Post by Date

Recent Comments

Blog Tags

Video Games (158) Geek (100) Media (162) Deep Thought (67) Sport (27) Misc (46) Places (121)

I'm aware that this could be filed under really old news, but just watched this today (knew about the news), though he has also written an article describing his experiences of Alzheimer's for News of the World.

Wow. I remember the first year we were allowed to take calculators into exams. Now The Register reports that kids today may have it far easier... or at least that exams will be different.
Quote:

Presbyterian Ladies' College in Sydney is running a trial among year nine English students, allowing them to access information from the net, speak to friends by mobile phone and listen to podcasts during a series of 40-minute tasks.

But the kids aren't being marked on what they know (or who they know)...
Quote:

For example, one session asked pupils to discuss Martin Luther King's “I have a dream” speech. They were allowed to search for information about the speech online and get friends’ points of view, but the girls were only marked on use of persuasive language.

The girls aren’t allowed to check the web for answers in, say, a maths exam.

The school requires pupils to cite all sources, in an effort to discourage plagiarism.

All this in an effort to teach them real world skills
Quote:

“What they will need to do is access information from all their sources quickly and they will need to check the reliability of their information,” she said.

img by Alpha Auer, aka. Elif Ayiter

Sat down to watch some Good Game last night with urbabe(who referred to the watching of said show as "dweebing out"). We watched the Good Game Game: The First Days segment and I had my head down as the names of the employees of the company the game was being created by flashed up.

"Who was making the game?" I asked urbabe.
"Dunno... probably no-one important"
The segment went on and they mentioned it was Infinite Interactive, which tingled my memory for some bizarre reason.
"Oh... I think you know who they are" I told urbabe as I quickly googled the name.
"Don't think so"
"They make this game called Puzzle Quest"
"Never heard of it" she sheepishly replied.
It's funny how a logo can pop up so many times when you play a game and you don't really pick up on it. I think Rare and Rockstar have done a brilliant job in the past of making their logos stand out (Conker's Bad Fur Day and GTA: Vice City stick out in my mind).

I should point out that she has all but one achievement to go in the game (including the expansion), which is to win a game on Xbox Live. So if you play, let us know. I'd play her if I wasn't on the same console... she'd very easily kick my butt...

What's surprising about the segment though is... well... I'll quote Si_ from the Infinite Interactive blog...
Quote:

for those that have watched it there was the brief tour of the I2 office, which pointed out a few people and what their job was.

The problem is they were all wrong..... (except Janeen)

Oh, but there's a prize for getting it right...
Quote:

So my faithful Blag readers, can you guess the real job titles of the people from the Good Game segment, there might be an eCookie for people who get it right, or perhaps a Raspberry Jetsam Mousse Cake

I just wonder why they are doing this... surely they should be working on Galactrix...

Seems that Lego will be releasing some new Pirate sets in 2009. Which makes me very happy. That's all. Kraken, pirate ships, cannons, sharks... arr...

We'll see what pricing is like when it's all offically announced instead of just scans of retailers' catalogs.

Oh and there's also some new Indiana Jones sets and farms? Interesting.

The Minifig (as we know it) turns 30 today. Hurrah!
To celebrate the anniversary, Lego has released a video here called Go, MiniMan, Go!.

But the unanswered question that Lego is looking to answer is "Who has the largest minifig collection?" I think the answer is not me... According to LEGO
Quote:

The LEGO minifigure represents the world’s largest population of people! Over 4 billion minifigures have been produced in the last 30 years. This is almost 3 times the population of China, almost 47 times the population of Germany, 66 times the population of the UK, 120 times the population of Canada and almost 12 times the population of the United States!

But even if you don't have the most minifigs, you can still enter the Brother's Brick Miniman Go Photo Contest.

And there's lots more stuff at Go Mini Man Go...

I tend to enjoy some spam. On occasion I respond to it in that kind of naive mocking way. On other occasions I just google my spam to see how common it is.

Recieved one today, from Mrs Rose Houry, which contained some strange phrases...
Quote:

I know you will see my letter to you as anembarrassment considering the fact that we do not know ourselves.

Googling this though I found a lovely blog entry where an Interpreter responds to his spam mail. Contained a lovely conversation with a co-worker (Stacey).

Quote:

"What are you writing?" asked the interpreter. "Keep it friendly."
"Oh, just chatting," said Stacey. "Girl-stuff." The interpreter looked over her shoulder.
"I try to keep these exchanges civil. "Idiotic, but civil."
"It's just spam."
"But it's my spam."

Made me smile for some reason... probably because it's exactly how I feel about my spam... It may be rubbish, but it's my rubbish. Go get your own rubbish if you want to burn it.

According to IGN, Singstar Amped is to be released in Australia. It's supposed to be Rock, er.. and it is a bit I suppose. Some decent Australian stuff on there. It looks like Singstar Amped was released in the US a year ago and the AU version has bits and pieces of it.
Just for the count... tracks by origin. AU 8, UK 10, US 12

Australia
Divinyls (NSW) - "Boys in Town"
Faker (NSW) - "This Heart Attack"
Grinspoon (NSW)- "Chemical Heart"
Regurgitator (QLD) - "Black Bugs"
Choirboys (NSW)- "Run to Paradise"
Silverchair (NSW) - "The Greatest View"
Spiderbait (VIC.. well kinda) - "Black Betty"
The Saints (QLD)- "I'm Stranded"

UK
Judas Priest (UK) - "Breaking the Law"
Judas Priest (UK) - "You've Got Another Thing Comin'"
David Bowie (UK) - "Changes"
Free (UK) - "All Right Now"
Kasabian (UK) - "LSF"
Robert Palmer (UK) - "Addicted to Love"
Skunk Anansie (UK) - "Weak As I Am"
The Subways (UK) - "Rock & Roll Queen"
The Cure (UK) - "Primary"
T-Rex (UK) - "20th Century Boy"

US
Mighty Mighty Bosstones (US) - "The Impression That I Get"
4 Non Blondes (US) - "What's Up"
Blink-182 (US) - "I Miss You"
Blue Oyster Cult (US) - "Don't Fear the Reaper"
Cheap Trick (US) - "I Want You to Want Me"
Faith No More (US)- "Evidence"
Fall Out Boy (US) - "This Ain't A Scene...It's An Arms Race"
Iggy Pop (US)- "Real Wild Child"
Quiet Riot (US) - "Cum On Feel The Noise"
Soul Asylum (US) - "Runaway Train"
Tonic (US) - "If You Could Only See"
Warrant (US) - "Cherry Pie"

Not really. Don't think we'll see much about Rock Band 2 until E3, though Gamespot has a hands on of Rock Band 2. Given that it's a pre-E3 event, there's not much given away, but it's something. Hard to know what's improved without having played the original.

Which brings us back to news of an Australian release date... As previously mentioned Dan Teasdale is the lead developer on Rock Band and an Aussie (from Brisbane?). Which puts him in a tricky place. In his latest Developer Q&A post is the following snipet
Quote:

Q: "Could you find Europe or Australia on a map? Only kidding. After the flamefest of the last European release hopefully you'll be more eager to talk about why there is a delay and such forth. So, why is there a delay and how long will it be?"

A: Trust me, I complain daily to everyone here about the release date in Australia (my home country). As soon as we can announce dates in other territories outside the US we will. Stay tuned for more info about this at E3! The window will be smaller this time around.

Not entirely sure what he means by "the window will be smaller this time around"... but at least it's an answer. The mention of E3 (which is next week) brings some joy too.

Coca-Cola is trying to relaunch Mother. Busting into the energy drinks market (a $150 million market in 2007) is kind of tricky for Coca-Cola. In the last 7 years, Coke has tried with Lift Plus, Burn and Recharge by Sprite and Mother.

At it's best (discounting early interest) Mother reached an 8% share, where V and Red Bull take up 90%. Why? Because while people like the concept of an all natural energy drink, it tastes horrible. After seeming to be dumping the product mid last year with dropping the price to almost nothing (causing speculation that Mother was made out of flat coke).

According to The Age reports that after spending millions, Coke is relaunching the Mother brand:
Quote:

But the $15 million marketing campaign, including two large sampling campaigns and heavy discounting in stores, failed to lift sales. At its peak, Coca-Cola's share of the energy drinks market, which IBIS World analysts put at $325 millionin 2007, stood at 6.3 per cent. Since then, sales have dwindled prompting Coke to rerelease the brand.

The new branding claims that it "Tastes nothing like the old one".

As a part of the new advertising campaign, they've enlisted Smart, who did the Coke Zero campaigns. Prepare to be assaulted with a whole new round of in your face advertising.

Now warily did I take up the challenge of drinking a bit of a can of new Mother. Having stupidly drunk a Lemon V last week (hated it, really tastes like dropping a lemon in a V) I was a bit cagey. The bottle has some really idiotic text...
Quote:

If you need a MOTHER of an energy hit, you need MOTHER. It delivers twice the kick[1], in a big black can.
So when a mate turns up with a wussy-sized can, you can raise your MOTHER up and proudly say 'did yours come with a man-bag?'
1 Compared to a standard 250ml Energy drink

Best Drunk Freeze Your Nuts Off Cold
Warning! High Caffeine Content... OK, we know that's why you're drinking it but our lame legal guys made us warn you not to feed this to kids, up the duff women or the weak who can't tolerate it

Yes, your hard, all of your friends are pussies and therefore you should drink Mother. Good on you. Although, Mother's target audience is 18-24 year old males, so I suppose I'm a little too old for this drivel.

The smell was definitely better, more along the lines of Red Bull.

And surprisingly it is drinkable. But not something that I would buy. The nasty sting and foul aftertaste is gone. But it's very meh, it hasn't been replaced by anything good. It's a good start, but given the option between Recharge and Mother (purely from a taste perspective) I'll take the Recharge (it tastes like Sprite).

From this double kick perspective... nah... I mean let's say it delivered a kick equal to that of two 250ml Red Bulls. The obvious question is, how often would you drink two Red Bulls bang after each other? OK, sometimes you might, but every time? Would you want your only energy drink for the day to be a Mother? On the positive side, now that it's drinkable, it won't take all your effort to finish the can, but seriously. And if size really matters, have they seen Jolt (which is currently branding itself as "The Energy Drink that actually tastes good")?

Wouldn't buy Mother, but I can drink it, which is a bonus if I get anymore free ones.

What I want from Rock Band 2... an Australian release date... this year... that doesn't slip.

IGN has an interview with Rock Band 2 Lead Designer Dan Teasdale, who it should be pointed out is an Australian. Anyway, Rock Band 2 will be released in the US in September (and Europe apparently) on the 360. Instruments will be improved and so forth... eh... but I want it.

But Dan's response to the interviewer's question about what bands should be in the game was met with an Australian focus...
Quote:

While I can't rate your list explicitly on "What's on Rock Band 2," I can rate you based on the number of times you mention music from my home country of Australia – which is none. Do you not like Australians? I'm a little offended that you haven't added iconic rock acts like Billy Thorpe, Radio Birdman, INXS, Midnight Oil or Crowded House to your list of songs. I haven't even started on modern bands like Regurgitator, Silverchair, Architecture in Helsinki, The Grates or Wolfmother!

Huh? Seriously how well known are the Gurge, Radio Birdman and so on (no offense). Wouldn't it be great to have these bands songs in Rock Band 2.... if it was released in Australia?

Just in case you didn't get it, I'd like Rock Band (either the original or the sequel... or both) released in Australia. Please....

Events...

Contact Urbaer

Blogroll

• Miriam Parkinson
• Cameron Reilly
• Michael Specht
• Jay
• Bianca Chen
• Jam
• Richard Giles
• ComicBookDB collection
• Goodreads
• Flickr
• Picassa
• scientaestubique
• urbabe
• Last.fm
• Twitter
• Lauren

Disclaimer