquote> <blockquote> <p>We&rsquo;ve been keeping an eye on the challenge/response (C-R) debate for quite some time now. I remember we spent a good while debating over whether we should include it in our anti-spam arsenal. After a lot of consideration, I think we&rsquo;re going to leave it alone for now, and treat it as a &ldquo;last line of defense&rdquo;.</p> </blockquote> <blockquote> <p>A few of the reasons we are choosing not to roll out a C-R solution:</p> <ol> <li>Increases the amount of non-legitimate mail traffic. This is actually contrary to the goals of an anti-spam solution.</li> <li>Doesn&rsquo;t provide as much protection as you&rsquo;d think. I doubt Eric&rsquo;s claim of &ldquo;no junk mail ever&rdquo;, especially since we regularly get spam emails that are &lsquo;spoofed&rsquo; to be from @ourdomain.com addresses.</li> <li>Trivial to work around. Spammers, for all their misdeeds, are inventive, creative little sods. For example, there was a story recently about spammers getting around Yahoo&rsquo;s automated-account-creation-prevention tool. When you try to create a Yahoo account, you&rsquo;re given an image with a word on it, which is hard for machines to easily guess. So what the Spammers redirected this image onto their pornography sites. People joining these sites would type in the word they saw, and this would be fed directly into Yahoo. Sneaky, but impressively so.</li> <li>Any kind of automated response will just lead to the auto-responding address being added to the spammer&rsquo;s list of &ldquo;active&rdquo; emails. This results in more spam hitting the address.</li> <li>This, in turn, results in heavier burden on the system.</li> <li>Speaking of which, most spam comes from non-working or false email addresses. A C-R response to each of these could easily result in a DOS attack on our system.</li> </ol> </blockquote> <blockquote> <p>I could go on, but I think you should see by now that there&rsquo;s a lot to be said AGAINST C-R systems.</p> </blockquote> <blockquote> <p>However, one of the things we&rsquo;re keeping a very close eye on for our anti-spam toolkit is the idea of &lsquo;greylisting&rsquo; (<a href="https://www.greylisting.org">www.greylisting.org</a>). A brief rundown on the greylisting method:</p> <ul> <li>Unknown person (<a href="mailto:john.doe@unknowndomain.com">john.doe@unknowndomain.com</a>) sends an email to <a href="mailto:myaddress@ourdomain.com">myaddress@ourdomain.com</a></li> <li>ourdomain&rsquo;s mail server responds with &ldquo;oops, temporarily unavailable, try again in a minute&rdquo;</li> <li>ourdomain&rsquo;s mail server notes that it&rsquo;s got unknowndomain.com&rsquo;s mail server in its queue of mails</li> <li>if unknowndomain.com is a proper mail server, it will wait a couple of minutes and try again</li> <li>if unkowndomain.com is using spam software, it will just barf</li> <li>unknowndomain.com&rsquo;s mail server tries sending the mail again, ourdomain.com&rsquo;s mail server notes that it passed verification, and &ldquo;whitelists&rdquo; @unknowndomain.com</li> </ul> </blockquote> <blockquote> <p>It&rsquo;s like C-R, but without any of the nasty downsides I listed above. One thing I particularly like about this system is that it doesn&rsquo;t involve any human interaction. My Grandmother could email me and not get confused by the Challenge-Response mechanism.</p> </blockquote> <blockquote> <p>We&rsquo;ll probably be testing out greylisting on our secondary mail server soon, and if all goes well, we&rsquo;ll roll it out onto our primary mail server.</p> </blockquote> Open-Source groupware https://lowbrowculture.com/post/open-source-groupware/ Thu, 26 Aug 2004 13:01:50 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/open-source-groupware/ <p>Something that&rsquo;s come up quite a bit in work recently has been the idea that we need groupware. What we specifically need is:</p> <ol> <li>shared address book</li> <li>shared calendar</li> <li>shared mail directories</li> </ol> <p>The third of these, we&rsquo;ve managed to hack together using courier-imap. Unfortunately for us, most of our users are very reluctant to move away from POP3, so they&rsquo;re largely unaware of the availability of this really cool technology.</p> <p>The second of these, we&rsquo;ve&hellip; well&hellip; sort of managed to hack together. Using Outlook 2000/XP/2003&rsquo;s Free-Busy publishing tool, our users publish to a shared folder which they can all read from. I even wrote a nifty little hack for our &lsquo;resources&rsquo; (meeting room, projector, etc.). But one of the limitations of the free-busy information is that it doesn&rsquo;t list the <em>reason</em> for being busy. It wil just say &ldquo;John is busy from 10am until 11pm tomorrow&rdquo;, not &ldquo;John is in a meeting with Jane and Bob from 10am until 11pm in Meeting Room 1&rdquo;. So again, this gets underused.</p> <p>Playing about with <a href="http://www.mozilla.org/projects/calendar/">Mozilla&rsquo;s Calendar</a>, we have a tool that does what we want, and allows us to share calendars amongst a team. And it does it all using open standards, so we can get in there and hack around it, if we want. Unfortunately, Sunbird (the codename for the calendar software) is still at a very early stage (0.0.2?), and is barely-usable. Definitely not usable within a production environment.</p> <p>Shared address books? Nightmare. We have a company-wide address book, with all our email addresses in LDAP (one of these days I&rsquo;ll get around to integrating this with Sendmail, I promise). But we can&rsquo;t add to this remotely. Perhaps we can, and I just haven&rsquo;t figured out how yet. Either way, we need something better.</p> <p>Yesterday, a crazy thought entered my head. Bear with me, because it sounds a little &lsquo;out there&rsquo;. Would it be possible to remove Outlook completely, and have everyone work through a &rsquo;thin-client&rsquo; (read: browser-based) solution? We already provide a much-loved web interface to mail (using the <a href="http://www.horde.org">horde application framework</a>), so would it be possible to extend this some more? Horde offer a module that lets people browse CVS, which I&rsquo;m sure will appeal to developers. It also allows them to set up filtering rules and vacation notices and, and, and&hellip;</p> <p>Well, this is useless. Of course <em>I</em> can see the advantages of it. I&rsquo;m already sold on it. Based on their reluctance to give up POP3, I&rsquo;m worried about how reluctant they&rsquo;d be to give up their Outlook. People get remarkably attached to their email.</p> Free X Server for Windows → http://www.pexus.com/ Thu, 26 Aug 2004 09:11:45 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/link/free-x-server-for-windows/ <p><a href="http://www.pexus.com/">X-Deep/32</a> has been released as a freeware X Server for windows since its parent company (pexus) went into voluntary dissolution.</p> <p>As someone who&rsquo;s spent months trying to find a decent free X server, and each time had to settle for the giant cygwin/X11, all I can say is: hurrah!</p> First Post! https://lowbrowculture.com/post/first-post/ Thu, 26 Aug 2004 07:32:34 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/post/first-post/ <p>Finally got around to watching Danny O&rsquo;Brien&rsquo;s Life Hacks talk from NotCon (<a href="http://www.ejhp.net/notcon/#video">video</a>). This talk is essentially a &ldquo;<a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0762408332/qid=1093523677/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i1_xgl/026-1934737-3194017">Seven Habits of Highly Effective People</a>&rdquo; for dorks - Habits of Highly Prolific Geeks. It&rsquo;s terrifying how many of these habits I seem to have formed myself, and yet am nowhere near being what you would call &lsquo;prolific&rsquo; (I sometimes stick a mirror under my nose to make sure I haven&rsquo;t died).</p> <p>One of the figures that stood out for me from this talk was that &ldquo;7% of all posts to livejournal are marked as &lsquo;private&rsquo;&rdquo;. These are the posts that are visible to noone but the poster. I use these a lot on <a href="http://www.livejournal.com/~mekon">my own livejournal</a> to keep track of important memories, or even nuggets of code that I might use a lot (the most-used being <em>wget -r -l1 -H -t1 -nd -N -np -A.mp3 <a href="http://www.site.com">http://www.site.com</a></em>). There are also countless nerd-related thoughts that run through my head on any given day that I&rsquo;d love to expand upon, but don&rsquo;t want to do it through livejournal. I&rsquo;ve got everyone thinking I&rsquo;m some kind of puerile semi-moron, and I like that. I wouldn&rsquo;t want to spoil that by posting something that&rsquo;s actually slightly useful.</p> <p>So that&rsquo;s the purpose of this blog. Hopefully I won&rsquo;t get bored too quickly.</p> Sophia Coppola https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/sophia-coppola/ Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000 https://lowbrowculture.com/picture/sophia-coppola/ <p><img src="https://lowbrowculture.com/pictures/tumblr/11649765997.jpg" alt=""></p> <p>from <a href="http://fuckyeahdirectors.tumblr.com/post/11631642032">fuckyeahdirectors</a></p>