Change of gear

I just bought a Canon-EOS-550D to replace my older EOS 400D. I bought the 400D in January 2007 (4 years ago). What made me change was:

• The much improved sensibility and noise performance


• The Live view on the LCD screen, which can be very useful in difficult conditions nhile shooting in gigs

The step from 10.1 megapixels to 18 megapixels, and the ability to shoot movies with the camera, are absolutely NOT what made me bought the 550D.

However, I really look forward to use this thing in 2011 shows.

Taake

Influences: Norway, Autumn, Winter, Hell, Pain, Death, The Devil
Sounds Like: True Norwegian Black Metal



The Taake Paris gig was great. Ulvhedin Høst was completely in transe, to the point that he repeatedly hit his forehead very hard with his mike, spurting a lot of energy and blood.

The whole set is here

Harajuku

The worst movie ever made

Very funny review of this almost unknown splatter movie. Worth watching, the only problem is the review is in French.

What we do on the stage is to build a temple of Chaos

Here is the link to a very interesting interview of the leader of Watain by Metalkult.
The energies that we evoke are real. We let them manifest.

They really believe in what they are doing. That they believe in total chaos is not a problem, because that's how they are able to create. Their way is not everyone's way, but it's undoubtedly their and their only.

George Romero on Left 4 Dead 2

Very interesting interview. Humans are more of a problem than Zombies. My films are political satires. And in the case of a Zombie apocalypse, go to Max Brooks, he will know how to deal with it ;)

Old Days

"We used to believe that Venom and Bathory were
evil, because it's impossible to make such evil music without being
evil yourself. We choose to believe that even if it's unlikely... But we
live in the old days."
Euronymous

Law Abiding Engineer

A great (fake) movie trailer using Valve's Team Fortress 2 characters. The hero is the engineer.


And soon, news about the Inferno festival in Oslo, were I was just some days ago...

Los Angeles is doomed

This is in Logorama, which won the Oscar 2010 for the best animated movie.

Logorama from Marc Altshuler - Human Music on Vimeo.

It is a dream of Los Angeles, but Ronnie is a Psychopathic killer, and Gomorrah is doomed.

Faire les courses j’ai trop la flemme, je ne mange plus que des ramens

"Faire les courses j’ai trop la flemme, je ne mange plus que des ramens, qui ont le même goût que le lait en poudre, mais que c'est bon".
"Going shopping I'm too lazy, I only eat noodles anymore, they taste like powdered milk, hmm this is delicious."

Uncreation

Upon the powdered joints of human bones,
In grim chambers and unhallowed ground,
Tied down with ropes from skin and flesh,
Here lies only ruin and damnation,

The dead holler... endless and toneless
Rites of the miserable turned to dust,
Your maggot-ridden hearts still beating,
Fleshless, bricked up, and left to rot...

Uncreation,
Unspeakable Rituals,
Into my rotten soul they wail,
Clandestine Writing,
Hacked from human bones,
Whispered in the eldest ways,
Casket movements,
Through Cascades of towering limbs,
Behind a leathered masque of hate.

Out from a permanent nothingness,
Beyond the black cloak of death,
Ancient, Rot-browned inhuman ways,
Buried in disintegrating flesh.

Uncreation,
Diabolic Blight,
Enter with pride Necropolis,
No sanctum,
Here lies only infernal death,
Buried in ash and angel's dust,
Casket movements,
As worms on gangrene-flesh,
Like drones through necromantic galleries,

Howling through mounds of teeth and hair,
Imprisoned behind a wall of corpses,
Necrotic skin peel from yellow bones,
Licking the envenomed blades of evil.

The Devil's wears Nada

Or Nicolas Sarkozy in the Simpson's.

Nicolas Sarkozy et Carla Bruni dans les Simpson !
par lemondededemainTV

Mass We Pray

The Christian video game, hmm they are a little ridiculous. But, BUT... Look at 0:31: The Devil's Horn... And 0:39: inverted crosses, people...

hmm, it could be from a particularly imaginative Satanist group ;)



Edit: It seems it was part of a viral marketing campaign for Dante's Inferno, an upcoming video game loosely based on the aforementioned book. Here's a trailer for the video game:

It does not look so interesting.

Random thought

"There are those that will see conspiracy and disgust in the rotation of the earth simply because its too popular with the mainstream". (@realjenius)

Apart from that, I bought Left 4 Dead 2 after more than 100 hours on Left 4 Dead. I only finished the first campaign yet (with friends, of course), but I must say that this game is a masterpiece!!

What are you waiting for? Buy this game on PC NOW!!!

And don't forget to check the Mignight Riders website from time to time. It seems that we will see them soon ;)

Return to Bioshock

One year ago I bought Bioshock, played it on my old laptop and did not like it at all, it seemed to me it was a hell of a overhyped game. However my PC did not handle Shaders 3.0 at the time, I had to get recompiled Shaders for the game somewhere, so some of my bad impressions of the game could have been related to that.

I have now a state of the art laptop, and I was able to play this game will all settings maxed. Unfortunately, my impressions did not change:

• I'm sorry, but this game has lower than average graphics, even for a 2007 game. Except for the settings (which are OK, but also not mind blowing), objects and NPCs rendering are really not very good. Some years ago, games like Half Life 2 or Doom 3 had much better graphics


• Gameplay very much look like a child console game. For example a lot of glowing colors and oversized objects in the game. And unfortunately even if you disable all these kind of unnecessary features in the game options. Or the fact that you have to loot every object and NPC in the game, or random places, to find items. This all feels so unnatural. To take a very old example, for the first Half Life, Health stations were always put in logical places. Here this is completely "random", and you only have to look everywhere like in a flash puzzle game to get what you want. Not to mention the absurd mini games that are used to hack sentries or vending machines. Why?


• I also have to mention the combats and NPCs behavior which are really ridiculously bad and uninteresting


• Story: Because they were not able to tell the story in a natural way, they recorded hours of recordings to tell the story by dead NPCs. Even in Doom 3 I did not like that very much, but the Doom 3 universe was very simple. Here they had to create a very specific universe, and it seemed that they could not really make the player experience it. So they had to resort to these recordings. You don't play the game, you don't experience the universe, you are fed the story by some kinds of audiobooks... So why not reading a Ayn Rand book instead?


• Level design: not very interesting. Even at the beginning of the game, when I arrived in Rapture, there was no wow effect at all (except for the short cinematic part when you are in the bathysphere, but remember that it's only a cinematic). Small rooms everywhere, very much all looking the same to me

I will very soon remove this game from my computer, because I really don't enjoy playing it i any way. But why did some people loved this game so much?

I Have Not... Come This Far... To Die Now

Awesome Left 4 Dead 2 trailer.

This guy needs to get a life, maybe

However, at the end he did not seem to suffer from playing Left 4 Dead during some 8 hours on a row approximately ;)

Left 4 Dead 2 is not an expansion

There have been a lot o whining lately from Left 4 Dead gamers about the fact that Valve announced a new Left 4 Dead 2 game in late 2009. They say they feel that they were cheated because the new game should have been released as free DLC, and that Valve has abandoned Left 4 Dead support and development. Some of them even say that the game is unfinished or unplayable.

Just immature whiners.

Valve do not owe them anything:

• The game is very much playable, on the contrary it's one of the games I played the most I think


• Valve already released DLC and SDK for Left 4 Dead. The Survival Pack is a great addition to the game. If some people don't like it, that's their problem, but saying that it's nothing just because they prefer to play versus (or play versus only) is twisting reality. Left 4 Dead is not only Versus (even if Versus is cool). And for those who say that releasing new Maps (or even adapting existing Maps to a new game mode)is really zero work, they should begin to Map themselves


• Valve has the right to develop a new game when they want

Beside, judging by the additions in A.I. Director, game engine and gameplay in Left 4 Dead 2, it could never be an expansion on the first game. Expansions are when you add limited new content and stories without changing the game engine itself. here we have (and I think it's just the beginning):

• New special infected (and even new special normal infected) with the consequences on the A.I. Director, not mentioning how the Versus mode will evolve because of that. It's much more than only tweaking the characteristics for one class like in Team Fortress 2.


• The new evisceration / gore effects in the game engine (beurk !!)


• New Dynamic weather, and dynamic path, all handled by the new A.I. Director

Without Pride Mourned The Loss Of Freedom

Steingrim Torson was the talented vocalist of the Norwegian Black Metal band Celestial Bloodshed. He was shot to death in the stomach by his best friend, who happens not to remember why he did that...

Revelations of the Black Flame

An update about the upcoming 1349 album: It is still not available on amazon, but it seems it has been already released on iTunes. However, you can already listen to samples of the album titles and buy them (or the whole album). I will still wait for the CD ;)