Ξ April 30th, 2006 | → 0 Comments | ∇ |
Another week, another podcast. These should be coming thick and fast now we’re getting regular dates down. This weeks is brought to you with the letters M and P, and the number, 3. All in a featherweight 19meg for 42 minutes and 31 seconds of free “entertainment”. The files are located for listening on www.nbs-review.net
This week we discuss:
HD-DVD versus Blu-Ray
China and Yahoo: Western companies operating in the Eastern Iron Curtain.
Nintendo Wii (and associated jokes)
Our op/end is yet again from Megadriver, so if you enjoy it, go visit.
Podcast Comments:
I’ve included an outtake of our first end, the one we did before Brett showed me up and did it properly off the cuff.
Im sure we’d be sorry for the continual and overused Wii/Wee jokes if we could be bothered.
Yet again the subject of male genitalia arises.
I think we’re getting better at it. Our topics have become more general and even political, ethical, social with a hint of theological in some parts, especially in the East versus West discussion.
Ξ April 30th, 2006 | → 0 Comments | ∇ |
Wow, I bought this CD from an Amazon shop not expecting much, despite the fact it was over the “normal” price I pay for CDs at £18, it said it was just a “multidisk set”. I get it through the post and get this:
An engraved 5 CD set with comprehensive insert. The music is just fantastic which makes it that much better, but it’s nice to get something through the post for once and it be better than you expected.
Ξ April 24th, 2006 | → 0 Comments | ∇ |
We weigh in this time at 58 minutes and 54 second of 64kbps mono mp3 which is just 28 meg of your download bytes. The files are located for listening on http://www.nbs-review.net
Wow, after 3 weeks we finally managed to grab a couple of hours together to produce Podcast 1-beta, without our new title NBS Review; NBS for No Bull Sh… You get the picture. We figured this was the way to go since we generally talk crap about everything. This time we’ve gone all out and have music and proper topics which we try to stick to. My “hosting” skills are ever-so-slowly getting better, I think.. I hope. We’re not a review podcast in the sense we’re going to talk about the hardcore details. We’re a review in a way of what it means for the consumer, what it means for the industry, what it means to us and feel it’s useful for but with an enthusiast edge.
Topics this week:
PPUs and everything about physics processing in the future
Raytracing and why it hasn’t taken off as a way of feasible graphics processing
Modding: from underground to mainstream
Micro-payments in Gaming: The good, the bad and the future of gaming
We’ve even got music and everything. Our intro track is from MegaDriver: Bonus Stage for Shadow Dancer which is free to download, and our end track is the classic Imperial March, by the fantastic John Williams. I can’t recommend the “40 Years of Film Music by John Williams” on 4 CDs enough. I’m sure we’ll probably have to pay royalties to Lucas or Williams for using it, but it was worth it. You’ll see (listen) once you hear the end.
Podcast Comments:
Try to spot where I disappear for 5 minutes whilst Brett goes off on a rant. Seriously, you can go make a cup of tea, chat to your mum and fall right back in again without anyone noticing.
We still don’t take ourselves too seriously, especially the introduction and ending.
Whilst podcast 1-alpha had an editing time of mere minutes, this one took around 7 hours editing to get right. *phew*
There’s a lot of distortion and hiss in the recording, which draws out some words unfortunately. We also don’t really sound like robots in real life, honest. No matter what automatic algorithms I tried to make it sound better, it always sounded worse.
I don’t even consider myself to sound that British. I’m sure its a subconscious accent change.
We seem to go off on one about oil versus hydrogen at some point, then later about Hollywood movies versus Independent films. Just to extend the analogy and get the point across to our listeners we are prepared to go completely off topic.
I say, penis . It was not in a direct phallic context. I think we’re inadvertently trying to mention genitalia at least once an episode.
Ξ April 18th, 2006 | → 0 Comments | ∇ |
A short run down for you of the few you should pick up:
xxxHolic. No this isn’t a porno; the triple X is actually “silent” according to the intro on the show. It arguably has the best opening and ending music that I’ve heard in a long time, the animation is fantastic and totally original (as expected from Production IG) and the story is strange, yet, vivid and unique. Not “sex doll” or “typical fantasy” like other Clamp offerings. She has a unique way of selling her product and getting payment, usually in the without letting the recipient know, and if the movie that’s been out recently before this is anything to go by this serious should get pretty awesome.
Black Lagoon. Oh. Hell. Yea! Talk about killer, multi-dimensional story with mercenaries and lots of action. I can see this having great potential, and whilst the lead female in it (Levi) is typically “hot” in her short shorts, she also has the “less than sexy” arrogant attitude rather than “cutesy wootsie” that plague so many anime into complete unrealism and stupidity. She doesn’t act sexy, she doesn’t try to be sexy, she just kinda is. There’s also the ’stereotypical’ hard man black dude whose cucumber cool and with the persona that you’d want him as your best friend rather than any alternative. Finally there’s also a cracker computer geek: you can’t fight wars without the digital edge these days it seems. All the voice actors are excellently suited, as is the animation and rockin’ music.
Ray. Oh you need to read this manga before watching the series. Only one sub group has picked this up, and the first episode doesn’t offer that much but I’d totally recommend the manga. However, ADV, in typical fashion decide to release it on a schedule that’s marked by eons. It’s about an unlicensed surgeon chick (think Tifa, FFVII) who is trying to find out about her past, and who gave her eyes that can see through things. It works well, but the manga is better. For starters she should have beautiful baby blues, not deep red like in the animation.
Tokko. Not much I can say about this yet, but it’s a 15+ so violence and gore are a given in this “action horror”. Apparently it’s about violent murders in the city which the police investigate along with some kid/guy who finds that they end up fighting against these “monsters” with swords rather than guns. Given a katana or a colt I know what I’d be hauling at 30 feet. Sounds a bit “meh” with the monsters and “special swords skills can only win” but it might be worth it.
School Rumble: 2nd Semester. Without a doubt comedy at it’s best. Pick up the first season for definite though if you’re not already a fan but this is definitely an anime worth watching. It’s Full Metal Panic, but without the crap and better than ffumofu.
The new opening song has to grow on me a little after the last one was just so perfectly iconic to SR, and the lass who sang it was incredibly cute, to the point of making a room full of puppies look like shit filled gargoyles in comparison.
Finally there’s Higurashi no Nakukoroni, which is apparently about some village where people die and disappear at certain times of the year, but I haven’t watched it yet. It sounded good although it’s not been picked up by popular sub groups.
Ξ April 16th, 2006 | → 0 Comments | ∇ |
I don’t know who the hell Murphy is, but I sure as hell want to give him a piece of my mind. All I can say is THANK GOD FOR MIRRORED RAID otherwise I’d be spitting fire. I thankfully still have one, 300gig Maxtor left with ALL my stuff on it since the other decided it didn’t want to work, entirely out the blue this evening. How things can go from “normal normal normal probl-failed” I’ll never know. Not only that, but due to Maxtors fantastically crappy 1 year warrenty, which I’ve just discovered was 54 weeks old, I now have an expensive, rectangular steel paperweight. Hurrah, Hurrah.
The “unprotected” feeling is most unwelcome though. Like standing on a breezy cliff edge, with all my files in plastic bags. How do people live without backups and redundency?
Ξ April 11th, 2006 | → 0 Comments | ∇ |
I’ve got to play with the theme, to co-ordinate it into that of this site, and other pictures will adorn it later but getting it this far was hard enough.
Trying to integrate it into WordPress, is apparently possible, albeit impossible. No doubt one of those “theory not reality” things that often rears its ugly head. There was confliction with integrating it into the same database, which never really happened, but that was all after getting the right plug-ins sucessfully installed and activated, right before whilch, I sacrificed a lamb with a gold knife at the equinox according to the install notes.
As you can gather (or possibly not), the podcast didn’t happen because I ended up playing quite a serious game of Poker with Death, War, Pestilence and Famine, whilst suffering from the flu. At one point I sure I was hallucinating from the lack of sleep, because one of them bears an uncanny resemblance to a current President. Regardless, I managed to win my health back and we should be on for this weekend providing my co-hosts aren’t in cahoots with the Christian faith or anything. (Easter)
Ξ April 6th, 2006 | → 0 Comments | ∇ |
Alright, so we only got two episodes of Bleach. But they were damn rockin’ ones with healthy new intro/end tracks! Whereas Naruto is continually… Naruto, where every other episode looks like the random scrawlings of a four year old, along with the filler storylines. I suppose you can pay pre-school kids in sugary treats, which is cheaper than a professional anime team.
Robot Chicken is back on the air for their second season! Whilst everything else is drawing to a close in the next few months. There’s the usual “Easter lul” now coming up until they hit our screens with everything in May.
Podcast beta, or, 2 as it might be called, is due to be recorded on Sunday which means we’ll be releasing it Monday/Tuesday sometime. Our second attempt will consist of something a lot better than last time, now we know we can do it. The three of us are going all out for structure, free music and coherent discussion because it will be done at a sensible time. We even have a name for it!
Ξ April 3rd, 2006 | → 1 Comments | ∇ |
30meg, 1hr 03min. 64kbps mp3 stereo.
The podcast can be heard over at http://www.nbs-review.net
I want to thank Hiren and Brett for taking the time out to do this too, nice one guys! 
The top 10 bits of advice I can offer:
#1: Don’t wear headphones to listen to this. I sound like I’m breathing down the back of your neck in your left ear. For some reason the mic sounds like it was right under my nose, despite the fact it wasn’t. I seem to have moved the mic at 34 minutes, so it makes it more tolerable, rather than practicing my phone voice to my victims.
#2: Don’t do podcasts at 1am. It’s overwhelmingly hard to focus when you’ve been awake for 18 hours.
#3: Don’t expect too much. Until Brett turns up (18 minutes in) it sounds like just two guys having a chat, minus the pub and the beer.
#4: Podcasts are seriously hard to get right. What you hear is about the most amateur thing you’ll ever have to listen to. I’ve a whole new level of respect for those who can put out podcasts that sound coherent, keep on topic, knowing when to butt in and what to say without going umm and uhhh. We spent literally about four hours going through a dozen pieces of software trying to get one that worked with the sound levels correct. What we got from HotRecorder was the easiest and most compatible with skype, whilst not having everyone who’s calling in sound like they are the other side of a field. Having said that, it was too simple and fairly prone to crashing. That’s why it also sounds like Brett and I are sitting on the left and Hiren on the right due to the way it was recorded.
#5: Hate mail will be posted on here, because at least then that proves we have listeners.
#6: I didn’t cut it much, only trimmed the ends. That’s the good, the bad and the ugly. There’s no intro, no name, problems with software/mic’s/people arriving late. I’m going for the rawness angle to hide my laziness until I find a good sound editing program and work out what we want.
#7: I apologise for my piss poor pronunciations of Japanese game names.
#8: I love you really, Mike, even though I didn’t expect you to turn up.
#9: The topics we ended up talking about (in no particular order and more than once):
AMD’s AM2 versus Intel’s Core
Oblivion, and other games we’re playing or want to play (Okami, Ikagura, Naruto, Freelancer versus EVE online, Streets of Rage and the back catalogue for Revolution, SEGA Chrome Hounds)
PS3, Revolution and the Xbox360: their game play, their prices, their accessibility, their potential success (or lack of) and the relaunch of the 360 in Japan.
Microsoft’s Steve (my kids have no fun) Balmer versus Satoro (dishonour me, and I will tell you to suck my balls) Itawa-san.
#10: I just realised… maybe it’s me that has the weird hands if everyone else likes the PS2 and I like the (small) Xbox controller!?
EDIT: Hirens excuse: I should explain, that my microphone actually broke just before we started, that’s why I sound so bad.
Ξ April 1st, 2006 | → 0 Comments | ∇ |
It seems those at the BBC News offices are in a cynical mood for sound bites, or I’m reading it wrongly.
Jack Straw and Condoleezza Rice are doing the rounds in the UK, etc etc, woo-hoo, and obviously front page news. However this seemed to catch my eye:
Mr. Straw:
“They (protesters) said they were going to get bus loads and bus loads in. Well they didn’t do very well,”
I imagine him saying this and laughing to himself. Especially reiterating the “bus loads”. That doesn’t make you sound like a 10 year old, does it? You can almost imagine him doing hand movements to describe a bit thing. He chuckles to himself, saying this in such a way that’s incredibly patronising to those who’ve tried to organise a peaceful protest, especially the, “Well, they didn’t do very well”, bit. He’s made it sound like they couldn’t be arsed or something.
Some random woman:
“To me it’s astonishing to have a person like that in a town like Blackburn”
What does that say about your town, and what it contains? I’m just sayin’, I mean, you seem to have sooooo much faith in it.
And finally, Ms Rice, the woman with the longest name on the planet chirped in:
“It was not a mistake to overthrow Saddam Hussein… it was not a mistake to unleash the forces of democracy in the Middle East“
Watchin’ one too many superhero movies there, Conda.. Con.. .. Ms. Rice. You make it sound like the Bush administration is from Krypton (well they aren’t from this planet, lets be honest) and your troops had rayguns (that was no doubt developed in the 60s to combat them damn Commies), that some previous administration has developed. Maybe, it’s that that’s been blessed by God on to you, or whatever.
Don’t get me wrong, I love democracy (when it works), but when you make it sound like something from a Cold War propaganda video at a comic book store, everyone laughs at you.
Ms Rice said there had been mistakes made in Iraq, saying: “If you’ve ever done anything then you’ve probably not done it perfectly.”
That’s like coming home with an F on your school report and trying to pass it off as a complicated subject that you thought you had the grasp of, but didn’t quite get it right although you truely did strive for perfection, but the hard honest truth is you’re just shit at it.
That’s some entertaining afternoon reading, Thanks, BBC.
Ξ April 1st, 2006 | → 0 Comments | ∇ |
So, it seems like we have four people on for tonight, and by tonight, I mean tomorrow. At least for us Blightians on BST it will be 12 midnight, but our US friend should be 6pm. That may seem a tad unfair for us, but he has to work today. On a Saturday. Poor sod.
Predictions are going that I bottle it and sound like I have no tongue, don’t know what I’m doing (highest odds going), or that I fail to record it properly.
We’re going for some next gen gaming discussion: PS3 / Xbox360 / Revolution, as well as some next gen hardware: AM2/3 and Intel’s Core and some Oblivion, hopefully 
