July 31, 2006
DVD Savant on the censorship of From Russia With Love in the UK ('What a performance', indeed.)
Google Sightseeing finds traffic accidents on Google Earth (The Internet is good for things like this.)
Gamasutra: 'Special: Hachenburg On EA China's Plans' (Allegedly, he's leaving the post soon, but interesting anyhow.)
July 30, 2006
GSW: 'ChinaJoy: Sega's Chinese Play' (We love you Sega, weeeee do.)
GSW: 'Game Mag Weaseling: Mag Roundup 7/29/06' (Another good overview of the U.S. game mag market.)
July 29, 2006
Gamasutra: 'Special: The9 On World Of Warcraft's Chinese Success' (WoW costs 6 cents per hour in China - not bad!)
GSW: 'COLUMN: 'Bastards of 32-Bit' - Skullmonkeys' (OK, not China-related, but DannyC writes up one of my favorite games, yay.)
July 28, 2006
GameSetWatch: ChinaJoy: World Of Warcraft & Coca-Cola Extravaganza! (Yes, including WoW/Coke-themed Whac-A-Mole. Really.)
July 27, 2006
Gamasutra: 'Exclusive: Xbox 360 Piracy Spreading Fast In China' (Yep, quite a few pirate X360 games out here, surprising.)
Gamasutra: 'Special: Inside China's Game Outsourcing Biz' (My latest report, on console game outsourcing to China - interesting stuff.)
July 26, 2006
Flickr: added some better Shanghai pics (Including, uhoh, a closed down Sega World, haw.)
Flickr: A few pics from Shanghai (All the good night stuff comes out blurry, but boy there's a lot of skyscrapers here.)
Gamasutra: 'Special: What Chinese Gamers Look For In MMOs' (Interesting info on what Chinese gamers actually care about.)
Gamasutra: 'Special: The State Of The Chinese Game Biz - Part 1' (A first write-up from Shanghai.)
July 24, 2006
Updates light for next few days - off to ChinaJoy 2006 (Doing biz meetings and then attending the Chinese video game show in Shanghai - will be posting updates and hopefully pictures on Gamasutra and GameSetWatch, will try to crosslink here! Back next Sunday.)
Popjapan.tv official website (In the Bay Area, Comcast carries this on AZN TV, if you want to see Japanese music vids without trawling YouTube - neeto - though the show is Sony-owned, so does that mean all Sony artists?)
Mowaxcuts podcast weblog (Awesome - a podcast just for mixing Mo' Wax releases.)
July 23, 2006
GSW: 'COLUMN: 'Game Mag Weaseling': Unraveling Game Players' (More immaculate video game history lessons from Kevin Gifford.)
YMU Playa: My YMU Playlist Mix: 'Ninja Tune Lets Us Play' (Latest playlist on my Yahoo! Music Unlimited blog, for one of my fave labels.)
UK DVD recommendation: Alexei Sayle's Stuff (Rather brilliant surreal '80s BBC series from seminal British alternative comedian, almost a tad Python-esque - has aged really well.)
GSW: Mega64 Version 2 Hits Online Shelves, Badoink (Clearly The Lonely Island of game skits, and TERRIBLY ignored by the mass media.)
July 22, 2006
Dubious Quality notes the Sci Fi animated show The Amazing Screw-On Head (Holy crapola, based on the Mike Mignola comic now I love you, Sci-Fi.)
Evan Dorkin updates and mentions the Game Developer cover he did for us (I'm a little fanboy about him, yes.)
YouTube: 'POP VIDEO AWARDS CELEBRITY MESSAGES' (As done by Adam Buxton, formerly of The Adam And Joe Show, for a UK awards show. Rather fun, esp. Michael Moore.)
MetaFilter lists the Kevin Smith 'Me And My Shadow' posts about Jason Mewes (Some comment snark here, but I appreciated it - via k0.)
July 21, 2006
eBay: Insanely large/rare comic book collection ("Includes early 1800s pieces featuring Dr. Syntax, who is an early (if not the earliest) recurring franchise character in comics... [plus the] Platinum era, beginning in 1897, with the Yellow Kid, the Brownies, Buster Brown, Little Orphan Annie, Charlie Chaplin and many more." And Action Comics #1!)
HOPE Number Six conf starts tomorrow in NY (Lots of eclectic goodness, NY-ers should go.)
Everybody loves Eric Raymond: 'Happy Mines' (Damn, I forgot about this hilarious webcomic. Also, Knuth is my homeboy themed T-shirts!)
July 20, 2006
LegalTorrents: 'Done The Impossible' Firefly/Serenity CC-licensed documentary added! (Possibly the best thing I've ever added to LegalTorrents (831mb .torrent) - an amazing doc, go buy the full DVD for the giganto-extras if you dig it.)
Gamasutra: 'Analyze This: Does Microsoft Need Japan to Make the Xbox 360 a Hit?' (Uh... maybe!)
CNN: 'Google's unknown artist has huge following' (Eagerly awaiting goatse day.)
YouTube: Valve's 'Portal' game trailer (In case you haven't seen - based on IGF Student winner Narbacular Drop!)
July 19, 2006
GSW: 'COLUMN: 'Free Play' - iteration GAMES' (More delving into awesome gaming niches, ta Dessgeega!)
SGS: 'ImpactGames on PeaceMaker, A Game For Social Change' (Talking about the game 'where the player takes on the role of either the Israeli Prime Minister or the Palestinian President'.)
GSW: 'Letters from the Metaverse: Take Shelter' (We continue to let Mathew Kumar wander around Second Life being Scottish. Is this sensible?)
July 18, 2006
YMU Playa - 'My YMU Playlist Mix: Madchester Rave On' (A little more Bez influence from my YMU blog.)
Monotonik: Delayscape - 'Everybody Drops EP' (CC-licensed Danish electro on my net.label - stream it at the Internet Archive.)
July 17, 2006
DCComics.com: 'LoEG: The Black Dossier' (The 1950s League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen one-shot, 'includes a "Tijuana Bible" insert and a 3-D section complete with custom glasses' - the next LoEG after that will be Top Shelf-published, interestingly.)
Indevelopment.org: Ads from Alan Moore's '1963' pastiche comic books (Just got most of the series itself in another eBay box of comics - Moore's geekiest, most lighthearted work.)
Videoville - music video wiki (A bit busted up, but reminded me of Videos.antville.org again, which is great for music vids and which I forgot about.)
The Horrors - 'Sheena Is A Parasite' music video (First new Chris Cunningham vid in 7 years (!) - scary/odd.)
YMU Album Playlist: Grant-Lee Phillips - 'Nineteeneighties' (Mm, retro album alert on my new YMU playlist blog.)
July 16, 2006
Quick Stop Entertainment: 'Interview: Carlos Alazraqui' (From Rocko to Taco Bell Chihuahua to Reno 911, yay.)
Music Thing on Manchester's Instrument festival (If it's Tenori-On-related, it's mentioned here - whoa, Tenori-On official blog, nice!)
Twichfilm: Trailer Alert: A Night at the Museum (Silly Xmas movie starring, uhh, Ben Stiller, Owen Wilson, Robin Williams, Steve Coogan, Ricky Gervais, Ernest Borgnine, Dick Van Dyke, Mickey Rooney. Sold!)
Kircher Society on artificial Solresol language (Includes 'a vocabulary of 11,732 possible words', can be sung.)
Kaiju Shakedown details Jackie Chan's drunken concert appearance (Better detail than the wire reports, which I was suspicious of.)
July 15, 2006
Independent Source: 'The top 10 unintentionally worst company URLs' (Very silly. Via Jark.)
DVD Savant guest views: Ronnie Barker's 'Futtocks End' ('A slightly saucy silent movie', even.)
'Big Floppy People' Swedish retro demo-scene party (Only for 'c64, Amiga, Atari, Spectrum, anything low-tech.' Via ABFY.)
GSW: 'Slipgate Ironworks Smites Lazy Workers!' (John Romero's new company 'borrows' its logo from the communists, heh.)
Yahoo! Music Blog - 'This Week In Playlisting 4' (Mentions my new blog YMU Playa, yay!)
July 14, 2006
Gamasutra: 'Exclusive: DB Weiss Talks Halo Screenplay' (Not a fan of slavish game to movie conversions, apparently.)
The Rugs Don't Work: 'Over In About An Hour: Volume 1' (Some nice YMU playlisting - there are two others in the series already.)
Gamasutra: 'A Glimpse Inside the Cell Processor' (It's, uhh, a bit complicated!)
July 13, 2006
Gamasutra: 'Xbox Live Hits 60% Attach As New Details Revealed' (Two billion hours of gaming, too. Did I mention I love XBL?)
GSW: 'Ex-Frag Doll Branches Out, Bites Back' (This got picked up a few places, I hope the Frag Dolls don't try to have me bumped off again.)
GDMag.com: '2006 Game Career Guide Presented By Game Developer Magazine' (Yes, yes, it's an Evan Dorkin-drawn cover vaguely spoofing Nevermind, yes! On newsstands soon!)
July 12, 2006
GSW: 'COMIC: 'Our Blazing Destiny' - Super Mario Bros!' (Uh, I hope nobody in corporate at my company is reading GSW, haw.)
ZDMCirc: Free EGM subscription for U.S. residents (In case you don't have one already - not a bad mag.)
Gamasutra: 'Beyond Conversion Rate: Further Numbers to Improve Casual Game Sales' (V. good piece by Reflexive/GameTunnel's Russ Carroll.)
GSW: 'COLUMN: Letters from the Metaverse - American Apparel in a Parallel World' (Fun column on Second Life from Mathew Kumar continues!)
July 11, 2006
YMU Playa: 'My YMU Playlist Mix: 'Ozric Tentacles Envelop Me'' (A best-of for the psychedelic UK band I compiled for my new YMU blog, yay.)
GameSetWatch: 'GameSetInterview: Barrie Ellis @ OneSwitch On Accessible Gaming' (V. interesting piece, hopefully not to be ignored.)
Gamasutra: 'The Designer's Notebook: 'Bad Designer, No Twinkie!' VII' (Much Twinkie withholding necessary.)
July 10, 2006
Arthur Magazine - neat music-ish mag with free PDF downloads (The Wikipedia page has more - nice to see pubs like this still exist.)
Kircher: 'The Blue People of Troublesome Creek' (They're pretty, uh, blue.)
Twitchfilm on Dr. Who's 3rd series assistant (I refuse to torrent 'em, so I'm waiting for the (box set) UK DVD release of the second series.)
July 09, 2006
Poppy Z Brite's list of the Great American Novels (Handy.)
Collision Detection: 'How the attention-span of the world is changing' (Something I wrestle with every day.)
Slashdot: Billy West interview ('I did an entire season of Futurama with one vocal chord because the other one had constricted up into itself.')
July 08, 2006
YMU Playa - my new playlists weblog ('An unofficial site that shares Yahoo! Music Unlimited playlists', yay, subscribe and share too.)
Reminder: California Extreme in San Jose this weekend (EDIT - Got a cold, so probably not going now, bleh - but there's some good talks on Saturday tho.)
Gamasutra: 'Postmortem: Digital Chocolate's Tower Bloxx' (Wow, this cellphone game looks great - nice postmortem too.)
GSW: 'COLUMN: 'Bastards of 32-Bit' - Cosmic Race' (The worst PlayStation game you never heard of!)
July 07, 2006
GSW: 'Like DOOM III, But With Added Jesus!' ('We are fully confident our video games will prepare all players in their daily battle against the devil, his followers and their evil ways.')
Survival Research Labs starts page for upcoming San Jose gig (...which I will be attending, yay!)
July 06, 2006
Gamasutra: 'Exclusive: Sony Talks PS3 E-Distribution Initiative' (I got some of the first (albeit vague) info about the PS3's version of Xbox Live Arcade - only about 25% of my questions got answered, mind you, heh.)
GameSetWatch: 'Special Report: To Live And Game In NY' (Ridiculously exhaustive guide from Matt 'Fort90' Hawkins, thanks!)
Music For Ants: 'The Evolution Of Crazy' (Both the original sample and some sublime cover versions of Gnarls Barkley - the Twilight Singers version is beautiful. [Via Waxy.])
July 05, 2006
USA Today Popcandy on Buffy TV unaired pilot (Lack of Alyson Hannigan main talking point.)
Twitchfilm on Daft Punk's 'Electroma' movie (This will, likely, be terrible.)
Quick Stop Entertainment: Russell T. Davies (Dr. Who) interview (Filming for third series starts soon, and I haven't even seen the second yet.)
TheCuteProject.com (Turning adorability into a commodity, daily! From Reed of GameTab fame and his SO.)
July 04, 2006
Nick Denton note on Gawker Media reshuffle (Some good points, but I find 'perversely countercyclical move' incredibly smug, for some reason. [UPDATE - here's more on the subject from Business Week.])
UK DVD recommendation: 'Stella Street: The Complete Third Series' (A very odd, very cult impression-based show with the voice of Gorillaz' Murdoc and Phil Sessions.)
July 03, 2006
GameSetWatch: 'Game Mag Weaseling: Mag Roundup 7/1/06' (Ferrets and terrible MMO mags, all at once!)
Yahoo! Music Engine: 'Union Jack Swing' playlist by 'lyndseylaunch' (Click if you have YME - great 80+-song mix of British hiphop from Yahoo! Music staffer.)
Silicon Beat: Cisco leads investment in Akimbo (I keep meaning to review my Akimbo box.)
The Comics Reporter: 'Why We Should Be Worried That Diamond Comic Distributors Rejected PictureBox, Inc' (Interesting.)
July 02, 2006
Romanesko: 'Oops!: Paper runs "Dummies" hed in Special Olympics section' (Just 'something that slipped by', apparently.)
Quick Stop Toy Box: Hawaiian Spike and Angel (OK, Buffy and Angel fandom/merchandising, simmer down there!)
Pop Candy: 'Talkin' 'zines with Esther Pearl Watson' (I enjoy Pop Candy, of the mainstream media-affiliated blogs.)
Pink Tentacle: 'Robot Museum Set To Open In October' (Damn, I'm in Japan in September - oh well.)
Paul Boutin on Greenpeace's press release faux pas ("In the twenty years since the Chernobyl tragedy, the world's worst nuclear accident, there have been nearly [FILL IN ALARMIST AND ARMAGEDDONIST FACTOID HERE]")
July 01, 2006
Loonyboi on the Swedish bot song ('I know a bot. Her name is Anna. Anna is her name. She can ban, ban you so hard. She cleans up our channel.')
USA Today: 'Potter doomsday approaches, but for whom?' (It's all about the estimated percentages.)
Priz: 'Build The Village' (Wow, The Prisoner Lego, wonderfully geeky - via FoundOnTheWeb.)
Cinematical: 'Morgan Spurlock Presents...' DVD doc series launched (Good way to publicize otherwise obscure docs, or more tedious personality-driven marketing? Former!)
Gamasutra: 'Ron Gilbert On His Post-Guybrush Universe' (It's all about the Threepwood.)