Noise to Signal

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September 2006

A Public Service Announcement / 30.09.06

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.

Press release for new Who album / 28.09.06

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.

Didn't Like Star Wars? Re-Edit It Yourself! / 24.09.06

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.

UKGPOO / 21.09.06

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?

A whole world of ew / 19.09.06

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.

The mathematics of album cover art. / 19.09.06

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 Eye of Argon now in print! / 16.09.06

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.

Biffo-sitcoms-me-do! / 16.09.06

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.

Wiiactions? / 15.09.06

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: -

Look! Mitchell and Webb! / 14.09.06

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.

Tom Goes to the Mayor DVD this spring! / 12.09.06

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...

Copyhound / 11.09.06

"[...] 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

New Doctor Who villain revealed! / 10.09.06

Prepare yourselves...

LOL!

Haha, not really. I tricked you. This is a clever joke based on the fact that the Doctor wears a blue suit and has red shoes. Do you see?

Erm, fuck off / 09.09.06

From DS:BB:

Touch Me / 08.09.06

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.

Double O FUCKING HELL WOULD YOU LOOK AT THAT! / 08.09.06

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.

Wannabes trailer / 07.09.06

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.


DesktopEarth / 07.09.06

This is brilliant.

http://codefromthe70s.org/desktopearth_dl.asp

I currently have it set to update every one minute, sans clouds. It looks superb.

Sun-dar-riiiise, in the morning

BBC Four: Joyce Grenfell Night / 06.09.06

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.

BBC buys Dangermouse! / 06.09.06

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/5316700.stm

Excellent news, I think you'll agree.

Congratulations! You're Pre-Pregnant! / 06.09.06

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.

Playstation 3 Delayed in Europe / 06.09.06

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.

My new favourite YouTube video / 06.09.06

Yes.

Tube + hoes - e = tubehos / 04.09.06

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.

Watch season one of The Venture Bros. online / 02.09.06

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.