Earworm: “Do I Wanna Know?” by Arctic Monkeys

Alex Turner and his gang of Monkeys are at it again. The Arctic Monkeys put out an album just two years ago with Suck It and See, and now they’ve already begun to drop singles for their new album, said by Turner himself to be titled AM. You’ve no idea how excited I am for this, actually. All their albums are tremendous, and there doesn’t seem to be a reason to believe their next album won’t be as good.

With the upcoming release of their new album, the Arctic Monkeys will have five studio albums (Whatever People Say I Am, That’s what I’m Not, Favourite Worst Nightmare, Humbug, Suck It and See, AM), akin to my other two de facto favorite bands, Linkin Park (Hybrid Theory, Meteora, Minutes to Midnight, A Thousand Suns, and Living Things) and The Strokes (Is This It, Room on Fire, First Impressions of Earth, Angles, and Comedown Machine).

Actually, GQ stated the music of Arctic Monkeys can only continue to improve, as Alex Turner has been named was named as a Survivor in 2011 (http://www.gq.com/entertainment/music/201111/alex-turner-gq-music-issue).

Do I Wanna Know? is the second (or technically third) single to drop, only preceded by R U Mine? and its B-Side, Electricity. Do I Wanna Know and R U Mine are heavily influenced by a hard slapped bass guitar, and it’s been a while since a song (or in this case a set of songs) has made me literally drool from excitement.

The song is accompanied by a ridiculously artsy music video, if I do say so myself.

Have a watch. Beware though, animated naked ladies. I don’t know if this is SFW or NSFW. Take heed, though.

 

Big Boss Gets Another Face Lift

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Looks like Play Arts Kai is at it again. Yet another iteration of Big Boss is being “toyed” with (sorry I had to). PAK’s last outing with Snake, Liquid, and Solidus’ daddy was with the MGS Peace Walker figs, all 3 of which I happily own.

This time around, Snake seems to he designed to invoke the likeness of himself from MGSV. His face being more realistic on the powerful FOX Engine, PAK tried to reflect the same amount of detail on Snake’s head sculpt. For now it seems they’ve pulled it off. And the body itself seems to have been upgraded to FOX Engine specifications.

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I think that’s what Play Arts Kai attempts to do in general with all their products, which is to capture a comic or video game character’s likeness as closely to the specific book or game as possible. They’re quite good at it. Their version of Big Boss for example looks almost exactly like in-game Big Boss. One hard comparison to do though would be, for example, the PAK MGS1 Solid Snake. If we were to use MGS1 for PSX as a reference point, difficulties would arise due to the fact that Snake had a very blocky pixelated head and near indistinguishable facial features. I’m sure that aside from certain reference photos PAK took some creative liberties here. Nonetheless Solid Snake was done justice.

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Back to MGSV Big Boss, here is an initial rough draft of a 3D printout of Snake. Looks pretty stiff but PAK seems to be on the right track.

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Other figures in consideration are Solidus Snake, Liquid Snake, and MGS2 Raiden.

Can’t wait to see the finished product for Big Boss!

Source: MetalGearSolid.nl

iOS 7… Beta 2?

Already been using this iPhone for almost a month… I’ve gotten used to its innate quirks and undeniable flaws.
But that’s not what I’m here To complain about. In fact, I’m not even here to complain. (shocker, right?!?!?!) anyway. I actually want to inform anyone using an iPhone 5 for Verizon* and wants to beta test the iOS 7 beta 2, to actually go ahead and do it, so long as you don’t actually watch people’s Vine videos.
On the first beta, The features that I found most annoying were these 5.
1) Instagram wouldn’t load properly if you wanted to scroll back up.
2) After watching several Vines, the app would freeze and crash. Simply return home and kill the app to unfreeze it. Which was a bit of a bummer and inconvenience.
3) I can’t see the things people replied to on Twitter. Did Jimmy reply to this tweet or that? UGH
4) Google Translate (actual app) wasn’t working.
5) FUCKING BATTERY LIFE MAN oh and to go along with this the phone reboots (2 seconds really) which is also an inconvenience)

Alright, well, here’s how that list has updated in Beta 2.
1) INSTAGRAM WORKS!!! HALLELUJAH!!!!!!
2) Vine is destroyed and refuses to play videos. I cannot wait for Beta 3 to see if they fix this.
3) Twitter is still broken in this aspect.
4) Google Translate is still broken.
5) BATTERY LIFE IS IMPROVED TO NEARLY iOS 6 MAGNITUDE!!!! Still a bit horrendous honestly but it totally trumps Beta 1’s battery draining ass. Also it doesn’t reboot as much.

HOWEVER. I did find new bugs in Beta 2. Killing an app has an adverse effect on the wallpaper… Sometimes, not all, it removes the wallpaper leaving black nothingness. Also, I don’t know whether or not this is a bug, but in all iterations of iOS (including 7 beta 1) it was possible to view the big clock on the lock screen and double click to get to music controls. Now, iOS 7 Beta 2 has music controls permanently in place of the large clock. Inconvenient.
But some other improvements other than battery life are present. You can now swipe left on texting to see what time the messages were sent and received, which is a lot more sensible than 15 minute card time checks, which I do believe are still there for those too lazy to swipe.

Anyway that’s my observations on the topic. Feel free to leave comments about your findings!
*I am not entirely sure if these apply to the AT&T or int’l or any other iPhone build model, or if these apply to the iPads as well. Please leave a comment about these too!

MGS1 REDUX

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Ok so my header image is actually one for wishful thinking as the article I’m referring to in this piece is about Kojima actually talking about looking for a 3rd party studio to recreate MGS1 on the FOX Engine. This is great news and all, though MGS1 has already been rebooted once before. Nintendo had the fortune of MGS1 being remade by Silicon Knights using the MGS2 engine which gave us The Twin Snakes. Great game on all accounts.

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What would be even better is if Kojima chooses to remake Metal Gear and Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake instead. Kojima has said he’d have to retool the story for MGS1 anyway to fit it into today’s standards and practices of gaming.

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Why not go balls deep and just redo those initial MSX games? It’d be totally worth it for MGS fans, Konami, and for all gamers alike. And shit, imagine Solid Snake infiltrating Outer Heaven during Operation Intrude N313… ON THE FUCKING FOX ENGINE!!

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Kojima, MAKE IT HAPPEN!!

BTW

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Source: MetalGearSolid.nl

Wet Snake

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So I was perusing David Hayter’s twitter today. I do this with Hideo Kojima’s as well as Kiefer Sutherland’s, just for some sudden breaking news if any, and happened upon Hayter’s scuba adventures while apparently on vacation. I thought to myself, “man I’d like to be off somewhere for some R&R.”

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Then I read the photo’s accompanying hashtag which said:

“This will soon be me, again…
#DeepWaterSnake”

This would be a fairly innocuous comment in itself if it weren’t for Hayter’s past tweets and interviews about how he felt when not being called to reprise his roll as Snake for the upcoming MGSV. If we didn’t want to be to intrusive we’d probably think Hayter meant that he’d go scuba diving again the next day after that photo was taken. But for the MGS fan who reads between the lines there could be a hidden message being thrown at us. I like reading between the lines.

“This will be me soon, again…”

Could he mean that he WILL be Snake again? Could he still be trolling us and continually use his twitter to tease us? What adds to my speculation is this damned hashtag:

“#DeepWaterSnake”

What comes to mind is the prologue portion of MGSV, Ground Zeroes. Mother base is seen being destroyed, going down in flames, with Snake and company fleeing the scene.

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During the Extended Trailer there is a bomb looking box extracted from Paz’s body which led me to speculate that it could explode while in the chopper they’re riding in, perhaps causing everyone Including Snake on board to take a dip in the ocean, hence DeepWaterSnake.

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Maybe Snake pulls a Bourne Identity and gets lost in the ocean till someone finds him in a coma floating around and then 9 years later he wakes up and The Phantom Pain portion of the game takes place. It’s fun to speculate! What’s your take? Hit the comments!

Source: David Hayter twitter

I have joined the Dark Side.

By the Dark Side, I mean the dreaded iPhone nation. I have made the transition from Android to iOS. Now, iSheep, do not revel in this ‘defeat,’ for I’m still Android at heart. Partly why I’m actually documenting this reality is because of my heavy bias.

Let us remember  https://justwroteablog.com/2012/09/15/time-to-catch-up-apple/ , an article I posted much earlier in the days of JWAB.

Read that prior to the rest of this post, that way you get the full experience of my experience.

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Happy Weekend

I have had so many fails in the last few days.  I just recently purchased a classic game, knowing that I can play it on one of my current systems, and maybe do some vid cap, and launch our retro re-visits.  BUT when it went to that portion of the system, my Happauge decided that it did not support it, so I could not do any captures.

I also tried to play Metal Gear Solid 2 HD and the controls was just oh so old or at least it felt old.  In any case, I am planning on taking a break from some gaming, and try to get out and enjoy the sunshine, and catch Man of Steel later on.

What’s everyone’s agenda this weekend? Playing anything?  I do eed to get going on the Last of Us.  I played it for a bit, and I was impressed for the hour or so I played.  I will follow up on that in a bit.

 

Happy weekend all.

MGS: MATURE GEAR SOLID

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Hello boys and girls. It’s been a minute since my last serving but I’m back to bring you a nice healthy and hearty dose of MGS goodness in the form of my very own breakdown of the latest MGSV Extended Trailer. Everyone dig in…

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Earworm: Just Give Me A Reason – P!nk Ft. Nate Ruess

First of all, I would like to apologize for posting this.  I know some of you may like this, but I do not.  Don’t get me wrong, it’s an OK song…wait, never mind, I just really don’t like it.  They overplay it on the radio.  Just yesterday, all three of my usual morning stations were playing the song at the same time!  It gets regular rotations on Sirius‘ Hit’s 1, Top 20, and the Pulse.  And it’s been stuck on my head.  I probably wouldn’t mind it so much if fun. didn’t get so much air play too.  I am just not a big fan of fun.  Nate Ruess just sounds like a man that just inhaled helium, and at the same time got kicked in the gonads.

Anyway, here is the video.

 

[youtube http://youtu.be/OpQFFLBMEPI]