Right... I apologise sincerely in advance for any offence this may cause but I need to get it off my chest.I was back at work today after a very enjoyable five days off from work and as if getting up in the freezing cold and having to leave the house to sit on the tube for an hour isn't bad enough I was greeted by a new poster at Marylebone station. Now this wasn't one of those nice adverts for holidays in the Ukraine or even some of that pretentious poetry on the underground that's been popping up recently. It was a five foot tall picture of a Joseph Merrick lookalike. Now I'm really sorry but facial deformities scare me. I mean really scare me. I didn't feel right all morning. It's a feeling not unlike the one you got as a child when you watched the climax of The Fly when Jeff Goldblum's head splits open to reveal the monster underneath or one of the Robocop goons meets his end by getting covered in toxic waste and partially melting.I'm a bit scared now that I might run into this poster at other stations when I'm similarly unprepared... or even worse having it in front of me in a carriage when I have to travel from Balham to Edgeware... or opposite the platform blown up to about 20 feet high.Everyone needs a phobia but I wish mine wasn't so horrible to people that already must have a really shit time.
Published by Louis Houghton
on Monday 29 December, 2008 at 19:31
I thought I better get going on the first game nn my list before I completely forgot about it and wrote about something else.I was a bit of a late comer to the whole Burnout party. I never played the first three games on PS2 which is strange because Ridge Racer 4 is one of my favourite racing games and I'm a huge fan of the arcade style. I picked up Burnout Legends on the PSP fairly early after it came out as during that time there was a distinct lack of great games on the PSP. I played it to death and I truly believe that it's one of the contributing factors in me only getting a 2:2 at university. This was also during the period where I was travelling to Brighton, London or Milton Keynes to see Jordan every week so it helped me through a lot of long train and coach journeys.My only gripe with the game was the rather horrendous load times. When you were playing crash mode and had to restart the level every 30 seconds or so the 15 second load times really got in the way.Once Christmas is over and I have some free cash I'll definitely be picking up Burnout Paradise on the 360.
Published by Louis Houghton
on Friday 05 December, 2008 at 15:42
Today at work I was listening to the Final Fantasy VII Advent Children soundtrack. Advent Children is a CGI movie sequel to Final Fantasy VII - one of the most loved video games ever made. This got me thinking about FFVII and then about all of the other games that I have loved over the years which gave me the idea of doing a top 10. After thinking about what would make my top 10 I ended up with a mental list of about 15 or 20 and could not for the life of me decide what would make the list and what wouldn't.So I decided it would be more fun to write a series of posts over the next few weeks in which I would name one game on the list and describe why it's there. The list will be in alphabetical order (or in no order at all) so as not to show any favouritism.I must stress that this is just my own oppinion and I will inevitably leave off many amazing games due to me not playing them or just thinking they aren't very good. Over the years I have owned a fair few consoles and a pretty decent gaming PC so the list will cover most formats. For your information, this is what I've owned...ZX Spectrum, NES, Master System, Mega Drive, MegaCD, 32X, SNES, Sega Saturn, N64, Playstation, Playstation 2, Game Boy, DS, PSP, Pocketstation (ahem) and XBox 360.I have only recently acquired the XBox 360 so don't expect to see many new games on the list and I haven't really played the N64 since Jordan told me she had one a couple of years ago.I hope you all enjoy my trip down memory lane and please give your oppinions on my choices!
Published by Louis Houghton
on Thursday 04 December, 2008 at 18:32
Hurrah! There is nothing quite like listening to a new album by one of your favourite bands and it not being a huge disappointment. Having been fairly hard up for cash over the last few months I have held off from buying Sigur Ros' new album Með Suð Í Eyrum Við Spilum Endalaust. I had watched the excellent video for Gobbledigook a few times and decided to at least download that one track. Upon searching iTunes I found that the album was going for £5.99 (iTunes Plus, hence no DRM), an offer I couldn't pass up. My tube journey to work takes around an hour so I decided that it was the perfect opportunity to give it a good listen from beginning to end. I cant be bothered to go into a track by track review or anything but I have to say that overall, the album is definitely a candidate for my favourite album... that's right... even better than Takk... and ( ).If you are one of those people that only download single songs (I couldn't do it. I'm too anal about my iTunes library - single tracks piss me off) I would highly recommend Goggledigook - even if you had previously written off Sigur Ros as pretentious bollocks. There are several more 'catchy' songs, i.e. not 10 minutes long, throughout the album but they do not in any way sound dumbed down or unlike Sigur Ros. There are a couple of epics on there too so lets not get too scared that we'll see Jonsi playing his guitar with a violin bow on T4 just yet... although they like to be all edgy and underground nowadays so we just might...Now the reason for the plural in the title of this post is because I also wanted to quickly write about The Cure's new album 4:13 Dream. I've deliberately waited a while to voice my opinions because they have a habit of changing over a short period of time as was the case with 2004's The Cure. At the time I listened to it non stop but now I only ever really listen to Lost, Going Nowhere and, if we are talking about the vinyl, This Morning. A similar thing happened with 4:13 Dream. I listened to it once through and made up an opinion which after several more plays had completely reversed. I hated it.Well... maybe hate is too strong. I couldn't really hate an album that included Underneath the Stars and The Perfect Boy but the rest seemed a bit of a disappointment. At least The Cure (the album) flipped between upbeat songs and more dreary ones. 4:13 Dream is practically musical Prozac in comparison. I know Robert has promised that we'll see the darker songs on another album released next year but rarely can we trust our mate Bob. After listening through a good few times (as of this time, the play count is at around 20) I've realised that it doesn't really matter that there are no Disintegrations, Bloodflowers or Colds. It is still a great collection of more energetic, punchier Cure songs that will be remembered alongside Just Like Heaven and Inbetween Days rather that the aforementioned epics. You can decide for yourselves over at the album's Last.fm page where every track is available in full. I'll just sit and wait in hope that we do actually see this dark album next year and I finally get to hear a non live version of the almost legendary song 'A Boy I Never Knew' - a song recorded for the 2004 album but scraped because it was so sad the recording had Robert crying for the last minute. It was lost for about four years until they played it on this year's 4Tour. Now that's The Cure that everyone really wants. Not all this happy lark.
Published by Louis Houghton
on Wednesday 26 November, 2008 at 22:40
Yet again, I apologise for the complete radio silence on this blog over the last month. I'm not sure why I haven't posted as there have been several important events that have occurred over the last month which I have been quite interested in such as the new Cure album, The Cure playing the O2, the U.S. presidential election and the wonderful Dead Set.One other thing to happen to me this month is my (almost) free acquisition of an XBox 360. I have a friend who earns a fair amount of money. He is also quite impatient. His second XBox 360 started showing the infamous red ring of death and was therefore useless. I assured him that he could get it repaired and that I would even sort it all out for him and send it off myself. He didn't want to wait that long and the next weekend he went out and bought himself a brand new premium model. He then donated the broken console to me to send off to be repaired.I bought some packing paper and bubble wrap (this is the almost part of the previous paragraph - cost = £6.00) and sent it off to the Microsoft repair centre in Frankfurt. It has only been a week and I have already been told via Microsoft's support site that they have sent out my new XBox. I should have it arrive some time next week.Now the last time I wrote a post about video games was back in April. I was annoyed at not being able to play Grand Theft Auto IV and I mentioned I was very much a PlayStation fan. It's not due to any mindless fanboyism, it's just because I have had Playstations since 1998 and most of my favourite franchises are Sony exclusives (WipeOut, Gran Turismo, Metal Gear Solid). I do not, however, have a spare £299 + games to spare on buying a PlayStation 3 so a free XBox will make a pretty good stand in since other than the franchises I have mentioned, most games are cross platform or indeed Microsoft exclusives. I am still faced with the problem of disliking the controller and of course having to quickly translate A, B, X and Y into X, Triangle, Circle and Square. I'm sure after playing GTA for a few hours I will have worked it out but I still doubt I will ever love a controller more than the Dual Shock.Another problem I am facing is the fact that I'm not a huge fan of first person shooters. OK, this may sound strange coming from someone that often cites Half Life 2 as one of his favourite games but that's different... that's Half Life 2. I am looking forward to Bioshock and maybe one of the new Call of Dutys but I couldn't care less about Halo 3 or 90% of the other FPSs that clutter up the XBox game catalogue. I am also not fussed about XBox live. I don't particularly want to pay £30 a year to be called a 'gay' or a 'pussy' by a fifteen year old American kid because I don't play the game 19 hours a day. Online gaming is really something that has passed me by.So there we are. I am a PlayStation fan forced to go over to the dark side. When I bought my iMac back in April 2007 I thought I was rid of Microsoft but they have a funny way of getting themselves back into your life. Lets just hope that they've sorted out their god awful quality control and my shiny new box won't die a horrible death lit by three red lights in a few months time.I shall report back once I've had a few days of play with it and I can say for sure whether I feel cheap and dirty from cheating on Lady Playstation with her most bitter of rivals or whether I will be starting divorce proceedings.
Published by Louis Houghton
on Sunday 16 November, 2008 at 14:25
It's been weeks since my last post and I'm afraid this one isn't really going to make up for the lack of attention being paid to this blog at the moment.Lying in bed this morning I was flicking through the channels and ended up settling on Sound which is a trendy music show presented by Radio 1 DJ Annie Mac and generic, indie funny-man Nick Grimshaw. This usually isn't my thing but I do sometimes like to see what music is popular nowadays. There was a band... no wait, that's the wrong word... I'm not quite sure how to describe them. Think of Blazin Squad with only three members and one of those members being female... got it? They are called N Dubs if you want to look them up or maybe listen to a 30 second preview on iTunes. You know, just for fun.Well, (the?) N Dubs were being interviewed by the aforementioned Annie and Nick and were discussing how they feel that they have worked really hard to get where they are and, even though they respect other artists who don't write their own songs, they see themselves as more credible because they do everything. It then cut to their performance of a song called Ouch. Now bear in mind that they have just 'bigged up' their song writing skills in the interview section. The chorus consists of the line 'I loved you so much but you cheated on me' and 'You need to recognise that she was just a whore.' Top notch lyrics if you ask me.
Published by Louis Houghton
on Saturday 18 October, 2008 at 15:02
Every month from May to August The Cure released a new single on the 13th. The Singles were The Only One, Freak Show, Sleep When I'm Dead and The Perfect Boy. Now I wrote my thoughts on The Only One back in May when it was released but I didn't get round to writing anything about the other songs. All were a good listen but it was The Perfect Boy that made me wish it was the 29th of October so I could hear the new album (Dream 4:13).In September they released an E.P., Hypnagogic States which includes remixes of all four singles and one mash up, as it were, by 65DaysofStatic - a band who have already reserved £8 of my first pay packet to buy an album. I'm not usually a big fan of remix albums as remixes seldom live up to the original. Hynagogic States is like that in a way. A little of their Cure-ness is lost in the translation but overall they are all still great songs. The Perfect Boy would still be amazing if Robert Smith sang it over the sound of tortured kittens.The final mash up track, Exploding Head Syndrome, is slightly different. At 21 minutes long it almost feels like Godspeed You Black Emperor if they went a bit disco. As it bears so little resemblance to the original material, Exploding Head Syndrome holds up as its own piece. I would expect little else from one of my future favourite bands.Not bad for £3.99.
Published by Louis Houghton
on Tuesday 30 September, 2008 at 16:48
A few years ago my girlfriend received a booked called 1001 Movies to See Before You Die. Due to Jordan's love of ticking things off lists, we decided that it would be fun to tick off the films that we have seen and work our way through the book. To be honest, we haven't been the dedicated high brow film watchers that we hoped but we have managed to watch a fair few. Some time last week we decided to make a concerted effort to work our way through the list. We have also set up a spreadsheet to mark off each film so we get a running total... it also makes searching for a film on there much easier.So this week I have watched...Roman Holiday Annie Hall The Great Escape Wolf Man Notorious Easy Rider Grave of the Fireflies Things to Come Frankenstein The Maltese FalconThe Great Train Robbery Only Angels Have Wings Rabbit-Proof Fence Muriel's WeddingThere was, I'm sure, one other film on that list but I cannot for the life of me remember what film I watched before The Maltese Falcon. I suppose that says something about how much I enjoyed The Maltese Falcon... good ol' Bogie.For any one curious about what's included the 2008 list can be found here.
Published by Louis Houghton
on Wednesday 24 September, 2008 at 15:55
As I have mentioned many times before I grew up watching Japanese animation. Not the nice Studio Ghibli stuff, but the fairly mature films and series. One of these series was a four parter called 3x3 Eyes. It followed the story of a teenager who meets up with the last of a race of triclopse who is on a quest to become human. The fourth episode ends with a fairly exciting cliff hanger. This being the early-to-mid 90s there was no (for me) internet in which to discover that this was in fact based on a manga series and there was lots more to the story. After rediscovering, and subsequently watching, many of my old anime videos I realised that there were probably more episodes available. I managed to grab the last part of the series a few months ago but never got round to watching it due to travelling. Well, today I sat and watched a couple of episodes today and it feels so odd continuing the story about thirteen years on.A similar thing happened recently with the release of an updated Guyver series that was much closer to the original manga and expanded on many story elements that were left out of the early 90s series. On a side note, it seems very odd that Hollywood haven't tried to remake any of the high profile anime. I'm surprised we haven't seen a live action Akira starring Leonardo Dicaprio as Kaneda yet... oh dear... after writing that I did a search on IMDb and found this. I despair, I really do.What next? Ghost in the Shell with Keira Knightly as the Major and Orlando Bloom as Batou?
Published by Louis Houghton
on Monday 15 September, 2008 at 20:33
Now I know I'm late again on this one but I've just started using Last.fm. For anyone who hasn't heard of it, it's a music recommendation site where you type in (or import from iTunes) a list of your favourite bands and it recommends music to you based on this information. You can also just search for music like (insert band name) and it'll play you a seemingly never ending playlist of songs from bands in the same genre. You are also given the option to add songs as they play to your 'love this' list or banned list.At the moment I'm listening to music like Mogwai and I've already made a list of bands I need to buy albums from. Some highlights are Mono and This Will Destroy You. I wasn't aware of the fact that there are so many good instrumental post rock bands around. I'm very picky about vocalists in bands and I often finding myself liking the music and hating the voice - these bands do away with that problem which is probably why I pretty much like them all.
Published by Louis Houghton
on Saturday 13 September, 2008 at 14:25
Here is the finished promo that I have been working on.
I was supposed to have an interview today for a runners job at a post production company but the northern line was broken. I've managed to reschedule it for tomorrow but I'm a little worried that I may have blown it... I'll have to give myself two hours to get in rather than just one...
Published by Louis Houghton
on Thursday 11 September, 2008 at 15:09
On Wednesday mornings we have to vacate the house as the cleaner comes and (strangely enough) cleans. This usually includes breakfast out and then a fair amount of time killing until we can return at 12 o'clock. Today Jordan and I decided to head over to the Skeletons of London exhibit at the Wellcome Collection in Euston.It was fairly odd experience staring at long dead bodies and reading about their lives - most of which included a good deal of rickets, gout and dental problems. There were even a few that were excavated from a similar area that all exhibited signs of facial damage thought to be caused to drunken behaviour. Not much has changed in London in 200 years then.The skeletons' ages range from about 1900 years old to about 150. They are in various states of wholeness... some only having a few limbs and about 2 ribs and others only missing the tips of their fingers. One even had had a craniotomy which gave us the opportunity to peak inside the cavity... spooky.All in all, a very fun and interested hour or so was spent staring at these skinless fellows. Not bad for a free exhibition.
Published by Louis Houghton
on Wednesday 10 September, 2008 at 17:08
After changing my sub heading on this blog to something containing my full name, I now actually come up on the first page of Google results when you type in my name. I have always been a little miffed that my name didn't link to me in any way on the net but now it does.My internet pseudonym Louisblack (one word) however reveals my many little homes around the web. In the top five results we have my Flickr, my Macrumors profile, my Myspace and my Youtube profile. Stupid Austinist.com and their tags. I could have been five for five there as my now defunct Livejournal page is hanging around at result number seven.
Published by Louis Houghton
on Friday 05 September, 2008 at 15:13
In my post from last week I wrote about how I had managed to get some unpaid work editing a band promotional video. Well sadly hat project fell through due to my camera being unable to transfer HD footage into Final Cut Pro.
This week, however, I was given some SD footage to use for a different band. I spent a day or so playing with the footage and sent it off to my contact who is organising these promotions. Apparently it was the best he's seen so far. I've sent it over to the visual effect guy who will add a few touches here and there and hopefully I will have the final piece by Monday or so.
In the mean time, here is my edit of the footage. In classic Youtube fashion the quality is terrible but you get the idea. I will upload the final version when I have it. The band is called Kojo (there is no link because apparently they are revamping their Myspace at the moment).
Published by Louis Houghton
on Thursday 04 September, 2008 at 15:24
Good ol' British Gas. This rather astonishing bill came through the door today. It is, of course, wrong. Just like every other bill we have recieved from this awful company. Jordan is currently waiting for them to call us back so we can get this stupid mess sorted out. They are two hours late in calling.I think I can safely say that British Gas has outdone NTL in complete idiocy and I am often known for complaining about my year using NTL Internet and dealing with their customer service.
Published by Louis Houghton
on Monday 01 September, 2008 at 14:22
I've just arrived home from a meeting with Media Circus. They are an advertising agency based in Leicester Square and they want to move into creating band promos. For this they need editors and that is what I hope to be. I have been given a couple of tapes of live footage from a band called Cats and Criminals. I'm having a listen now and they aren't exactly my thing but I'm sure I'll be able to fling something exciting together. They have a cool logo that I'm thinking of taking advantage of.This is (of course) unpaid for the moment but it could lead to a permanent position and I can at least add it to my show reel and put it on my CV.
Published by Louis Houghton
on Wednesday 27 August, 2008 at 13:53
Hurrah and Huzzah. I am home at last... well, I have been home for about a week but I have neglected my blog in place of many important tasks such as seeing missed friends, searching for a job (my most hated of activities) and of course getting a hold of the iPhone 3G.As you may have read back in July, my trusty K800i gave up after around 22 months of loyal service. Upon arriving home I quickly went about trying to acquire another phone. I was given two phones but each one was locked to a different carrier and, as I am new to Balham, I have no idea where I would go to get these things unlocked. This of course proved to me that an iPhone was meant to be and after much confusion and O2 generally being arses I managed to procure an 8GB GodPhone.It arrived on Monday so I have had a while to play with it and come up with a few first impressions.Firstly, it's beautiful. But everyone knows that and everyone knows how fun the multi touch interface is. I haven't had any of the problems that seem to be popping up on Mac and iPhone forums. My battery life is as expected - if I use Wi-Fi or 3G to surf the web and download apps from the app store or use the GPS to find my way I get about 13 hours of battery life. If I leave it in standby and only use the net every no and then, it'll last for days. As I bought it because I liked the idea of always having internet access, I am happy to charge it every night.My 3G signal is fine. Inside the house I get two bars which is still enough to comfortably surf websites. Outside I get full signal. In fact yesterday I had to go to Ealing Broadway and on the final part of the journey where the tube goes over ground I managed to read my e-mails to get an address and then use Google maps to search that address. All from a train carriage.As you can see I have never had mobile internet so this is all rather exciting. It's a long way from spending 5 minutes checking your e-mails and paying about £2 for the privilege.
Published by Louis Houghton
on Wednesday 20 August, 2008 at 11:45
Our last few days have been spent holed up in our room as Hong Kong has just been narrowly missed by a typhoon. Typhoon signal 8 was in force which tends to close down most businesses for the day such as the stock market and urges people to stay indoors. Of course we had not prepared for this and had no food. So we psyched ourselves up to get out into the pouring and went out... it was actually fairly pleasent. The rain wasn't too bad and the wind was a huge relief after two weeks of above 30 degrees temperatures. It turned out that this was the tail end of the storm and we weren't quite as brave as we thought. Later we saw on TV that the worst part was in the night and there had actually been quite a lot of damage caused.The storm has left us with lots of rain which will certainly mean that our last few days in Hong Kong will be spent in the pub next to our guesthouse watching the Olympics on the big screen... oh well, sounds fun.
Published by Louis Houghton
on Thursday 07 August, 2008 at 09:46
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