Alright, ALRIGHT, I'm writing a blog, shaddap already!

Some shit has happened since I last blogged about videogames.

I graduated from university for one thing. I spent the last couple of weeks slowly trying to transition my life back to some factor of normality, a mental progression that ran parallel to my rapidly decreasing funds. I then spent a week scrubbing around on Turntable.FM where my eclectic audio preferences were met with a mixed hail of praise and, most often, confusion. I was rewarded with a selection of follows, DJ points and even a boot from the Gary Whitta himself.

I don't know what stage turntable is currently at, though when I had access to it (being from the UK that is, unfortunately, no longer the case due to licencing issues) it was a fairly small userbase, only allowing friend-of-a-friend access to the fortunate few - I don't know to what extent the site has become quantified amongst a common audience, though I shall attempt to explain why it sucked away a handful of days from my life. At it's core, turntable.fm is a chat room where, at all times, music is playing. That music is chosen by one of several DJ's who nominate themselves on a first-come first serve basis. The playlist moves through the DJ's consecutively, playing whatever song they have at the top of their playlist. The audience can either "Lame" or "Awesome" the current track, a culmination of the former resulting in the track being skipped, whilst "Awesome's" get you DJ points which you can flaunt in front of the masses, letting everyone know just how good your grooves are. Perhaps the best feature is the ability to easily add the current song to a playlist on either turntable, last.fm, spotify, or buy it on iTunes. The result was that many people, myself included, left turntable.fm idle in the background of our computers, adding music as and when it became apparent.

The resultant experience is highly entertaining. Many of the best rooms claim a "theme" that can be enforced by the moderators of the room and, if the atmosphere is right, DJ's working together to establish an audio fluency are rewarded for their efforts by the crowd. Picking the right song becomes increasingly challenging as the session goes on, but on more than one occasion I was witness to, and even took part in, virtual sets that were incredibly entertaining. Syncing up your song with that of the DJ prior to you can be fantastically complicated, but doing so successfully is wonderfully rewarding, especially when you introduce your audience to a song they have never heard before. Fuck achievement points, gaining a shallow respect from your fellow music enthusiasts is far more satisfying.

And remember, popularity leads to intimacy.

Apart from Turntable.fm I have spent my time pointedly not playing Trenched. Because of geography. What has geography ever done for us? Fuck geography.

There are a couple more blogs coming in the next few days. It's not like I have anything else to be doing right now. I have spent some time with LA Noire and The Witcher 2, both of which deserve some bloggage. Oh, and I saw Transformers 3.

I don't like it when people say "Transformers 3 was made by Michael Bay" as though that's some form of justification for its stupidity.

I don't know at what point we, as a society, decided to just accept that the man is a bad director and bypass that fact. I appreciate that accepting the low quality of the narrative may allow an increased sense of enjoyment for explosions and robots and whatnot, but with Transformers 3 I can't help but feel that Michael Bay is no longer meeting us halfway. The film is a mess. Call me a snob if you want, but if one were to disengage all mental activity as frequently as Michael Bay requests, one might find themselves with severe neurological damage. Or a brain tumour.

Anyways. Robots.

Thanks For Reading

Love Sweep

Alright, ALRIGHT, I'm writing a blog, shaddap already!

Some shit has happened since I last blogged about videogames.

I graduated from university for one thing. I spent the last couple of weeks slowly trying to transition my life back to some factor of normality, a mental progression that ran parallel to my rapidly decreasing funds. I then spent a week scrubbing around on Turntable.FM where my eclectic audio preferences were met with a mixed hail of praise and, most often, confusion. I was rewarded with a selection of follows, DJ points and even a boot from the Gary Whitta himself.

I don't know what stage turntable is currently at, though when I had access to it (being from the UK that is, unfortunately, no longer the case due to licencing issues) it was a fairly small userbase, only allowing friend-of-a-friend access to the fortunate few - I don't know to what extent the site has become quantified amongst a common audience, though I shall attempt to explain why it sucked away a handful of days from my life. At it's core, turntable.fm is a chat room where, at all times, music is playing. That music is chosen by one of several DJ's who nominate themselves on a first-come first serve basis. The playlist moves through the DJ's consecutively, playing whatever song they have at the top of their playlist. The audience can either "Lame" or "Awesome" the current track, a culmination of the former resulting in the track being skipped, whilst "Awesome's" get you DJ points which you can flaunt in front of the masses, letting everyone know just how good your grooves are. Perhaps the best feature is the ability to easily add the current song to a playlist on either turntable, last.fm, spotify, or buy it on iTunes. The result was that many people, myself included, left turntable.fm idle in the background of our computers, adding music as and when it became apparent.

The resultant experience is highly entertaining. Many of the best rooms claim a "theme" that can be enforced by the moderators of the room and, if the atmosphere is right, DJ's working together to establish an audio fluency are rewarded for their efforts by the crowd. Picking the right song becomes increasingly challenging as the session goes on, but on more than one occasion I was witness to, and even took part in, virtual sets that were incredibly entertaining. Syncing up your song with that of the DJ prior to you can be fantastically complicated, but doing so successfully is wonderfully rewarding, especially when you introduce your audience to a song they have never heard before. Fuck achievement points, gaining a shallow respect from your fellow music enthusiasts is far more satisfying.

And remember, popularity leads to intimacy.

Apart from Turntable.fm I have spent my time pointedly not playing Trenched. Because of geography. What has geography ever done for us? Fuck geography.

There are a couple more blogs coming in the next few days. It's not like I have anything else to be doing right now. I have spent some time with LA Noire and The Witcher 2, both of which deserve some bloggage. Oh, and I saw Transformers 3.

I don't like it when people say "Transformers 3 was made by Michael Bay" as though that's some form of justification for its stupidity.

I don't know at what point we, as a society, decided to just accept that the man is a bad director and bypass that fact. I appreciate that accepting the low quality of the narrative may allow an increased sense of enjoyment for explosions and robots and whatnot, but with Transformers 3 I can't help but feel that Michael Bay is no longer meeting us halfway. The film is a mess. Call me a snob if you want, but if one were to disengage all mental activity as frequently as Michael Bay requests, one might find themselves with severe neurological damage. Or a brain tumour.

Anyways. Robots.

Thanks For Reading

Love Sweep

I stopped using Turntable when they stopped allowing UK users. I know you can get around it, but I can't be fucked. It was really fun, but I should probably be doing more constructive things anyway. Like browsing the Giant Bomb forums and playing Final Fantasy VI. Much more constructive.

I like your blogs, you sexy burger-mod-thing. I've just started out on Turntable and yeah, I can see it hooking me something bad the next couple of weeks.

Us GB (Great Britain) GB (Giant Bomb) users should just create our own turntable website in a childish retaliation to this licensing shut-out, except call it something way classier. Like The Gramophone Chaps dot com. Or the Ribald Victrola Summer Jam Gentlemen's Club.

I'm being condescending to my own nationality again. Bad habit.

I tried getting into Turntable a few days ago but the friend-of-a-friend thing put me off pretty quick. And now I can't even do that, 'cause I'm not from the US.  
 
Dumb.

I bought The Witcher 2 on Steam and for some reason can't get into it. I loved the first one. Oh well, I'll play it eventually.

@Claude: What is it you don't like about the second game? I'm enjoying it a lot more than I thought I would, though it does seem very linear at the moment.

Its* stupidity
Thanks for the blag mon ami! I have yet to try out turntable, should give that a shot at some point =) Hope life gets somewhat normalized for you! Somewhat.

@Sweep I shouldn't complain as I didn't even know if the game could run on my PC, but there's one thing that pulls me out of the game. I have a 19" Flatscreen CRT monitor. The ratio is 4:3. The Witcher 2 does not support that ratio, so I have to play it in letterbox. I have a hard time reading text in the game, so it kind of takes me out of the game world. If I had known that this was the case, I would not have bought the game.

Well written as always

@Bassman2112: I cunt spell ^____^

turntable sounds interesting...  wouldnt it be cool if actual DJs could scratch and mix tracks on it?  that way you could keep it on at a party or something (correct me if im wrong and you can already do this)

@dudeglove: Indeed.

I actually liked Transformers 3 quite a bit.