No Coming Back

You heard it here first (well, maybe...) - Scotland will do very well to avoid losing all their remaining games in the Six Nations 2010. That game against Wales was a sucker punch. As Shane Williams glided over, arm aloft as if conquering the ground beyond the Scottish try line, I felt as if one of Lee Byrne's massive left foot punts had hit me square in the gut - so I can only imagine how the Scottish squad felt. Losing is one thing, winning with some great stuff before losing by haemorrhaging points in the final 7 minutes as your colleagues lose their heads around you* is quite another.

Combine this with the fact that Chris Paterson bruised a kidney, Rory Lamont buggered his knee and Thom Evans just about got paralysed and I think it's a pretty big ask to come back from that and win a tough set of remaining games. Italy in Rome, England in Edinburgh and then a most likely championship chasing Ireland in Dublin. As ever, I'll be delighted to be proven wrong (I was pretty pessimistic about the Cardiff showdown to begin with, in typical fashion), and I may well be, but it is far more likely than before.

I've said before that it's hard being a Scotland fan in any sport and Saturday was the perfect example of that classic Scottish export - the valiant defeat. It's happened time and again and I still don't know why I continue to be surprised by this...

*Why didn't the restart get kicked to touch!?

New Decade, New Dimension?

This new decade will be the glorious dawn of 3D TV and movies apparently.

Um...no...it won't be.

I went to see Avatar earlier this week, but that isn't what prompted me to get hot under the collar about this. Sure, it's the poster child for the 3D 'revolution' and was quite impressive in 3D. The film is well worth seeing and enjoyable enough (if a little predictable) - in 2D or 3D, that extra special spare dimension doesn't add that much to it...apart from £3 to the ticket price.

That isn't what gets me though, I'll leave it to Mark Kermode to rail against 3D in cinemas. It's 3D TV sets for your living room, in particular the idea this will haul consumer electronics companies out of the recession. Am I the only person entirely uninspired and a little sceptical about this? The hype has gone too far if company high heid yins are pinning economic recovery on this gimmick. Remember Terminator 2-3D? A theme park ride. A gimmick. You can thank James Cameron for that as well I suppose. The 3D raising its head now is the same thing in disguise.

When the time comes the watch your shiny new film or TV series on your sofa, can folk be really bothered cracking out the glasses that make you look like the lovechild of Bono and Woody Allen?! Everyone watching needs a pair, surely. What happens if you lose them? You can't watch until you get a spare set? I thought the point of new technology was to make things simpler, not infinitely more long winded and complicated. It seems to be a lot of development and expense to bring what is essentially an anti-piracy device into the living room.

What happened to the drive to get everyone with HD 1080p television sets? I still don't know a lot of homes with HDTVs There's no need to foist 3D on the world with all the associated gubbins. We're still in a situation where swathes of consumers still haven't quite sussed out HD, Blu-ray, (legally) downloaded films and shows, may well not be inclined to do so and are not very well catered for with regards to being able to play what they own on what they want - TV, iPod, PC etc...who gives a toss as to whether spears and fingers can point out of the screen at them?

Killing In The Name Of Fun

I'm sure most must have heard about the unlikely Christmas No.1 battle in the UK this year. Well I've been sucked in and bought Rage Against The Machine's profanity laden Killing in the Name (which I already owned) ahead of X-Factor winner Joe McElderry's The Climb (although it's not really his, but we'll get to that).

To begin with though, as much as I may like him to be, Simon Cowell is not rattled by this. I may not like the bilge he pumps into the airwaves year after year but he's an intelligent man who hasn't made umtpy-thrumpty millions by being an easily perturbed idiot. For all his protestations in the press he will be loving this battle - all publicity is good publicity in this case. Syco records won't sell any less Joe McElderry CDs as a result of this. If anything this means more X-Shocker singles will be sold, as more fans of it hear Killing in the Name and recoil in horror and run out to buy it. Similar to the boy himself. I'm ignoring the Sun's "They wouldn't get through to boot camp..." quote as it just sounds ridiculous and I wouldn't trust the Sun for anything. I very much hope that quote is out of context, or I really do despair but the lad seems pretty diplomatic about the whole thing. But all this coverage is why Cowell can't stop popping up in the press talking about it. Despite shelling out my 50-odd pence I have no doubt at this point that the X-Factor physical sales from today will tell and propel another crap ballad into the Christmas playlists. I would say he needs a No.1 not for his pockets but for the X-Factor brand to continue spinning money the way it is now.

So why am I bothering? Why does it matter? Well it was not a Simon Cowell quote that got me so annoyed, but that annoying little idiot Louis Walsh. He claimed it was "killing the fun" in the race for the top spot. For who? You and your cronies? This is the most fun I've had with a Pop Chart in years. It's the first time I will have paid attention to anything involving the Christmas No.1 since...well, ever. I've had immense fun with RATM swearing on 5Live and sending producers into panic, the ridiculous mashup videos and all the rest of it. The supposed ironies over the song choice of the massive facebook group are unimportant and miss the point. It's a vote against the show, as members of RATM have said, and an attempt to make the charts interesting. The final lines of the song are Zack de la Rocha screaming "F*** you, I won't do what you tell me!" and it's appropriate for multiple reasons.

About 3 days ago I went and looked at the iTunes download chart and spotted two oddities. Stop Crying Your Heart Out by Oasis hanging around the top 30 and Don't Stop Believin' by Journey right up in the top 10. I then discovered they had been performed on the X-Factor recently. All this Rage Against The Machine campaign is showing is that the massive marketing machine that propels glorified karaoke singers to chart topping positions and long-forgotten singles back into them is not the sole preserve of the Simon Cowells, Nigel Lythgoes and and Pete Watermans of the world. Exposure correlates with sales pretty closely, and it always has. In an age of quick word-of-mouth through things like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube there is no reason why what record executives decide should dominate the charts and this is proof of it. Even if RATM don't make it, the fact remains that politically themed, rap metal song from 1992 about the LA Riots got to No.2 in the UK charts - purely as a result of facebook group gaining some traction.

Secondly, X-Factor contestants should adopt the song's final refrain as their motto. Where are the previous winners of these type of shows? Michelle McManus, Steve Brookstein, Leon Jackson, One True Voice? Where are these people now, not even counting other finalists? Absolutely nowhere, getting dropped the minute they were past their prime - which was about a few months to the marketing men. Anyone who genuinely wants a singing career should not audition for the X-Factor. A quick 15 minutes? Yes, but unless you are fairly talented (there have been exceptions) there is no career through this route. What ever happened to a distinguished but low-key session career? As long as you do what King Simon decrees you're fine. It's about time there was some creativity involved, rather than just churning out (rather bad) covers. This is not the best route, or even the easiest, to a musical career. To all X-Factor hopefuls I implore you, turn to Cowell and say "I won't do what you tell me!" It's ironic he claims this is "[putting] down young talent" given that is exactly what he himself does when it's no longer making money for him.

Can the show be entertaining? Sure, of course it can and it must be. Not my cup of tea, I hate it, but 19 million people don't watch it if they do. It's about time it stopped being a shop window for music though (and not new music either, we're now talking Miley Cyrus covers for goodness sake, the original only came up about a year ago or something). In the year that has seen the cancellation of the grandfather of all reality TV shows, Big Brother, it seems appropriate to deliver a big two's up to the X-Factor before it hopefully begins to go the same way.

I'm fed up with it, and clearly millions of other people are as well. We're "cynical" and "stupid"? It's "very Scrooge" and we're "taking the fun out of it"? No we're not, quite the opposite. We should just shut up? Well f*** you, Simon, I won't do what you tell me.

Can The Web Kill The Pub Quiz?

It's a familiar sight up and down the country - people huddled round tables with scraps of paper, desperately fumbling around for a pen or pencil as bit of feedback crackles over the sound system. Whispers of "Shut up!" echo around as the first conundrum is burbled through what sounds like a microphone covered in cotton wool. The pub quiz. Teams gather in hope of having a good spread of knowledge - sports guy, film guy, history guy, geography guy, general brain-box guy. A sure fire winner of the cash/sweeties/free drinks, no?

Not any longer as I put it to you they can be beaten by one single person - mobile internet guy. This is something that occurred to be a while back whilst doing a pub quiz I attended semi-regularly at The Pear Tree in Edinburgh (anyone in Edinburgh should go along, good quiz). When I briefly formed a team consisting of friends and flatmates, we had 3 smartphones amongst our number and agreed not to use them as that would be cheating. More and more people though are getting smartphones. Of my rough age group, about half the people I know own, or are considering, an iPhone; another quarter own, or are considering, a Blackberry. The number of people owning such devices is only set to increase. Even my old Sony Ericsson could access Wikipedia and Google, albeit quite slowly. Text services such as AQA, text a question to 63336 in the UK, offer answers to your questions at a price.

All of this is simply an evolution of that moment when you realise your absent friend would definitely know the answer to that question. One cheeky text message later and you have your answer. A host of information is right at your fingertips now, not just the knowledge of those in your phonebook. Short of getting everyone to forcibly turn off their phones, the answer to any question is a few fingerswipes away. Not even the music round is safe from the all-knowing power of the internet, you could even stream the song to check the answer given. I've used my phone to settle various non-quiz pub disputes over the time since I got it. What colour is a polar bear's skin? What the hell is a kelpie? How tall is Nicolas Sarkozy? Can dogs look up? How long is a piece of string? No question is safe.

My role tended to be 'film guy' or 'sports guy'. Name all the films Tim Burton directed beginning with 'B'? Batman, Batman Begins Batman Returns (Edit: Cheers, Jay. Stupid error - d'oh!), Beetlejuice, Big Bish. Bam! Four points please. But knowing you could achieve the same thing, possibly quicker, by Googling Tim Burton's filmography lessens the satisfaction somewhat. There's plenty of incentive for some folk to do this too, there are often some valuable prizes on offer at a pub quiz. With the ubiquity of such devices it will become harder to police (short of building a pub in a Faraday cage).

Obviously the pub quiz is not going anywhere soon but with more and more people having access to on-the-go internet I can't help but think the questions are soon going to have be wonderfully creative if it's not to become an endangered species.

Music On-the-Go...all of it

Well not all of it, but a hell of a lot. I blogged about music service Spotify a while ago and generally how superb it was. Well - it just got better. Today the iPhone application hit the iTunes store (and Google's Android store as well I believe).

When the history of music in the digital era is reflected on years from now this will be a watershed. Although my technology predictions are generally a bit dodgy*, I genuinely believe 2009 will be regarded as a landmark period. When Spotify finally gets a release in the United States it will just explode.

Spotify in its desktop form was an excellent and well-executed service, but I always had that niggling thought in my head - "I can't listen to these on my MP3 player, iPod or whatever - shame, really". No longer, I now have access to over 6 million tracks in my pocket, accessible through my phone. Just think about that for a second - 6 million. Through a phone. I like to keep up to date with consumer technology and, as a result, little that comes out on a day-to-day basis makes me go "Wow", but this has kind of blown me away. I'm still surprised Apple allowed it, as it poses a massive threat to iTunes long term. Naturally, you won't always have a signal good enough to stream music over which is why you can store anything up to about 3,000 songs (assuming you have the hard-disk space on your phone) for listening offline. The playlists you set up at home on your computer seem to automatically synchronise to your phone as well. Add on the collaborative playlists already available on Spotify (where your friends can add tracks as well) and the genius grows.

This isn't all a fairytale dreamworld, however; the mobile versions are only available to those paying £9.99 a month for the advert-free version of Spotify. I coughed up as there was no minimum term and I could axe it after a month if I wasn't satisfied. So far I am (although it did cut out a couple of times this afternoon) and will be keeping it on. In the last post on Spotify I did worry about the longevity of the service in terms of it becoming a money-making venture. this will certainly help. I wasn't a fan of subscription based models for music but if they can get me to sign up then something is obviously going according to plan. The only true problem is the inability to run the application in the background and check e-mail, text messages and such while the music is playing but this is more the fault of Apple than Spotify and it won't affect those running it on an Android based phone.

Once again, anyone who hasn't tried Spotify should. Even in its free (advert-based) form it is worth seeing. To that end, I have a spare invite going as a result of me signing up for premium so if anyone is after one then let me know.

*I effectively said Google Chrome web browser would flop. Whilst hardly the new standard, it's now my default browser on every system and I've been turning family and friends over to it. I have been proven to be talking out my rear end. D'oh!