A video game is not that different from any other software development; it perhaps depends more on hardware, but even so it is very similar. When you describe a program you need the client´s opinion and plenty of information to determine how the issue was being taken prior to the new development. In the end it is obvious that albeit there won´t be much relation between the analysis and the final development, that relation will still be more or less recognizeable.

But, what about video games? To start with, Read the rest of this article »

The first thing you should know, I’m not a Stephen King fan, but I feel interested by the fact that many of his novels have been taken to the Big screen, though not always with great success. I´ll overlook the sometimes terrible or unimportant adaptations, and the overrated ones (sorry, but I don´t enjoy “Carrie” very much).

For a great movie tour around King’s novels, Read the rest of this article »

It is curious, this of trends. I remember the synthesizer boom around the second half of the eighties. And I say it is curious because the “synthesizer phenomenon” is much older. More than fifty years ago, avant-garde composers (Ussachevsky, Subotnick, etc…) were already using electronics in their music. However, I recognize that I identify myself more with the seventies´ boom and Schulze, Tangerine Dream or the megapopulars Vangelis and Jean Michel Jarre. Read the rest of this article »

Hi everyone! We can consider this article as a continuation of those “Five remedies for sadness” released several weeks ago. Today we are going to concentrate on a film which, in 1988, revitalized the comedy genre: “A fish called Wanda”.

There is something that distinguishes this film from many others: surely, the charisma of the four main actors and their brilliant and hilarious performances. But, let’s start with the beginning.

Mythic John Cleese (along with Graham Chapman, the two most outstanding members from Monty Python) dumped his acid sense of humour in a story about burglars, and he decided to offer it to a filmmaker (Charles Crichton, who hadn’t shot a movie since the late 60’s). Cleese succeeded in putting pressure on the producers, and (along with Crichton) wrote the final screenplay. They opted to dispense with the dark surreal humour from Monty Python’s stage, and they also impregnated the absurd situations with more dramatic likeliness. And the bet was complete, because they Read the rest of this article »

Is there a gene for Evil? Or maybe do we turn wicked due to life´s circumstances? No; I’m not going to be serious. Not today. This was only a way to introduce today´s review on bad guys in films. Because, does anyone ever ask himself/herself why bad guys Read the rest of this article »

http://www.glest.org/

In case you haven´t read my previous articles on it, Glest is a Free, open-source 3d Real Time Strategy Game, designed in a way so that it is easy to customize and expand. Glest has been in continuous development for several years, and has received awards in the Art Futura and Mundos Digitales spanish international festivals. Finally we have released the official 2.0 version, which includes many add-ons that we hope will enhance gameplay. Read the rest of this article »

http://www.dprp.net/proghistory/index.php

The albums featured will either be milestones in the history of progressive rock, other influential albums, or just good examples from the catalogue of a certain band. Each article is designed to offer an insight into the background of the band, the musicians, the writing and events surrounding the recordings. Not so much a review but more of an in-depth feature assessing the impact made by these particular recordings.

“Counting out Time” is a site, part of the dprp (Dutch Progressive Rock Page), which offers a collection of articles on selected Progressive Rock music albums from the sixties to the nineties. Some of the articles focus on analyzing the music (my friend Ángel will probably Read the rest of this article »

Let’s start the second and last chapter dedicated to Portuguese singer Dulce Pontes, in which we pay attention to ten outstanding musical moments (for different reasons) of her discography. Read the rest of this article »

http://www.lectrosonics.com/PressReleases/xsdt/xsdt.htm

the smallest wireless microphone in the world, the XSDT or “eXtra-Super-Damn-Tiny.”(…) with a 1×1mm capsule area, provides an astounding frequency response of 5Hz to 120kHz(…) the XSDT-ALK which uses an alkaline AA battery, providing 38 minutes of operational time; and the XSDT-LITH using a lithium battery providing 1 hour and 15 minute operational time. Due to the permanently installed battery on each unit, the XSDT must be discarded once the battery dies. MSRP for the XSDT-ALK: $499.99, for the XSDT-LITH: $699.99.

Just let me add something: this information was first published last saturday, April 1st- and yes, it´s an April fools joke, albeit a very interesting one.

I was browsing Digg just a few hours ago when I found a piece of news about the microphone. As I usually do I clicked the headline first to see what it was about, which got me to mobilemag.com. I then read the description and decided to write an article on the microphone since I found it quite odd that it was attached to a big battery and that it was so expensive for such a short life span. However, I must admit that by that time I didn´t doubt it was a real product. I just hadn´t taken the time to decypher the acronym (we´re faced with weird acronyms everyday: I know it, you know it, every NAN out there knows it), and though 120 KHz sounded quite excessive (we humans hear on average up to 22KHZ), it backed the statement that the mic was “astounding”. All in all, I thought it was a weird microphone, though surely appealing to Read the rest of this article »

http://www.iceagemovie.com/

The Ice Age is coming to an end, and the animals are delighting in their new world: a melting paradise of water parks, geysers and tar pits.

I liked Ice Age, the first movie, very much. That´s why I was a bit worried when I watched Ice Age: The Meltdown´s trailer for the first time. There was Scratch, the squirrel, searching again for the unattainable seed, there were the same ol´chaps from the first movie escaping again from an inminent danger… I feared that the forecoming movie was to be a sequel made to make some cash by using and abusing all the things that made the original famous. Now I that I finally saw the movie, I´m happy to Read the rest of this article »

http://www.nbc.com/Medium/

Allison DuBois is probably one of this year´s best fictional characters (the other one may be doctor House, but I run away from hospital plots as much as my cat does from water). Allison travels at daybreak to the sewers of terror, and then, when she wakes up, she finds her husband´s look, a saint in strict sense, still half asleep, her children and the daily chores. The way in which she intertwines the threads of panic and life is amazing, as much as the ability of the scripts to extract credible stories from her incredible powers. The chapters hardly last for 45 minutes, a juice with no spare pulp.

The fado is the Portuguese music par excellence. And I should add: it´s a feeling, a way of understanding life, a deeply felt expression of the inward voice of these people. If we try to find a synonym for the word “fado”, we will be talking about homesickness, nostalgia, melancholy, etc. But all of them are terms that don´t fit into the complexity of the original one.

The fado is displayed through the music by means of the melodies, the lyrics and, above all, the performances of the musicians and singers. The voice is usually feminine. We may search for the reason in the sociocultural context: womens’ situations in Portugal have been linked to the Land (the work in the fields) and the Sea (the loneliness generated by the emigrational phenomenon). And that voice has distinguished performers throughout time. Maybe Amalia Rodrigues is the major reference in this sense.

But, how has the fado evolved? Nowadays we can Read the rest of this article »

http://www.imagesco.com/ufo/index.html

Over the years many UFO sightings have reported magnetic and electromagnetic disturbances. The UFO Detector is designed to sense these disturbances and will signal their presence by flashing an LED and beeping.

I don´t dare to say that there´s people out there who would actually buy these UFO detectors for the sake of… well, detecting UFOs, but you never know. Anyway, from a nerdologist point of view I think they could be classified as gadgets, as they are small, expensive and, unless you live near Roswell, you don´t really need them (but still want to try them, eh…).

By the way, don´t miss the explanation of how they work. Since asking a local ET to fly nearby to try the device seems a little bit unpractical (lots of bureaucracy, mainly), at least they give several alternative ways to see that it works (whatever that means).

All in all, these UFO detectors, though expensive, are probably the best gift for those who want to believe (sing the soundtrack with me: nanananán-nanán-nan-nin-nin-nin-nin).

Have you ever wondered what a synthesizer and a percolator have in common?

In my opinion, the answer is that the better the filter, the better the result.

… ok, I guess that unless you have some knowledge on synthesizers you´ll be raising an eyebrow right now. At least my friend Carlos did so, and when I told him that a good synthesizer filter should Read the rest of this article »

Masculinity can be defined by two aspects: the cocktail adrenalin+ testosterone added to the liking for shooters.

Shooters, generally on a coin-op platform, were a dominant genre in the realm of early videogames. It´s easy to recall Galaxian, or Tempest, one of the first games to bring deepness to game mechanics. I would like to highlight one among them: Robotron 2084, the first game I ever knew that needed two joysticks to be used simultaneously, one for movement and the other for shooting.

Of course, the genre never died. People everywhere, especially asians as it seems, keep on devouring one shooter after another: Ikaruga, Bangai-O, Radiant Silvergun… Read the rest of this article »