THS S TH NWS

Posted in misc on October 26th, 2010 by RevStu

Are we all reading i? The hideously-named new newspaper from the publishers of the Independent is the first new "quality" paper released in the UK for 25 years, and it's got a lot of promise. The basic idea seems to be a non-tabloid Metro, cutting straight to the chase for easy quick reading. Even the crossword only has five clues.

It's certainly a great premise – currently the only newspaper I buy is the Guardian on Saturday, because it usually takes me until halfway through Tuesday to finish reading it all. How anyone manages to get through more than one Sunday broadsheet is completely beyond me.

Anyway, I'm just reading the first issue of i now. Why not join me by picking one up on your way home from work or whatever? Then we can all get together later and talk about it behind its back.

A bright new day

Posted in awesomeness, travel on October 25th, 2010 by RevStu

With the end of British Summer Time almost upon us, the much-delayed new Grand Pier at Weston-super-Mare only just beat the clock when it opened this weekend. You don't have to rush to visit it – unlike the old one, this one is open 364 days a year – but WoSblog got there when the paint was still wet in order to enjoy the carnival atmosphere to the max.

There are lots of official pictures of the opening and the inside here, but WoSblog's considered and expert view is that Weston now has the finest pier in the British Isles. And I'm not just saying that because I won a brand-new iPod Shuffle out of a crane machine.

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$100,000 Name That Tune Challenge

Posted in haylp!, music on October 18th, 2010 by RevStu

WoSblog needs your help, chums. I happened to be in Top Man earlier today, and heard a rather spiffy tune being played over the tannoy. However, there was nobody in sight to ask what it was, plus I didn't want to draw attention to the fact that I was in Top Man. 

I scribbled down a few of the lyrics from the end of the song, which was a reverby fuzz-pop number in the vein of the Raveonettes (or maybe The Enemy at a pinch), in which a male singer repeated the line:

"Oh, when I die, when I disappear, leave my troubles behind"

But surprisingly a Google lyrics search has failed to turn up anything even remotely close. Sound familiar to anyone? Get the right answer and you could win $100,000! Although it would have to be a heck of a coincidence.

More fun with chairs

Posted in chairs, games on October 17th, 2010 by RevStu

Someone's not really grasping the concept of "enlarge" here.

Also, what's going on with that controller in the background? Are they trying to convey the message that this £260 plastic chair is roughly the same size as some 3rd-party knockoff joypad? (Since the shadowing indicates that the joypad is clearly further away.) Man, I hope they've got Benchmark Reviews on board if they want to sell this one.

Other formats are available #2

Posted in games, ps3, stupidity on October 16th, 2010 by RevStu

To cut a long story short, I recently undertook some manual labour involving bricks in order to try to get some more use out of my Playstation 3.

Having done so, I noticed that the flawed but inventive iPhone game Space Invaders Infinity Gene had been released on PSN (and XBLA) in what appeared to be quite an interesting remake, moving the game into 3D and doing some new stuff.

A check revealed that I had £7.04 left in my PSN "wallet" from previous activities and, noting in the news story I'd read on a US website that the game cost $9.99, I decided it would be an ideal first purchase in my PS3's new life chapter. Here's how I got on.

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Other formats are available

Posted in awesomeness, games, x360 on October 13th, 2010 by RevStu

You'll probably have noticed that things have been pretty quiet on WoSblog for the last week or so, and alert viewers will almost certainly have deduced that it's due to the disproportionate amount of effort currently being put into Podgamer. We're hoping to spread the work more widely on that very soon now, so hopefully there'll be more time for WoSblog again shortly.

In the meantime, and for those foolish viewers who still haven't plugged into the zeitgeist by getting themselves an iPhone 4 or an iPod Touch (available, as ever, for a scarcely-believable-but-lordy-me-it's-actually-true £6 to WoS subscribers), there's Crossfire.

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Alan Moore knows the score

Posted in awesomeness, music on October 11th, 2010 by RevStu

Lots of people are aware that the celebrated Northampton comics auteur Alan Moore penned several volumes (recently reprinted) of Swamp Thing comic for DC in the mid-1980s, giving the strip a radical new direction and a powerful environmental message.

Fewer people know the secret origins of the author's connection to and inspiration for his controversial take on the character, which he first explored a few years earlier via the medium of interpretive dance as part of a protest group making a statement against the overuse of dangerous pesticides.


The footage has only recently been found and translated. He kept his beard a lot tidier in the early days.

 

(Original discovery via WoSblog's top pals at Rock, Paper, Shotgun, who amateurishly failed to recognise the cultural significance of what they thought was just a funny video of a Czechoslovakian banjo band.)

This is how I feel

Posted in misc on October 7th, 2010 by RevStu

http://www.theonion.com/articles/nobel-prize-awarded-to-man-who-helped-humans-have,18219/

The ongoing decline of modern standards

Posted in pictures on October 6th, 2010 by RevStu

IKEA Bristol, last week. There were dozens of these everywhere.

What with, a fucking spellchecker?

I am not happy

Posted in misc on October 5th, 2010 by RevStu

That there are still only 24 hours per day. It's proving highly inconvenient.

For this gift I feel blessed

Posted in awesomeness, music on October 3rd, 2010 by RevStu

I already tweeted this, and I'm doubtless the last person on Earth to have heard of it, but it still really needs to be seen by all people who are alive.

I have things to do today, but Go Home Productions have made it very hard to get away from the computer.

Now the fishes they all curse me

Posted in music on October 2nd, 2010 by RevStu

There's little I like more than a good ice-cold hate ballad (Radiohead's Exit Music (For A Film) gives me the absolute shivers), and while I was pottering around hammering nails into stuff today the iPod Nano plugged into my stereo in permanent Shuffle mode threw up one of my favourites that I hadn't heard in donkey's years.

Knife In The Water (named after a Roman Polanski film) from Austin, Texas are one of those bands who slipped posterity's clutches. None of their 20th-century work appears on Spotify, and there's nothing by the band themselves on YouTube either.

The video above is a pretty good amateur cover, slightly slowed down from the original (and with a word wrong) but if anything even more chilling because it doesn't take much imagination to see the person singing it as a real-life vengeful crime-of-passion killer.

Or maybe that's just me.

Some sort of landmark

Posted in misc, navel-gazing on October 2nd, 2010 by RevStu

Podgamer is go!

Posted in awesomeness, games, iOS on October 1st, 2010 by RevStu

Sorry this took so long, iPod fans. We wanted to make it pretty.

It's the iThing gaming website that isn't rubbish! Check it out, is what you should do.