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Anime. You've probably heard of it, but you might not have paid any attention to it. Ever wondered why?
Disclaimer: The following is probably very biased and not well thought out. But don't let that stop you reading it!
Continue reading "Ignorance is bliss? [now with added footnote!]" »
You may have noticed that this site was down on Friday evening. This is because we've been having reports that NTS was infected with the VBS/Psyme trojan. This exploits an Internet Explorer-only vunerability.
I've given the site a complete going-over, including a thorough virus scan, and I can see no infection at all. I'm therefore 99.9% confident that this is simply a case of false positives.
However, I'd like to track down exactly why this is happening. So if you get any virus warnings on NTS, then please email the full details (including which page you got the warning on, the name of your virus scanner, and any information it provides) to webmaster@noisetosignal.org.
Thanks!
Official press release at petetownshend.com. Apparantly it'll be called Endless Wire (which, to my own personal taste, is the worst of the potential album titles that included Who2 and The Boy Who Heard Music) and it's coming out October 30. I assume it's a global release date. And I do that expressly to make an ass out of u and me.
We've made it to one! Here's our review of the past year, where we all nominate our favourite article on NTS, our best article, and what we think the next year will bring. What better way to celebrate the site than being ridiculously self-indulgent?
Just recently, through my weekly crawl of the internet underground, I happened upon FanEdited.com. If you're smart, you will gather from the title of the site that it is all about fan edits. On it you will find a list chock-full of films re-cut by fans to suit their own creative styles and tastes.
Continue reading "Didn't Like Star Wars? Re-Edit It Yourself!" »
About half of the Noise to Signal crew is at Dimension Jump XIII, being supremely nerdy. The other half is at home being supremely nerdy. I reside in the latter camp, and so here is my latest explorative essay, and my first during my tenure at Noise to Signal.
So settle in. Unzip your fly. And enjoy my needlessly-analytical essay on the Futurama episode "Time Keeps On Slipping."
They say you can't go home again. Well, either "they" - whoever the hell "they" are - are talking complete bollocks, or maybe it's just that Kevin Smith is the exception that proves the rule. Either way, going "home" - to Leonardo, New Jersey, to the "View Askewniverse", and to two guys named Dante and Randal - has in fact turned out to be one of the best things that Smith could have done.
Would anyone like to inform me why UKG2 replaced the scheduled Top Gear at 15:00 with an episode of TOTP2?
Surely the best way to deal with what's happened to Richard Hammond is simply to enjoy his work?
I have a love/hate relationship with branding. I adore beautifully designed logos, brilliant advertising campaigns (some of which are works of art in themselves), and an interesting company image. On the other hand, I don't like the tendancy branding has to pigeonhole people, or simply spout complete horseshit.
HP cameras with built-in "slimming" feature.
B-but they looked better before!
This is just unpleasant. A sad indictment on our society? I'd say so.
I rarely do things on a whim. I'm not a whimmy person. But when you happen to be walking along the street in Bath, and come across the beautiful Theatre Royal advertising a play starring Mel Smith, I had to go and book tickets there and then. I've never seen Mel Smith live before, and just to watch him do a big poo for an hour and a half would be a special thrill, let alone a rare theatre appearance. Belinda Lang was also exciting; me being a philistine/poor* (*delete as appropriate), I've never seen any of her West End performances, and simply know her from 2point4 Children - but a great sitcom performance is just as revealing as a great theatre one, and she's pretty damn wonderful. I was sold.
That's "the mathematics of album cover art."
Here's an article by David "Zyzzyx" Steinberg regarding the cover art he provided for Trey Anastasio's bonus EP, 18 Steps. 18 Steps comes bundled with pre-orders of the full-length album Bar 17. Got that?
The EP isn't out yet and the final cover art--so far as I know--hasn't been leaked. So what's so special about this? Why a full article?
He was looking for something mathematical that would tie the two albums together; it should be confusing but yet actually mean something. [...] After an initial attempt at finding some fun facts about 17 and 18 - did you know that 17 is an unlucky number in Italy because XVII can be rearranged as VIXI which means, "I lived?" - the obvious approach came to mind. Let's try to take 18 steps to move from 17 to 18 using as much math as possible.
Almost makes me wish I could do math.
Yes, you read that right. Wildside Press has decided to go ahead and publish Jim Theis's infamous fantasy novella in actual print book form. Literature as a whole should feel very, very proud. A bit of background for those people who've never read it, then: "The Eye of Argon" was first published in 1970 in Osfan (a fanzine). After its publication, it was widely circulated among fan circles as perhaps the finest example of shit writing outside of a Dan Brown convention. For all you naysayers out there, here's Amazon's description:
"This is not a hoax. Jim Theis was a real person, who wrote The Eye of Argon in all seriousness as a teenager [...] It became the ultimate samizdat, an underground classic, and for more than thirty years it has been the subject of midnight readings at conventions, as thousands have come to appreciate the negative genius of this amazing Ed Wood of prose."
It's available December 1, 2006. Order early and often!
This is quite exciting. Paul Rose, who you might know as Mr Biffo off of sadly-defunct Teletext games page Digitiser, has got a couple of sitcoms in development. In today's blog post, he's finally revealed a few more details. With comments from Zombie Dave.
So, Nintendo's European Press Conference is drawing to a close as I'm posting this, and after two days of speculation based on information from the Japanese and American conferences, we finally know the important facts about the Wii launch here in Europe: -
Launch Date: December 8th 2006
Price: GBP 179 / EUR 249
Package: White Console, 1 Wii Remote, 1 Nunchuck, Wii Sports
Game Price: GBP 34 - 39 / EUR 49 - 59
First Party Launch Titles: Legend Of Zelda: Twilight Princess, Wario Ware: Smooth Moves, Wii Sports
Third Party Launch Titles: Red Steel, Rayman: Raving Rabbids, Need For Speed Carbon, Tony Hawk's Downhill Jam, Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz
I think that generally, the message is pretty positive; £180 is perhaps a little bit steeper than the £150 mark everyone was expecting to pay, but it's not a big enough increment to cause too much upset. Additionally, the lower cost of games (compared the the Xbox 360 and projected PS3 cost of around £50) certainly sweetens the proposition. Throwing Wii Sports into the package was unexpected, but it seems like a no-brainer to include the game that showcases the console's technology most effectively. It does seem rather odd that the "vital, emerging european market" is getting the Wii launch dead last, even after Australia, but at least it's before Christmas. I'm still very, very excited.
The European part of the Wii site has also just launched over here, so you can have a look at the Mii (character avatar) creation process, as well as the various other channels that will be accessible through Wii Connect 24.
Don't forget, folks, That Mitchell and Webb Look starts at 9:30pm, tonight, on BBC TWO. I went to the recording of the pilot, and it's absolutely incredibly amazingly fantastic. Mitchell and Webb are the best double act since Lee & Herring. Watch it, or it'll be a bad miss.
I got an email through the Tim and Eric mailing list that made public a few very tantalizing details about an upcoming DVD collection of Tom Goes to the Mayor...
"[...] the Internet is a machine for copying things cheaply, quickly, and with as little control as possible, while copyright is the right to control who gets to make copies, so these two abstractions seem destined for a fatal collision, right? Wrong." - How the Internet Broke
Cory Doctorow, of BoingBoing fame and John W. Campbell Award-winning SF author, has written a fascinating article for Locus Online. The article deals with how the Internet and copyrights will interact in the future. Go read it!
Prepare yourselves...
From DS:BB:
"It was a close call - the show wasn't ready until just before transmission," a source told the Daily Star. "Part of the problem was that Pete was saying 'w**kers' and making odd noises throughout the interview. It was impossible to bleep out all the swear words as that would have drowned out the interview completely."
Well, what do you expect when you invite someone with Tourette's Syndrome on to a chat show? It's not as if he could help it; the quote implies that Pete was being a git by ruining the interview, rather than it being something that's completely involuntary, and something they should surely have known would happen when they booked him.
Furthermore, the programme also contained a clip of Mrs Overall singing "have some custard fucking creams and shut the fuck up", Ricky Gervais and Rossy effing and blinding at each other, and Ross eventually calling Gervais a "cunt" (admittedly bleeped out). So what's the problem with Pete saying "wankers" every now and then?
Apparantly, Nintendo DS is in touch with original comedy. Which is why they've decided to just copy this for their Channel 4 break bumpers.
Finally, the full length Casino Royale trailer is here, and with it the first proper chance to get a good look at Daniel Craig's Bond.
Continue reading "Double O FUCKING HELL WOULD YOU LOOK AT THAT!" »
The trailer for Wannabes is now on YouTube! Well, I say "now", it's been there for two months, but I've not noticed it before. It's an interactive online soap thing, that I worked on briefly back in March. You can even see my arm and hair in the trailer.
A comedy legend getting the attention she deserves, there. Joyce won't be to everyone's taste, I'm sure, but this is just the sort of thing BBC Four do well.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/5316700.stm
Excellent news, I think you'll agree.
This worrying article was in the Guardian a couple of days ago. As the article points out, treating all women of child-bearing age as permanent incubators has worrying implications for a women's right to be seen as an independent person, capable of making their own decisions. And naturally, it's the poorest women in society bearing the brunt of ill-thought-out legislation.
I would hope that the UK doesn't see fit to follow the US's lead on this, but I'm not terribly optimistic given the rise of 'fundamentalist' Christian pressure groups here lately, and the attitude of some magazines towards celebrity mothers who 'break the rules'.
Women: as ever, you are being watched.
Just in case you didn't catch the news, Sony have delayed the PS3 European release as well as vastly reducing their unit estimation from a projected 2 million over 3 territories during the first 3 weeks, to half a million over 2 territories (Europe being the one that takes it in the ass ...again.) The PS3 is now going to be almost a year late in Europe.
Amusingly, the reason behind this is STILL reportedly because of Sony's hilarious inability to build its own components. It's been said that less than 1 in 6 Cell Processors and Blu-Ray drives are actually working out of the gate. Blu-Ray PC drives are being co-opted for use in PS3s, so bad is the shortage.
I don't want to be accused of Nintendo fanboyishness, but as someone who was going to give the PS3 a miss due to the ridiculously high price, I can't help but laugh at Sony. The funniest thing is probably that the first generation PS3s will, by the sound of it, be even less reliable than the usual first wave of console releases...
Wow, a while blog post about the PS3 without mentioning Sony's comedy appearance at E3. Is the curse lifted? (No.)
Well, there's no nudity or overt sexuality allowed on YouTube, I'll remind you all of that before I go any further...but there is a site that'll point you toward the closest things. It's basically just a collection of drunks, teasers and dancers, but I'm sure at least one of you (John) will find this (John) very handy (John).
It's called TubeHos. Crack wise about the spelling in your own time. For now, watch them swivel to shitty techno.
All 13 episodes, complete, uncut, free and legal. It's online at The Adult Swim Fix but I don't know for how long. A week or so? I've never used the Fix before so someone can feel free to correct me. Point is The Venture Bros. is a killer show, so take advantage while it's free and on demand.
Oddly though they have some of the episodes out of sequence. The first episode is Dia de los Dangerous and it goes in order from there, but the final three episodes should be Past Tense, The Trial of the Monarch and Return to Spider Skull Island. Watching those three out of sequence would be pretty bad.
Oh, and don't bother with The Terrible Secret of Turtle Bay. That's the pilot. And it's a pile of ass crap.
Continue reading "David Ford @ The Borderline, London - 29.08.06" »
