Gaming, Music, The Internet, Whatever….

During the recent UK General Election, Diddy David Cameron kept telling us at almost every opportunity that the new Conservative party was open and inclusive to everyone and that the narrow minded views of his party were very much a thing of the past.

He also seemed to spend his time doing a weak impression of one Mr. B. Obama, weak in the sense that all he thought he needed to do was say the words “hope” and “change” at some point in every sentence and that would secure the vote for him. Of course, it didn’t and we all know what happened next…

So, to my surprise, I received a letter in the post the other day from The Conservation Party Foundation asking me if I’d like to make a donation. Given that I’m not currently a made man in the business world ie the Average Tory Party Donator, I found this quite surprising. However, as I looked through some of the material provided, I noticed that perhaps the Conservative party hadn’t changed quite as much as it thought it had….

The Conservative Party "Spectrum"

LOOK! A WHITE MAN! AND A JEWISH WHITE MAN! AND IN THE MIDDLE THERE! A WOMAN! Who says the Conservative Party isn’t making strides to be all inclusive in the 21st Century?

Oh, and in case you’re wondering, everything they sent me went straight in the shredder. I didn’t vote for them, so sure as hell not giving them money.

Earlier this week, the UK shit rag/newspaper The Daily Star printed a “shocking” story about how Grand Theft Auto developers Rockstar North were going to base the next version of their incredibly popular series in the sleepy Northern England town of Rothbury, scene of the recent fatal stand off between Northumbria Police and Raoul Moat.

Expect of course it wasn’t. Someone at The Star had clearly been on the Something Awful or B3ta forums and decided that someone’s mock up was a real game and ran with the story, without first bothering to do anything important like fact check. The story was pulled from the website within hours of publication but not quickly enough for Rockstar Games’ lawyers to ask the Star for an apology.

What’s most interesting about the apology (link here) is the bit at the very bottom.

The Daily Star. A "news"paper, clearly?

If ever there was a more appropriate use of punctuation, then I’d like to see it.

Boards Of Canada are renowned by fans for being a) being hugely secretive about themselves and b) their pathological refusal to do videos for their tracks.

Which while on the one hand is a bad thing, it does mean that their are some fantastic “fake” vids on YouTube. A lot of these videos contain out of copyright material with Boards tracks over the top, which given that the band themselves are named after the National Film Board Of Canada, means that there is a wonderful symmetry to the whole thing.

One of the best is this wonderful video for one of their earliest released tracks, Everything You Do Is A Balloon. It also happens to be one of their most beautiful too and I played it lots when my cat passed away last year. Thought I’d share anyway.

Paris is generally considered to be one of the most beautiful cities in the world and having just had the pleasure of a few days there, I can understand why. It’s not the first time I’ve been there but it is the first time in nearly 20 years and the first time I’ve ever been there on my own and had the pleasure of using Paris’ wonderful Metro system. Which makes London’s Underground system seem like the lap of luxury.

It may well have only been for a couple of days but with 75% of Paris being within walking distance of my hotel, getting everywhere on foot seemed like the right thing to do. The metro may well take you everywhere but you don’t get the flavour or the ambiance that you would by walking around.

There are 4 Flickr sets to look through;

First is the trip to the world famous Louvre, famous of course for having the Worlds Most Boring painting, the Mona Lisa (Pictured above, as underwhelming in this photo as in the flesh);

Second is a very sunny trip to Sacre Couer and Montmartre, famous for being the location of many french films including the ending of the seminal short film C’etait un Rendez-vouz. Though it was alot busier when I went there than in the ending of the film (embedded below). Probably didn’t smell quite so much of piss either back in 1974 (homeless people are very visible in Paris, more so than in London and New York)

C’etait un Rendezvous – Watch more Funny Videos

Thirdly, The Eiffel Tower, which shouldn’t really need any explanation and offered arguably better views than those at Montmartre;

And finally, everything else which includes one of my new favourite photos, something which someone has now dubbed Picard BC. One for the geeks/trekkies out there…

All in all, a very nice few days but much like everywhere else you need a good week to really see everything. But on the basis of this trip, would happily do so.

The MCM expo is bi-annual event held at the Excel arena in London. It is billed as an event for Movie, Comic and Anime fans but it should probably add cosplayers to that list too, given how a good half of the the people there were dressed up for the occasion.

It had a rather interesting atmosphere to it, not being too focused on one aspect or another and having that rather British feeling of being “cobbled” together and trying to fill as much of the exhibition hall with as many things as they could find. I’m sure that certainly wasn’t the case and the organizers spent many months trying to get as many people to exhibit and appear there as possible, but that wonderfully British feeling was still there. And I liked it.

The day itself was a bit of a blur and while at the time I wasn’t keen on staying there too long, I would go back there without too much hesitation. Probably not as a cosplayer though. Certainly whets my appetite for going to something like E3 in the States but not any time soon.

I would just like to say a big thanks to Tim Maughan over at his eponymous site for getting me in on a press pass. Didn’t perhaps get me anywhere “behind the scenes”, mainly cause there weren’t any, but it meant that I had a hassle free time getting in. Which given how many people were there and the line for the queue to get in, is definitely a good thing. I’m pretty sure a few of the pics in this set will appear over on his site in due course. And rightly so.

To view the full set yourself, please follow this link go to the Flickr set. Enjoy.