| Turn on the TV let it drip right down in your eye |
[Oct. 31st, 2026|06:45 am] |
As people keep asking me off-line, here is the definition of the HDTV standard:
1280x720 OR 1920x1080 native resolution in square pixels
HDMI interface OR DVI with didgital audio interface
HDCP compatable
If your TV does not have this, it cannot play true HDTV.
The 'HD-Ready' sticked does not guarentee the above specs! Be sure to ask a service monkey when buying your TV. |
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| Now the hour of my return is drawing near |
[Sep. 16th, 2011|06:47 pm] |
| [ | music |
| | Iron Savior - Dragon's Rising | ] |
Well, here I am, finished work for a week off :D
Alas, it will mostly consist of sorting out the house. Hopefully this will be the end of it until we're ready to re-fit and re-decorate.
Further, today it is fourteen years to the day that I left home for uni. A lot has changed in teh meantime of coure, but life is, in general, awesome.
Also, for those who've missed it, there's a BBQ at my place tomorrow evening (turning into a partay of we're rained out). |
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| (no subject) |
[Aug. 2nd, 2011|07:24 am] |
Well, as of today, ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif?v=92.1) littletinwench as officially put up with me for six whole years. She's evidently totally lost the plot and is totally awesome. I'm a very lucky Slev. |
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| Bind all of us together, Ablaze with hope and free |
[May. 21st, 2011|02:29 pm] |
| [ | music |
| | The Prophecy - Rivers | ] |
So, much ado today about a minority fringe of Christianity's disproportionally vocal extremist fringe proclaiming the discriminant Rapture.
And of course, a lot of people miss-interpreting this as typical of Christianity, ignoring the silent Christian majority who usually don't give theese guys validation by arguing with them.
However, some points to consider on the Rapture:
Theoretically, if God can do ANYTHING, and proof in the existence of God denies the faith in God Christianity as a whole insists is so important, would God not rapture people in such as way that there was no evidence they ever existed, thus... leaving no evidence of the rapture?
On the other hand, would it not be true that evidence of the Rapture in preventing faith would undermine the underlying tenants of Christianity, and hence disprove it as a religion?
Further, in the Bible it states that no mortal, angel, and not even Jesus knows when things will end, only God does. Thus if this IS in the bible as the claimants insist, does that mean they then acknowledge the bible is flawed since it would be a direct contradiction? Either way, the "imminent" Rapture is not certain, since either interpretation could be equally wrong.
Further to all of this, Rapture eschatology originate with a Jesuit re-interpretation of the Revelation to John, which biblical scholars insist is a coded diatribe against the Roman Empire. This was reinterpreted to refute protestant claims about the Pope being the Antichrist. It is now used by the Pentecostal movement (who believe Catholicism isn't really Christianity) almost exclusively. Contradiction much? |
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| A penny won't do |
[May. 17th, 2011|01:45 pm] |
For those who don't know I've hurt my knee, very badly.
I am resultantly forced to sell my ticket for Rush in Manchester this Thursday , all reasonable offers considered.
I am, of course, gutted by this. The sawbones still don't know what I've done to my knee, but I've been given a three week sick note and strict instructions not to go anywhere unless absolutely necessary. I'll tell the full story later when my head clears from the painkillers they've had me on. |
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| Get me down the rock club pretty damn quick |
[Apr. 21st, 2011|08:01 pm] |
So, getting on for a year ago, Rockworld failed, and a slew of other nights sprung up to fill the void. Most of those nights died pretty quickly, and many others (some of which pre-dated Rockworld's demise) have folded too.
Now, there is no single reason all these clubs/nights failed. In most cases, it's a combination of several underlying reasons.
The first is due to how people deal with music. Most people don't actually like music as an art-form, rather they treat it as something in the background and something to dance to. These people learn to like specific songs that remind them of good times, and can hence be sold to.
The minority who like music though, really love music, and while they might like a few tracks on the same basis as the majority (typically where a person likes only one or two tracks by an artist), they otherwise tend to be fans of bands or at least albums. However, genres like we're discussing, counter-intuitively, have people who don't like music who consider themselves fans. As teenagers they find the sub-cultures attached to these genres attractive to and accepting of them, and grow to like certain popular tracks as a result*.
Thus a club night needs to cater to two diverse groups, the first who want the same narrow-selection of well-known tracks each week, and those who don't understand why you're playing such a boringly limited selection each week. You see, to the latter, if, say, Iron Maiden are popular, there's no reason not to play stuff like Out of the Silent Planet, Twilight Zone or The Black Bart Blues. They miss the former group not being familiar with this stuff. The former though aren't fans of Iron Maiden, the band isn't as popular as certain of their tracks. Each group cannot understand the other fully, the best we can hope for is to learn to understand the difference.
Alas, with alternative music, neither group usually has the numbers to make a regular night successful on their own.
The second problem is in how people access music. Go back fifteen years, and the record companies and mass-media still acted as gate-keepers to music. Resultantly, we had a (comparatively) narrow range of very popular acts. As the record companies have effectively abandoned alternative music over the last fifteen years though, and as the internet has taken their place, there are no gate-keepers. Any band can become well-known, and if you like a specific sub-genre, you can find bands easily. This leads to a (comparatively) wide range of fairly popular bands.
The result for clubs is that there is far less of a "mainstream" for most of the alternative genres. This means that it's harder to have dance-floor fillers, harder to find tracks with broad popularity amongst your customer base, and thus harder to play the kinds of music your clientèle enjoy. This is also why nights which are both occasional and specialist do so well.
As I mentioned previously, there are plenty of punters to be had, the clubs just haven't been delivering what people want, largely due to a lack of consensus amongst the customers as to what that is. Further, while the puk and goth scenes still seems to be in a determinant slow decline due to a lack of fresh blood**, occasional specialist nights still draw a crowd (just look how many goths travel significant distance to attend the Wendy House over in Leeds).
So, these two problems in consort make it very difficult for DJs to play to any given crowd successfully. Looking at rockworld it had four fairly big rooms. What it needed though was five or six smaller rooms to account for the ever diverging tastes.that's just to continue to support it's traditional crowd, not to start catering to the emos, nu-metallers, gothlings, new-wave-pop-rockers (or indie-rockers as they're perversely known), etc, etc.
Further to all this is a problem introduced with the move to twenty-four-hour licensing. Previously, people who wanted to continue boozing past eleven would be forced to accompany their mates to the club. This means that those wanting to booze and those wanting to dance would stay together.
Now however, the boozers can stay boozing on the cheap, which leaves the dancers the choice of abandoning their mates or abandoning what they want to do.
Further, the clubs are now in semi-direct competition with the bars for the business of these boozers, but are still pricing themselves as if they where not. Don't get me wrong that a small mark-up in a club is acceptable, but the large difference caused by the old pricing structure is detrimental.
*Incidentally, when these people join the work force and stop needing the sub-culture, their love of "our" music falls by the way-side, leading to the mistaken belief that music is for teenagers.
**I mentioned here how the scenes in Manchester are composed mostly of Students, the rock societies these days have only a very tiny number of goths/punks these days. The reduced number of younger goths/punks leads to fewer younger kids being exposed to the music in a vicious cycle, causing those genres to "grey". |
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| See what's ruling all our lives |
[Apr. 21st, 2011|11:11 am] |
OK, so, the referendum on voting reform. As ever, I'd rather you vote for something I don't want than not vote. I'm just looking at the situation.
First Past the Post is, of course, very simple. People vote for a single candidate, the candidate with the most votes wins.
In practice this means that the candidate with the largest minority of votes wins. Only 20%* (approx) of the electorate actually voted for the Tories in the election, but they achieved almost 50% of seats.
Similarly, it encourages tactical voting: in order to keep out unwanted candidates, people who believe they have little chance of their favoured candidate getting in vote for parties they don't really support. True this is more a fault of voters rather than the system, but the fact that this can happen reflects poorly on the system.
So, why do the "NO to AV" lobby want FPTP?? Well this link shows why they DON'T want AV. It's all bollocks, as has been every advert they put out, proposing false-equivalence choices. Don't forget the Treasury says AV will cost the same as FPTP.
Further, the donor list for the "NO to AV" lobby has been released, and its numbers are almost entirely made up by wealthy business magnates invested in the status-quo of having a de-facto two-party system where both the major parties practice similar politics and are in the pockets of said donors.
As for political parties, only two are siding with these jokers. First is the Tories, who have spent one hell of a lot of the last century in power, ruling despite having a plurality of the nation's votes rather than a majority. The second are the BNP who win seats by taking advantage of split tactical voting that plagues the current system.
But what about rational and logical opposition to AV? A lot of people object to it on the grounds not that they prefer FPTP, but on the grounds that the reform is not strong enough. Better, they say, to say no to this and agitate for REAL reform further down the line. Better no reform than poor reform. After all, this will cause even more agitation for such reform.
Not it can be argued that this is throwing the baby out with the bathwater. If the "no" vote wins, politicians who don't want reform can use it as proof that FPTP is popular. Refusing to vote "yes" for anything other than full voting reform is a risky strategy.
The counter-argument to this though, is that AV represents a foot-in-the-door towards full reform. IF the people overwhelmingly show they embrace the reform, why would a party not want to be know in the future as the party who gave the people more reform? Yes, we can't know which way it will go, but history has shown us a reticence for politicians to change the status-quo unless given a strong motivation.
I've not, as of yet, been able to find any other rational objections to AV. If you know of any, please tell me.
As to the Yes to AV group? a few want this specific system, but most want a bigger reform by all accounts. There's a lot to be said for a system which requires a candidate to achieve a broad support over a majority of the electorate if they want to win. With a similar "foot-in-the-door" mentality mentioned above, people are clamouring for a "yes" vote, making it easier to elect people who will give them further reform. Of course, there is a risk that having had a reform already, it will be used as an argument to prevent further reform, but it is pretty tenuous.
So, reasons to vote "No":
1. You support the Tories an want then to carry on ruling most of the time without a full majority;
2. You support the BNP and want them to keep getting seats;
3. You're a wealthy business type with the labour and/or Tory party in your pocket;
4. You want a bigger reform and are willing to risk any and all reform to get the exact form you like.
Reasons to vote "yes":
1. You want to be able to vote your conscience while still keeping undesirable parties out;
2. You want a bigger reform, but are hoping to use this to get us moving in that direction;
3. You hate the big business types having political parties in their pockets. |
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| Hey you! Get off my back! |
[Feb. 22nd, 2011|06:19 am] |
DON'T LET THEM MAKE YOU GET UP AN HOUR EARLY!
So, snathe posted a link to this tomfoolery.
Why "Tomfoolary"? The are suggesting we change our system of time so we have an extra hour of light in the evenings. What could possibly be wrong with that?
Well, we achieve this extra hour by doing everything an hour early. Office workers will effectively be working eight 'til four. The old six-two shift becomes five-one. Night-clubs close at three not four, and pubs at ten, not eleven.
The given argument then is not a reason to change the system of time. What they are really arguing is that we should all get up and do things an hour early.
I say, if that's the argument they want to make, let them. I object, however, to trying to do this via the back door!
I'll back a change in the system of time if you can give me a reasoned, scientific argument as to why it needs to be adjusted. I'll back BST for (a little over) half the year if you can give me a logical scientific or logistical reason for it's existence.
Myself and the BST-all-year cranks can agree that changing the clocks twice a year is foolish and cunter-productive. We should just have a single time and stick to it. It doesn't mean I'm happy to get up to arrive at work for seven-thirty every morning though.
GMT is a nice, simple system. If anything we should stick with it all year round. There is no logical argument for BST anyway, since every argument for it is, again, an argument for getting up earlier in the summer and autumn, rather than an argument for monkeying about with the clocks.
Beyond that, I'll be agitating for GMT all year round, at least then we lose the confusing two weekends a year, and we know what the bloody time is all year around. |
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| Riding on a tidal-wave of energy and sound |
[Feb. 7th, 2011|06:55 pm] |
So, my up-until-then-good weekend was ruined by Sunday - End of Cathedral announced, Garry Moore's death announced, game group cancelled on me, and my back is in agony from being punched by Louise at Becca's party.
The day was salvaged by a nice game of Merchant of Venus against littletinwench (which I actually won!), but alas I've spent the day at work struggling for breath due to my back. Another early night it is then.
Still, I need to remember just how awesome my life is. I know I'm very lucky even if I'm having a rough few days.
On that note, I have various tickets, so who is going to see:
Ensiferum/Machinae Supremacy;
Rush;
Iron Maiden;
BOA?
And before anyone asks, I don't know why I'm defaulting to IS song titles recently, don't ask. |
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| When little worlds collide |
[Jan. 28th, 2011|03:07 pm] |
One of my fascinations is the US political process. Given the USA's disproportionate impact on global socio-economic factors, some knowledge of their politics is important. Beyond that, much like watching a train wreck, it's impossible to look away.
For those who don't know, the USA's current administration is mostly composed by the centre-right Democratic Party, who for the Yanks are a left-wing option, the other parties generally being even further right.
Following the failed assassination of an elected official from the Democratic party by a likeley crazed gunman, extreme-right gas-bag Rush Limbaugh has declared heavy metal to be the source of the problem.
Limbaugh is the fellow who vowed to leave the USA if their right-of-centre-right health cre reform law was passed, since it was too left-wing for his tastes. He's yet to leave.
Th USA has pretty much no regulation forcing businesses to be socially responsible where free market theory fails to force such responsibility due to its flaws. As a result, this "man" gets away with spouting all manner of demonstrably false and often hypocritical statements.
His genius idea is that the gunman shot an unarmed woman in the head, along with killing a number of bystanders including children, due to being a fan of a sing by the nu-metal band Drowning Pool, hence it's the fault of metal.
However, nu-metal is not a type of heavy metal. Make your mind up Rush, the two music types are different.
However, that's a minor point, as the song that apparently set the gunman off with its violent imagery is about mosh pits. That's right, it's a song about dancing!
Oh noez! we can't have people listening to songs about dancing! They might turn into murderers!
Quick, ban Abba and the Nolans! close down all the dance halls and theatres. Down with ballet! (By which I don't mean the chimp riding a little car). Ban the Hustle and the Time Warp and Agadoo (actually there's probably a case for that last one). Take the Hokey-Cokey and Ring-a-Ring-O'-Roses out of schools!
Seriously Rush, did you think this one through? I'd say you where slow but that would: i) insult slow people; ii) imply some kind of motion in the first place.
Given that this is advice Rush evidently is in need of I'll leave you with the words of metal's founders, Black Sabbath:
"Just remember love is life and hate is living death." |
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