Author: Ian

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The Fat Of The Land – The Prodigy

Well, I’m not sure where to start with this album. There’s a lot to say and this will end up as a ramble through my history. There’s probably not a lot new there given some of the communications on this site.

I bought this album on the back of previously purchasing Music For A Gilted Generation. This new purchase BLEW ME AWAY. It is heavy and nasty and yet brilliant and perfectly produced.

I used to play quite a bit of Doom and back in ’97 or so and this album was placed in the CD tray to keep a nice background track to me blowing shit up. Fat Of The Land is perfectly moody for this task.

If you don’t own this album then you suck. Go get it. Download it. Play it. Make your ears bleed.

There isn’t a bad song on this album.

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Faith Hope Love – Kings X

I saw this band a long time ago in Wembley Arena. I have a feeling they supported Bon Jovi, but I could be wrong. I bought this album on vinyl shortly after and then obviously I bought the CD to update my collection many years later.

This is very melodic rock/metal. In fact I think metal is NOT what it is. The whole album is very musical with tight long harmonies in the vocals. I like it but you have to be in the correct mood otherwise you’ll hate it.

This is also a very “summer” album. It’s a bit jangly. Quite possibly this is an acquired taste. I know that Andy would hate it.

“Fine Art Of Friendship” is a good song.

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Facelift – Alice In Chains

This is, as far as I know, the first album by Seattle giants Alice In Chains. It opens with “We Die Young”, quite simply a brilliant song that introduces the whole Alice experience. The guitars are generally heavy and slow while the vocals haunt me.

Alice In Chains formed part of the Seattle sound, a mixture of grunge and anger, but I think they stood out from the rest. On the occasions I have seen them they blew me away.

This is a brilliant album. My favourites are the opening track and “It Ain’t Like That”.

Other Alice in Chains communications are here.

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Henry Walton Jones

Here is a picture of my Indiana Jones Minecraft character. The Cylon version is staying at home to look over my lounge. Indiana is based in my work room. He looks great, I am happy to have him.

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Cylon

It’s a Cylon Minecraft character made from cardboard and painted. I didn’t make this, it was made for me and I feel proud to be the owner of a Minecraft Cylon. It matches the Cylon in my dining room.

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For those of you unsure of what a Cylon is, then you should go here. For those of you unsure of what Minecraft is, go here.

Also, for those of you who haven’t seen the BSG series you might want to know that “Nothing but the rain” is a quotation from that series.

“What can you hear, Starbuck?”, asks Adama.
“Nothing but the rain.”, she replies.

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Extreme – Extreme

If this is your type of rock then it is a good album. I had a slight Extreme revival about a year ago where I got their albums. I listened to them quite a bit in my late teens. This was their first album. You should get Pornograffitti instead.

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Avengers – Age Of Ultron

So, I went to see this film last night. As ever I rated this film on IMDB, you should read this communication before moaning about my rating system.

Overall I enjoyed this film. I don’t think it was as good as the first film. The action sequences were perfectly fine although nothing really stood out for me. The buddy aspect of the film was ok but the best parts of that were dealt with in the first film.

Look, this is a solid superhero film and works very well. It is probably better than most of the standalone films that have been released, it just wasn’t as good as the first film. Sorry.

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Science Reporting Rage

I am annoyed.

BBCBullshit1

The BBC are arseholes. The headline and photo ALL imply that plucking makes hair grow in humans. Here’s the first few paragraphs. With my emphasis.

Plucking hairs in a precise pattern can make even more pop up in their place, a US study suggests. Playing with the density of hair removed altered how serious an injury the body recognised and in turn how much hair regrew. The team managed to regenerate 1,300 hairs by plucking 200, in the study using mice reported in Cell journal. Experts said it was “really nice science” but were uncertain if it could lead to a cure for human baldness. Half of men have male-pattern baldness by the age of 50. The team at the University of Southern California were investigating how hair follicles communicate with each other to decide on the scale of repair job needed.

So, with only a single reference to the fact that the study was in MICE and lots of human type text and a picture this article screams that plucking in humans will cause hair growth.

Ok, so it happens in mice. So fucking what. When they can show it works in humans I may interested in knowing about it. Not for myself although I am mostly bald, I’d rather have less hair.

This is extremely poor reporting. There is no need for this article. It is a waste of time.

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Thunderbirds Are Go

So people. What I thought of Thunderbirds Are Go:

Quite simple really. I loved it.

TBs

The show looked brilliant. The mix of miniatures and CGI was perfect. For a great example of where this works well you could see Moon. For examples of where just CGI doesn’t work see Star Wars Episodes 1-3. The whole look was organic, more natural than pure CGI.

I have no idea of which Tracy brother is which. I just can’t do similar faces and names. I will probably end up knowing them by colour. Quite clearly Kayo,  Lady Penelope Creighton-Ward and Parker were obvious. The others? No idea. My facial recognition fails me completely.

The vehicles looked and sounded brilliant. I had two “moments”. The first was when TB2 took off from Tracy Island and there were a couple of “boom” sounds that made me shiver. Then, and this is just brilliant, when TB1 flew there were condensation clouds behind shock waves that made my hairs stand on end. Yes, I am that much of a nerd.

TB1a

TB1b

Who cares if the story was over the top, that’s just what we want. Overall, this was a great piece of television. It is something I am really looking forward to sharing with my children The wait for something like this has been too long!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Nerd Stuff:

The animators have been very clever. They have given the humans a slightly shiny face in homage to the plastic models of the original series AND at the same time they have avoided falling into the UNCANNY VALLEY. Well done. Any more realistic and people would have felt an urge to throw up and turn off. Also, creating a smooth surface with certain reflective properties saves a ton of rendering time.

If you aren’t sure then think about why in Toy Story ALL the characters have plastic faces [rendering time] and then think about Monsters Inc, only one character has hair, why? Rendering time and computer power. I saw a documentary about Pixar where they essentially said that if they tried to re-create Cars using the computer power available when they made Toy Story the rendering would have taken around 2000 years. Computers are awesome.

 

[I had watched the Reggie Yates documentary called No Strings Attached, but I got bored. It was a modern documentary with reviews and reminders bracketing every advert break and that ruined it. Not worth watching.]

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Disaster Area Gig 20 March 2015

So, here’re some photos from the Disaster Area gig on the 20 March. Our set list, although small, was perfectly formed.

  • Detroit Rock City
  • Symphony of Destruction

The quality of these photos is terrible, mainly because they’ve come from the Disaster Area Facebook page. If you really want to see more head over to that stuff. As I’ve explained before: I don’t do Facebook.

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