Category: Blogging

One year of “The Hard Sell”

~ Inquisitor

Today is the one-year anniversary of the point at which I decided to move to blog software that didn’t suck – in this case, wordpress.com.

Am I glad I did so? Definitely. Here, my Xbox modding article has been read by a few thousand people, many of whom actually seem to be happy with it. And I don’t have to edit HTML manually anymore, which means I can post more; I haven’t posted as much as I really intended to over the year (my drafts list is proof of that) but at the very least I have managed over a hundred posts, which is much better than before. Some are even good.

So I’d like to thank everyone for reading, and add a list of highlights to come:

  • No ranting Nick Love post. People know that I don’t like him anyway, there seems to be no extra rioting in the streets and besides the reviews for Outlaw really have said it all.
  • Instead, more event live-blogging and culture reviews – I need to hone instant blogging skills anyway (and stop unintentional spoonerisms creeping in). Eurovision itself will be covered live, and I shall bring in more political content. I will be covering the Scottish elections from a “which-evil-should-I-vote-for” perspective.
  • More Xbox modding content as well – the remaining parts of my XBMC guide and a look at emulation.
  • The usual news story discoveries, and occasional PS3 bashing. But everyone expects that, don’t they? (Latest rumour: European PS3 won’t play NTSC games. If it’s true, Sony’s “region-free” stance is proven to be a total and utter lie, although that’s been pretty much proven already by their restrictions on playasia et al. Stay tuned! Thankfully, it’s not true: this probably resulted from someone trying games on a demo unit rather than the retail one. Even still, once you consider what they did to Lik-Sang and their restrictions on PlayAsia…)

So stay tuned – it’s all in progress. It just might take a little while for it to get out of there. In the meantime, there’s always my del.icio.us bookmarks – in which most of my one-liner blogging now takes place; right now, I’m off.

Coming up on The Hard Sell: a blog event

~ Inquisitor

Yes! Tonight, to make up for the lack of blog content over the last month, I will be bringing you British Eurovision liveblogging in which I give opinions on our possible entrants in everyone’s favourite naff music contest. I will also finally take those XBMC screenshots and put up the article on that, so stay tuned.

In the meantime, however, I’m going to watch the last half of England/Wales. All I have to say about that is: Irish fans will probably be feeling a bit hard done by right now.

Theme change and coming up

~ Inquisitor

Well, the theme has been changed to MistyLook, mainly because I like the font and colour style of it better. Plus, I’ve just found out about Nick Love’s new film and a rant about its marketing and implications is upcoming – once I find a way to minimise the swearing.

Schedule for the upcoming week, in a possible day-by-day order, subject to change:

  1. Article on Nick Love’s Outlaw: the latest film by the most loathable working director in Britain since Michael Winner killed his career.
  2. Reviews for Hot Fuzz, Idiocracy, Notes on a Scandal and the Kaiser Chiefs’ “Yours Truly, Angry Mob” album
  3. XBMC and Vista: making it sing (a setup guide taking into account certain vagiaries in the process.)

Hot Fuzz: an advance preview

~ Inquisitor

It’s really good. Go see it.

Full review coming up after the in progress Notes on a Scandal one, along with a little rant about the Brit awards. In the meantime, however, I have a few things to do and a very dodgy Net connection (and if Virgin don’t get their act together soon it’s time to remind them that I can get Be Unlimited and call their bluff.)

Coming up on The Hard Sell…

~ Inquisitor

Yes, another unenforced absence courtesy NTLewest/Virgin Media and university work has finally ended, and I’m finally in the right mood to write again. I’ve seen Notes on a Scandal and a review will be up tomorrow evening. In the mean time, why not have a look at this hilarious Amazon review? (via b3ta links.)

Unfortunately, Amazon seem to have finally taken down all the Jordan/Andre reviews, which were hilarious – spoilsports.

The PS3 price chart

~ Inquisitor

NTLewest has managed to solidly screw up my connection for a number of days (it still isn’t working quite as quickly as would be expected for a 4Mbit connection), so sorry all. In the meantime, I’m going to bash the PS3 again, because Sony have just released the official prices for Europe and have explained their screwing of Europeans as being due to VAT and ‘retailers’ (never mind that most British retailers are desperate to offer discounts on everything else in order to compete with Tesco et al). So here’s a little comparison table for the 60GB version…

  • USA: $599.00, €462.47, £303.69
  • Continental Europe: €599.00, $775.82, £393.34 (29.5% increase on US price)
  • Ireland: €629.00, $814.68, £413.04 (36% increase on US price, 5% increase on European price)
  • UK: £425.00, $838.27, €647.21 (40% increase on US price, 8% increase on European price, 3% increase on Irish price)

Right. It’s all to do with VAT. No matter that the highest VAT rate in Europe is held by Denmark and Sweden at 25% (the lowest are Luxembourg and Cyprus at 15%), which doesn’t explain the hike. No matter that Sony have used the VAT excuse for their Irish price gouging despite the fact that the Irish rate is 21%. And no matter that the British are the most expensive of the lot, despite a 17.5% rate.

If Sony weren’t threatening importers, it would be cheaper to bring one over from the US even if you got stung by Customs. They’re all coming from the same factories in China through the same container ships going through the same places, and the PS3 has a full multi-voltage power supply. Plus, since you’re going to play it on a HDTV anyway, there isn’t even a PAL/NTSC issue.

No, Sony is ripping us off on price. It doesn’t help that they don’t have any good games yet either, really. Avoid until the games come and the price goes down, at least; at this rate, the PS3 deserves to be as unpopular in Europe as the Xbox360 is in Japan.

Merry Christmas, everybody!

~ Inquisitor

Yes, it’s Christmas Day and I haven’t posted for weeks. Sorry. More stuff coming up over the Christmas period as I finally start remembering to write again…

As penance, here is a Youtube video of something funny: Mystery Science Theater 3000’s “Let’s Have A Patrick Swayze Christmas”.

You may have noticed…

~ Inquisitor

…the new theme and logo. This is courtesy of wordpress.com adding a cut-down K2, and I really like the K2 style; the logo was made to fit into it, which it does much better than the old one. Thoughts welcome.

“He’s in a world of his own…”

~ Inquisitor

Been listening to a lot of Soft Cell lately, and if you haven’t heard their Art of Falling Apart and you like synthpop I highly recommend it – ultra-depressing and incisive lyrics matched up with some quite interesting, underproduced, melodic yet somehow off tunes. Good stuff, completely ignored back in 1983. Only €5.99 from a branch of Saturn in Munich, which was cool.

(Germany is very good for finding these obscure 80s albums at decent prices. Shame I can’t get a cheap P.U.L.S.E. DVD for love nor money, though… oh well, only three weeks until I’m back.)

Anyway, I’m off to Dresden for the weekend. See you Monday.