Copy Protection Can Go Fuck Itself

So I go to watch a movie on my laptop...why the fuck does some copy protection error come up every 5 minutes?

I've gone out and bought the fucking DVD, go to watch it, with no intention of illegally copying it or anything like that, but the dipshits who try and stop people doing that make sure its impossible for me to actually get more than 50 minutes into the film, after having had to restart it 5 times before that.

Thanks, cunts.

The Eurovision Friends Contest.

Just in case you needed any more proof that the United Kingdom is shit, the Eurovision song contest sets out to prove that indeed we can't sing, have no friends and no-one wants to vote for us, except maybe Ireland, and Malta.

But that's probably some kind of insult that we'll work out later...

Still, millions of people tune in to watch all the shit acts from all the shit countries of Europe perform, and some even sit through 39 countries worth of voting.

"Hello Oslo, Some place you've never fucking heard of calling. I'm going to say hello in our shitty language...'Jhgdguy'. We loved (hated) the show, and all the acts were great (shit). We give our 8 points to (the country next to us), our 10 points to (a country that helped us in a war) and our 12 points go to (the country that's going to fucking nuke us if we don't vote for them).

Now, as far as ways to fix this voting system go...a panel of judges has been suggested, as a solution. The drawing in this link illustrates how that would go.

I'll just leave you to think about that...

Album Review - Leo RaDIEv - Radiev

Album - Leo RaDIEV

Artist - Radiev

Genre - Electronic/Synth

Year - 2006

Admittedly, I had no idea what this CD was going to be like, before my first listen. I bought it from a charity shop, for £1 because it looked like it'd be the sort of thing I'd like. Analog Synths, and Drums etc. Some nice electro vibes, i thought.

At first, I thought the CD was having a read error, in a very drastic way, because the first 10 minutes of the CD are basically just noise, with a bit of drumming. The first recognisable sign of actual synth music starts about 14 minutes, into the the 16 minutes in total, of track one - Die Part I. Having said that, dischordant synth notes and a bit of drumming is nowhere near perfection.

Perhaps then, you'll be hopeful that Die, Part II, another 13 minutes of whatever is to come, is a little less...noise. Noise being unwanted sound of course. Well, I can't say I got my wish but it wasn't quite as bad as Die Part I, I think...its pretty hard to judge actually...

So, swiftly onto track 3 of 4...the strangely titled Theremin_ ? There is no actual theremin, in the piece, but it starts more musically than the last 2 tracks, with a sort of melancholy ostinato, and some slow rhythmic drumming, but it doesn't really get past this. I mean, it doesn't develop the theme as such, just...turns to noise and drumming, again, with a little garbled talking to break up the flow of the music. The track ends with a sort of speech, but it seems a little pretentious, for this sort of low key, small band work.

So, onto track 4, talk talk!!, the final track. And finally a promising start, lively drumming, a relatively musical pattern on the synths, although again, a short repetitive pattern. Talking and noise seem to be evident again. And it goes downhill from the word go, really.

So, what to make of this album? Well, it says in the album notes that it was recorded and mixed live, in one day by the band. There are 3 members, and from my research i found them to be young Poles.

Well, there are two approaches I could take to rating this album. I could say that the band need to stop being pretentious cunts, and remember that real music needs much more development than they have on the album, and that if you want people to listen to your album, spend more than a day on it.

or

I could say that their album is an aquired taste, which i have not yet aquired.

However, I'm going to go with the former, because for the latter to be true, the music would need more definition. A sad fact is that the human ear likes catchy music, and I tell you, if you find yourself singing melodies from this album, you'd have to be fucking mad. This album is the one to get out when you want to annoy the neighbours, or if you're trying to prove to people that they really don't like ALL types of music, as they would have you believe.

Album Score - 1.3/10

Best Songs - Well I'd not reccommend you listen to the album at all, its a waste of 51 minutes, but if you felt compelled, I'd say the beginning of Theremin_ ? and the beginning of talk talk!! are vaguely bearable.

NayNay

DVD's, what the fuck is up with you?

So, its a nice Friday evening, and I want a crazy Horror movie to indulge into, so I whack on 28 days later, something from my all too small DVD collection, and suddenly, I have something to rant about.

I put the DVD that I had bought, legally, with my own money into my PS2 (its a dvd player too you know) and on comes a message, telling me about DVD pirating. It lasts about a minute, and then there's about 10 minutes of trailers for films, coming to DVD and cinema in the 'future', or the past, as it will be now.

My question is, why the fuck should I be made to sit through all the DVD pirating messages and trailers, when people who have pirated DVD's just fucking skip them? I mean where's the fairness in that? There's gotta be some reward for people who do things legally surely?

But just like many things in the present day, its the people who do things right that get screwed over, because they can't catch the fuckers who do it wrong.

Another DVD-related example of this, is regions. DVD regions are apparently 'necessary' to stop inter-contintental DVD pirating, due to films having different release dates in different countries.

Usually shops only sell DVD's compatible with the region you're in. Fine.

The other week, I came across a shop, which sold Region 1 DVD's. Region 1 (as I now know) is North America/Canada, however, after a moment of confusion, I decided that a shop, in the UK wouldn't sell a disk which couldn't be played here...

So I looked up which region was which as soon as I got home...found out I was wrong, so I return the DVD to the shop (a week later), and ask the man in there why the fuck they're selling disks which can only be played in America.

He answers "You can get multi-region DVD players", so i said "No, you can get multi region DVD's, region 0, but not DVD players", we agreed to disagree and I got my money back.

Went home and checked....apparently its illegal to modify your DVD player into an all region one, possible as it is.

But you know, I wouldn't have to worry about this if people didn't fucking try and get around the law. Who does the region law punish? Not the people who originally got around the law, but the people who are trying to buy fucking DVD's to watch, fucking LEGALLY.

Bullshit.

NayNay

First Album Review - Queen - Queen

Album Title - Queen

Album Artist - Queen

Release Date - 13th July 1973

Genre - Rock

The starting place, for anyone wishing to trace Queen a little further than just their greatest hits, should of course be, their first ever album - Queen. However such fans should also be aware that there are no songs, from the greatest hits on the entire album.

Is this a problem? Well, if you're used to only the polished Queen you've seen on the Greatest Hits, then perhaps, but if you're willing to open your mind and hear where it all began, then no, not at all.

The album opener, 'Keep Yourself Alive' is one of (if not) the best song(s) on the album, and was in fact featured on the American Versions of Greatest Hits I, and this doesn't surprise me much, as it sounds a lot like Queen's style, maybe a little less polished than later songs, but still a stellar track.

Now, I won't talk about ALL of the tracks, but its worth mentioning that a lot of songs on this album are quite theatrical, the immeasurably entertaining 'Great King Rat' is quite a tale to behold, and another of my favourites from the album, and the theatrical themes are seen throughout the rest of the album in tracks such as 'My Fairy King', 'Liar' and 'Jesus'.

The two recognisably slower tracks on the album, 'The Night Goes Down' and 'Doing Alright', mentioned in order of my preference, are well pulled off, with some nice stylistic changes to keep the listeners attention.

My only two complaints of this album are;

The song 'Modern Times Rock and Roll' - A song written and sung, by Roger Taylor, doesn't really fit the album's style at all, and almost stops it from flowing as well as it could, even mixed well in between 'The Night Comes Down', and 'Jesus' as it is,

and the fact that the last track is an instrumental demo of 'Seven Seas Of Rhye'. I'm not sure what it was meant to achieve, even when it was originally released...Perhaps it was to leave the listener wanting more of Queen and as an incentive to purchase Queen II, which featured the actual song, but listening nowadays, I HAVE to listen to 'Seven Seas Of Rhye' after the demo, because it just doesn't quench my thirst.

Overall Album Score - 8.4/10

Best Songs - Keep Yourself Alive, Great King Rat, The Night Comes Down

How many Pokemon do I have to catch again?

Anybody who has played a video game for more than five minutes knows what their favourite series of games are. It can be the Zelda series, Pokemon, Halo, but it dosent matter. It's like having a favourite band- some of the games (think of them as albums) are usually  different and better than others, and there's bound to be people out there that disagree, but there's something about it that makes you love it, no matter what. But there's one question that lingers in my mind- when is it time for a series to come to a close- for them to stop making the games?

Take Pokemon for example- the games started out simple with Red and Blue, with 151 Pokemon to catch, a basic story line and concept, but it was still highly enjoyable and played by millions. Then the second generation of games came along- Gold and Silver. These improves on the original, adding new Pokemon and features that really shaped the series.

Then came Ruby and Sapphire, of the third generation. Even though it improved on Gold and Silver on some aspects, it was a bit of a let down, and the Pokemon added to it were mostly forgettable. The forth generation, Diamond and Pearl, weren't much better, even with the added online and bigger world map. It still seemed to be lacking something... Or seemed to have too much. And with the upcoming Pokemon Black and White, who knows what they'll do to "improve the formula" this time? (especially since the new Pokemon that have been revealed look pretty shit.)

Some series, like the Mario and Zelda series, are still fresh with ideas that keep it ongoing and keep fans coming in. Although they both have some bad games in the series (See: Mario Is Missing! and the short-lived Zelda CDi games, both spawning classic Internet memes), the brilliant games that have been developed more than make up for such mistakes. 

But sometimes, developers need to realize that there's a point where they may need to stop on a series. Like I said about Pokemon, GameFreak will need to do something seriously awesome to make the next Generation special and prove to us they're not just churning out games for the money. Original ideas are really the way to go, and being able to take a classic series and be able to make nearly every game as good as the last is something that keeps a series alive, not just rebooting an old formula and adding to it, hoping that people won't notice the difference.

Well, I'm off to bed, since I don't have much more time to finish this. I'll add more on this tomorrow, I promise. 

Until then.

Tilly

Let's have a big fuuuuuu for call centres...

So, this is my first rage on this blog, and I'd like to take a minute, to talk to you about Automated Phonelines, and call centres.

Often the two go hand in hand, as I found once again, this morning. I went to a site, to apply for a student loan, and after experiencing some password reset problems, decided to call them, to see why the reset e-mail wasn't coming through. Perfectly reasonable, yes?

So why was I subjected to

a) A random maze of 'Press 1 for x 2 for y, etc. , resulting in a choice between two options that didn't apply to me, so i pressed on, and found

b) Shite 80's hold music. I mean seriously, at least be a epic and rickroll us, instead of playing shite.

c) A 15 minute wait to speak to an 'advisor'

and d) A voice, every 20 fucking seconds of my 15 minute wait, telling me that it may be 'more convenient to visit their website'.

I sure hope the 'your call may be recorded' applies to the wait as well, because then whoever listens might hear;

"I'M ON YOUR FUCKING WEBSITE, NOW STOP BEING A LAZY PIECE OF SHIT AND ANSWER THE PHONE, YOU CUNT"

However, having said this, I dunno what I'd do if the 'advisor' picked up during this sentence...it'd be slightly awkward, to say the least.

Anyway, the advisor today wasn't too bad, so i can't exactly rage about her, so I'll change story to when I attempted to register to be able to top up my phone by credit card.

I apparently needed a security number which 'I would have already set', however I didn't, ever, so I called them up

Fucking Indian Call Centre.

So, after explaining what I need to get done about 20 times, the woman asks for a 4 digit security number...

erm...1, 2, 3, 4? I said to her, aprehensive that it was TOO simple...

"That is a very good choice sir, easy to remember..." the woman said

WHAT THE FUCK? I DIDN'T ASK FOR YOUR OPINION ON MY 4 DIGIT CODE, I ASKED YOU TO SET IT, SO THAT I COULD TOP MY FUCKING PHONE UP....

"Thanks" I said....

Anyway, we all hate automated phonelines and call centres, so everyone, go relate to this

Peace

NayNay

Once upon a time.....

When NayNay suggested we set this up, I instantly thought "Oh boy, a blog! I can talk about everything!!" and got pretty exited, and had hundreds of ideas for what to do. But when it actually came to writing, I went totally blank. All morning I've been sitting here wondering what to write, and everything I tried simply didn't seem to go right. It maybe since I'm just not motivated today, but I don't know. I'll try something... Maybe Saturday.

But as the first post stated- Yes, I do try my best to draw, despite how my efforts are usually in vain. Hopefully though, you'll enjoy my little pieces more than I do (are they even enjoyable?). I'm just going to post some example sketches to show you what kinda thing's going on here. You like them? Good. You don't? That's alright, neither do I....

I'll post something worthwhile soon (PFFT) but for now stare in awe at whatever they are up there.

Another time, then....

Tilly

Welcome

Good persons of the world, welcome one and all to this, the epitomy of blogging experiences.

Over the coming days/months/howeverlongwecankeepthisup, you will be able to read the very latest

Rants - Provided by myself, about my experiences with idiots and the world.

Artworkings - Provided by Tilly, of veritable quality no doubt (if not, you can sue her or something)

Musical Reviewings - Imposing my musical taste on everyone and giving opinions you'll probably be raging over.

Gaming and suchlike - Tilly shows you how to fail....oh I mean erm...Well, you'll see...

General Stuff - Provided by anyone who's out of ideas that day...sure to be at least 7% enjoyable...probably.

Anyway, thats what you can expect...I should be going now

NayNay