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Who doesn’t like to fire up a freakin’ awesome computer game every now and then?

Let me cast your mind back to the late 1990’s. There were games released almost on a weekly basis right across the PC, PS1, and N64.
Times were good, and it didn’t matter which system you were on.

Recently, I had been feeling that games weren’t being released, or in as good quality, as they used to be. I guess its an “old” gamers thing, where nothing is as good as it used to be, and in all honstly this past year, for me as a PC gamer, looked bleak.

Then Modern Warfare 2 came along, and the news that the PC version of the game was being gimped. I snapped. I went out and bought a tone of games that had been recommended to me, MANY released in the past 6 months.

It was like my eyes had been opened up. Gaming wasn’t dying, the focus platform had just shifted. I’m not going to say that console gaming is the way of the future, its just where gaming is at, at the moment. Will it come back to the PC? Will it become more focused on mobile platforms? Will there be a new generation of consoles that it will move to? Only time will tell, but I shall ride this games wave now I’ve discovered where it is.

Oh, and for those who go “FPS can only been played on the PC”, that’s wrong, you just have to learn a new technique. Its not better. Its different.

I think it is a common thing that everyone does, listening to music that suits their mood. I would even go as far as saying every human does it at some point.

Music in itself can express many different emotions, and is designed that way. And good music’s meaning is open to interpretation for you to find your own meaning in it, sometimes separate to what the artist/artists were attempting to express. This is a good thing, both from a sales, and an artist getting the most people to experience their art.

For me, the song which has just the most profound energy, and is just always enjoyable to listen to is Rumble by Link Wray. Just the way it sounds and is preformed always brings a smile to my face. And yes, I’ll admit, its close to this.

Strangely for me, I don’t actually listen to sad songs when I’m feeling down. I havn’t found any songs that will be “me”. I guess this is where I’m lucky in that I have the ability to make/play music myself to represent how I’m feeling at the time.

Anger is always distortion for me. Always. Lots of noise and distortion. I don’t care what the lyrics are, but LOUD guitars with quick drums always does the trick for me. Oh, and the volume has to be on 11. Generally that takes me towards the likes of these guys.

Then I have the songs that just make me laugh all the time, regardless of what mood I’m in, if these come on, then I cna’t help but laugh. The Majesty of Rock by Spinal Tap are just a few that can do this to me.

This brings me to the music I have been playing lately my self.
It is all well and fun learning how to play some of my favorite songs on guitar, but in all honesty, its nothing compaired to being able to pick up that piece of wood, and use it to express how I’m feeling at the time.

And I have found that I am often at odds with myself when playing expressively like this. Its both more natural to play, and (generally) requires more concentration from me. I’m happy to use a guitar that’s not exactly in perfect tune, maybe the neck has a bit of a bow after a new string change, or I haven’t set the action yet, but that doesn’t bother me either. When I’m playing expressively I know it shouldn’t be easy, and I’m going to have to battle this thing in my hands. I’ll use techniques I’m not very good at. I’ll strip as many effects away from my playing as possible. And I don’t care if the “noise” I’m making annoys anyone.

Music is for you. Weather you make it your self or listen to it.

Content delivered via a subscription. You would have thought that with the technology, better video streaming and delivery would be what people would seem to want.

With TV, and Video, the Radio started to loose its popularity, but now with iTunes, and RSS feeding of pod casts (both video and audio), it seems that the idea of a radio show is back on the rise again.
The idea of pod casting a radio show after it has been broadcast in the normal sense, has seen a resurrection in the idea of a talk back radio show.
It can be seen plainly when looking at the top downloaded pod casts in iTunes, there usually isn’t any video based ones in the top 5 overall.

The Hamish & Andy show is a brilliant example of this, the popularity of the show has just kept growing since the decision to both broadcast it live, and offer it for pod cast shortly after this airing time. And that popularity has just kept growing. I’d even wager that their odd appearances on Rove didn’t have a great effect on the number of people listening in.

Another brilliant example is the Ricky Gervais show. That’s a pod cast that had minimal advertising, and as of the second season required payment to listen to it, and it still managed to reach the number of downloads and listens that alot of TV shows struggle to attain.

Personally, I welcome this change back to audio only broadcasting, it saves me from having to see poorly edited, shitty, videos on youtube, or people attempting to be funny for a forced 30 minutes on TV.