Ali Simpson

In anticipation of going to watch The Simpsons Movie tomorrow (Cant' wait!!! Got my Simpsons T-shirt and socks ready!), I was checking out www.simpsonsmovie.com and found an avater creator there.

And so, presenting, Ali "Simpson" Alsawaf:

360 Update

I am missing my 360 terribly. There's something wrong with it not being there. I think the community surrounding it is amazing, and nothing else has replaced it.

Hence I miss live, and I miss playing football with Hani :)

Anyhow. I bought a motherboard from the states that was treated so that the red light thing doesn't happen. Good price too. I forgot to ask what region it was though! I got the dreaded reply yesterday: it's American. So all my PAL games are useless. FUCK.

I was going to stick with it and just "obtain" the American versions of the games I play most, but that means one problem: I can't play PES6 with hani. Kind of defeats the purpose.

So, I've ordered YET ANOTHER motherboard. This one is PAL and brand new.

To try and minimise the stupid Red Light problem, I also bought some replacement fans for the crappy internal fans from Divineo. The Talismoon Whisper Fans are meant to be 58% better, and 7% quieter.

All this stuff is arriving Wednesday. I should be back on live then.

The American motherboard is going straight back on eBay.

Finally, if this new setup Red lights I will just ditch it all and buy a brand new 360 and leave it CLOSED. It's not worth openning them up and losing the warranty, especially now that it's 3 years.

Engaged!

Much longer story later this week, am in a hurry now.

YES.

We Are The Night

is the new album by those clever folk at The Chemical Brothers.

It's been out for some time now, and I've listened to it to death. It's one of those few albums were I don't skip too many tracks (one to be precise, the awful "The Salmon Song").

We Are The Night is the 5th album by The Chems, sixth if you count Exit Planet Dust (They were called The Dust Brothers then). Proving to be much more of an integrated experience than their last 2 albums (Come With Us was awful, Push The Button had a few great tracks).

With this album, the Chems take you on a dance music journey, from their own nearly-patented big beat style (sometimes called chemical beat), to 80s electronica, then over to a bit of trance/techno, back to some indie, with a little bit of Daft Punk, Death in Vegas, and Lemonjelly all thrown in for good measure.

It all sounds too wrong to work, but it does. They somehow manage to make every song feel like a Chemical song, either by throwing in a huge sequence here or there, or adding some psychedelic beeps and noises, you never lose the feeling that this is The Chemical Brothers. At their best.

The famous last epic track that all their albums have had is still there. This time it's called "The Pills Won't Help You" and it features someone called midlake on vocals. Admittedly, it's a lot more mellowed than their previous epics, and to me is no where near the stellar hights of "Surface to Air", nor even "The Sunshine Underground" or "The Private Psychedelic Reel" from their previous albums.

But that doesn't stop this album from being my favourite Chems album. Nothing could surpass the excellent Surrender, but this has. It's more complete, more modern, and amazing to listen to. Whether it will age as well as it's big brother, only time will tell. But for now, it's great.

Finally, some tracks worth mentioning:

Saturate: I'm sure to make this they got some child with a keyboard to press some keys. Repeat over and over but keep on adding layers. Very catchy beat.

Do It Again: by now EVERYONE should have heard this, or seen it's video, particularly arabs as the video is arabic again (like push the button). Stupid song at first, that then becomes your favourite cos it's so damn genius. In fact, video embedded at the end :)

Das Spiegel: The funkiest, happiest, greatest track they have ever made. A bit of lemonjelly, a bit of chemical, and lots of funky beats and sequences make this the funnest thing you'll hear this year.

Burst Generator: Pure chemical techno.

A Modern Midnight Conversation: ah, cowbells, lovely lady vocals, big beats. I could imagine them remembering their favourite bits from Electronic 80s and coming up with this track.

As you see, I like it. And so should you if you're reading this blog :)

Tweak UAC

Anyone who's using vista will love this.

As you all know, vista has this stupid habit of prompting you every now and then that it needs your permission to do something (that is if you've got UAC enabled, which is default and recommended). It's a feature they've copied off OSX, the difference being that the OSX one actually does protect (it prompts you for a password each time a file that is owned by "system" is accessed, which should never happen. Hence OSX = no viruses :D).

Windows UAC on the other hand, protects the computer from THE USER, making sure that when they're gonna do something potentially harmful, it asks for their permission first. Heh.

But someone clever has created TweakUAC. A program that lets you switch UAC in to "quiet" mode. Meaning that it keeps UAC on, but just doesn't keep popping up to annoy you.

And yes the creator has explained why your system will stay just as secure.

Try it out, and be thankful, it really makes life so much easier.

360 = DEAD!!!

Yes that's right. Today the 360 died after crashing a few times. It now refuses to boot and displays the dreaded "Three Rings of Death" pictured to your left.

Gotta fix it, will take ages I think. Shame really. PS3/2 gaming and Wii for now I guess....

Browser fun

I tried to put this in the sidebar, but it's too big and looks clumsy.

Reducing it to fit made it unreadable. Hence, I post it here for fun :)

On how the colossi fell

Today we finished Shadow Of The Colossus. One of the 5 or so games that I wish I had a PS2 for. Now that I got a PS3, I'm playing through them.
Colossus is an amazing feat. Not because it's so original, or because the Colossi are beautiful creatures that are huge, but because of the way it presents itself, and the way it tells its story.

The game starts off with you carrying a dead girl in to some sacred place. A voice from above tells you to go and kill 16 Colossi, after which she'll be resurrected. And that's about all you get to know. The game is about you, your horse, and the huge environment in which you've got to find the Colossi, and try to beat them.

Each battle is a huge task in trying to work out how a single human, armed with nothing more than a sword and bow, can down the beast. Our hero isn't that agile either, he's no Kratos or Lara, he stumbles around, has limited breath and grip, and doesn't bounce up when falls. All this adds to some really tense, nail biting moments of sheer clinging on to huge beasts and hoping you don't get flung off.

One by one the creatures fall, and after you kill the 16th Colossus the game truely shines, mainly because it has the most breath taking end sequence of any memorable game. Revealing a lot about the story, who you are and what you've really done, and ending in a very thought provoking and clever way, you finish the game both upset that you've finished it, and amazed at the story it was telling without you knowing it.

The whole isolation and emptiness you feel as you go hunting the Colossi one by one, and the lack of any story or cutscenes (very few in game) before the climatic end are all forgivable when you finish, as it's clear that the creators of the game wanted the player to feel lonely, isolated, and in doubt as to what is really going on. A very clever way of telling a story, and as a videogame a great addition to anyone's list.

If you've not played it and have a PS2/3 I strongly urge you to. If you don't, pick up a used machine and play the game then sell it, it really is a milestone.

Finally, somewhere in the game something terrible happens, something you wouldn't have thought would affect you that much. But when it happens, you can't help but feel very sad at the cruelty of it all, and it's all because of something you do. When you start realising that you've got to do the said thing, you're not sure whether you want to continue playing it or not. It's that powerful.. Pan's Labyrinth of games. GET IT.

Happy **th Birthday!

Today is my **th birthday!

I got a text message from a friend saying: Happy **th birthday!

Of course, she had put **th so that I don't realise that today I'm 3................0!

Thirty!

OMG!!

30 and I still type "OMG" and I've got a blog and I play games. What a waste.

We're going to The Lake District now, then from there to Blackpool, where the UK's best theme park is, I practically grew up there. LOVE IT!

Back on Tuesday. I'll be online now and then from the hotel, I hope.

SoB out.