This is purely an example of how the internet becomes quite useful when it comes to getting the best price.

I have a new camcorder and I need a new memory card for it. Nothing special, a class 10 8GB SDHC card.

The first place I check is Currys as there is one just up the road. So, I find the Samsung Class 10 Plus SDHC 8GB card. Now, many think “Wow, look at that! £34.99 down to £12.99, that’s a good £22 off!”. I think, hmmm, this is the usual retailers trick into hiking the price up for a period of time and then claiming a big saving.

.Then, I check Amazon
and well would you look at that, the same card, was £17.99, now £9.50. So not only have I proved that Currys were overcharging MASSIVELY on the original price, but they are still charging more than what you can buy it from Amazon!

So do yourself a favour, don’t get ripped off from the High Street stores. Go out onto the web or use a local independent store.

I’ve always been a musician at heart, and I’ve always loved listening to music. I’ve even gone so far as to get into music composition, some of which I carry on doing today. The Beatles, Kula Shaker, The Prodigy, Queen were all early favourites. From there, I gradually steered towards Progressive Metal (with thanks to my old school friend Tom Maclean, now the lead guitarist of To-Mera and bassist for Haken), the realms of Dream Theater, Symphony X to name a couple. Pantera was also a favourite of mine at that time. I also stumbled across American Prog Rock band Spocks Beard, who supported Dream Theater during their 1999 tour of Scenes from a Memory.

Now, Dream Theaters Mike Portnoy got involved with a project called Transatlantic, as did Spocks Beard Neil Morse. In this project, they got together with a guitarist called Roine Stolt who I learnt was from a band called The Flower Kings.

Whilst I was nurturing an unhealthy addiction to David Bowies album Earthling, I was in Russia in 2001 with a friend and in a dark, dusty CD store down a back alley in St Petersburg. In this store I was looking for more David Bowie, and it was then I found an album called “Back in the World of Adventures” by the Flower Kings. “Ooo!” I thought, “Thats that band that Roine Stolt is in. I’ll check that out”. I guess you could say from then, I embarked on what can only be described as the most magical journey I have ever been, and I’m still riding it.

So today, I felt obliged to dedicate a post to one of my all time favourite group of very talented musicians, The Flower Kings. And perhaps, some more shall follow, as they deserve a good, solid place here, and on the web.

Who are The Flower Kings?
I shouldn’t be, but here in the UK when somebody asks you what kind of music you are into, I shy a little, which is rather unusual for a musician to do so as the person asking the question is expecting me to reel off a list of bands that are instantly recognisable when they find out I’m into music. So, my response is “Favourite band of all time, The Flower Kings.”. The facial response I get is mixed from person to person, but here they are in a nutshell.

The Flower Kings are Swedish Progressive Rock band, founded by one Roine Stolt. In 1994, Roine Stolt released his Solo Album The Flower King, which brought together Tomas Bodin on keyboards, Hasse Froberg on guitar and vocals and Jaime Salazar on Drums. From there, in 1995, “Back in the World of Adventures” was released and was the first album to include these great musicians under the collective name The Flower Kings. From then on, they are recognised as one of the greatest Progressive Rock bands of recent history, perhaps even of all time.

What should I expect from The Flower Kings?
If you are familiar with the likes of Yes, Genesis (the early stuff), Camel, Caravan, Cressida, Can (how many Cs!?) then you will feel at home. But thats not to say its just for those Prog heads like myself. With an open mind and easy attitude towards music, you may just get taken away on a mystical journey.

But in essence, expect a surreal, pleasurable, immersive and enlightening musical experience. Also, in later albums, expect some political messages, as well as one or two digs at the celebrity / corporate lifestyles. It’s all about the goodness of mankind, peace, love and friendship.

Sounds like an ‘acquired’ taste…
It is, and unfortunately in the UK over the last few years we have got too used to ‘manufactured for profit’ music. All we hear about is celebrities, bankers, soldiers at war and general unkindness towards others. Rather unfortunately, that’s what sells in this country. And in the USA.

The Flower Kings music is a chance for me take an adventure and perhaps reflect on the world and my own life, with the ambition to inspire myself as well as others. I recommend you at least try it as you might be pleasantly surprised.

Any resources that I can check out?
The thing I am most disappointed about is the amount of web resources for The Flower Kings. I know that outside of the Progressive Rock circle they are not commercially successful, but I’d love to do my bit to get the word out there. I guess that’s partly why I am blogging about it today, but aside from that here are some resources:

The Flower Kings on Myspace
The Flower Kings Official Site (needs updating)

While trying to find “My Cosmic Lover” on Soundcloud, uploaded by Insideout Music, I find that it is no longer there. Very disappointed but instead, I found this which will give you some insight into what to expect (I seem to be the only one who has made a comment on the track!):

AgentsOfMercypreview by agentsofmercy

Wait, Agents of Mercy? Who’s that!?
The members of The Flower Kings get involved in all sorts of other projects, including Transatlantic. They also get involved in solo projects. Roine Stolt has released greats such as Wall Street Voodoo, Hydrophonia and of course, The Flower King. Tomas Bodin has released a few of his own (I AM is highly recommended), while Hasse Froberg, Jonas Reingold and Zoltan Csorsz have all done various other projects. Karmakanic (Jonas), Eggs and Dogs (Tomas), Agents of Mercy (Roine), to name a few, all worth checking out.

So you like them then, obviously…
I guess so! I was a member of the Fanclub when it existed (I’m in this list somewhere!), probably the first and last fanclub I’ll join!

What won me over when I first heard The Flower Kings was the fact that Roine, according to the in leaflets of most CDs, wrote all, if not most of the material. As a budding musician myself, I was, and still am, in awe of his ability to compose the most gloriously melodic, affectionate and yet complex music I think I’ve ever heard. And the way that man makes a guitar sound – he doesn’t just play the guitar, he makes it sing. I simply love the way he makes a guitar sound, I don’t think anyone else has ever managed to achieve that same sound.

Then, when I heard Tomas Bodins “I AM”, I realised it wasn’t just Roine who was able to compose some truly inspiring music. As for the rest of the TFK family, it wouldn’t be the same without them. Jonas is a truly remarkable bass player, and all of their drummers have all brought their own unique sound to the Flower Kings ensemble (they’ve had a few!).

So I guess this blog, at the end of the day, is biased. But it had to be, no other music has inspired me as much as theirs and no other music has touched my soul as much as theirs did.

So open your mind, and, as their fourth album boldly claims, take “A Journey to the Hidden Corners of your Mind”.

This isn’t really going to be a review. I like to review games once I’ve played more than just the demo. I also like to review games that I have played more than just the demo on a platform that I own.

What I am going to do is tell you about this most wonderful game, based on the half hour gameplay that I got when I went round to a friends house and played the demo on his XBox 360, as that is the only platform it’s available on at the moment. Yes, that old chestnut – once again, Microsoft flash the cash to ensure they get the releases first. Which is becoming quite boring now for someone who sold his XBox 360 two years ago in favour of his PS3 and PC gaming. Perhaps I’m, in a round about way, just proving that I can fend of the temptation of Microsoft mentality of corporate greed.

The game itself is produced by what I believe to be a small time games developer Other Ocean, published by not so small publisher Paramount Digital Entertainment. It is a platformer, reminiscent of Fade to Black, Flashback and the more recent Limbo, and is set in 1953. You start the game on a moving train and while you listen to Patrick Stewart retelling the story during the gameplay, the mood is set. It’s dark, almost slightly macabre but in true War of the Worlds fashion, it descends you into a world that is under threat by a force greater and stronger than man and there is “no one and nothing left to stop them”.

There is a constant feeling of menace and threat, knowing that if you come in contact with an alien, there isn’t much you can do as you are not carrying any weapons. But then as we know, even if you were, when you are coming up against the Heat Ray, it is just like “Bows and Arrows against the Lightning”. You are just there to survive, and survival is key.

For the hardcore War of the Worlds fan like myself, notice a few key things – it is set in 1953 (true to the 1953 film), the eyepiece on the tripod is reminiscent of the same film, and yet the tripods themselves are of similar build to the 2005 Steven Spielberg film. So no Victorian era, and no Jeff Wayne in sight. which leads me to believe that the game itself is influenced by the films, rather than the original novel by HG Wells or the hugely popular soundtrack by Jeff Wayne, and as far as I know, no other adaptation has done this. We are of course excluding the Pendragon and The Asylum films.

So what does this game do? To me, it’s almost an interactive story book which incorporates some sound gameplay and is perfect for those late night sessions which require not a lot of thinking and effort. For this reason, I will most certainly be buying this game when Microsoft lift the restrictions on the publishers, allowing them to distribute the game to other platforms.

Regretfully, I do not have an XBox category to post this in, so therefore I will have to place this blog entry under the three closest categories I have.

If you wish to read more, check out the official site at http://www.waroftheworldsgame.com.

Just a quickie to all you Reason followers – between 30th September and 31st October, owners of Reason and Record can pay what they want for the Reason 6 upgrade. That’s right, so long as its above 1 euro, you can pay what you want for the upgrade next month.

Why are they doing this you ask? Who knows, but loyal followers of Reason and the Propellerheads like myself who have purchased Reason from an early age (myself, I started buying Reason from version 3) will no doubt be over the moon with this. And hopefully, loyal followers will also invest a bit more than a euro for such a great production tool.

Thanks Propellerheads, you are literally the best, you know that don’t you?

Read more about Reason 6 and it’s features.

I try to cast my mind back before the internet played a large role in our lives. I love the Internet, it’s part of my job so therefore it’s vital to me. I am all up for companies, organisations and individuals to get involved, without populating it with tat, and boy have I seen some tat in my life on the web.

But I think my boredom stretches further than that. I know exactly where my boredom lies, and it’s with big companies. I constantly see advert after advert with the same names, and the same brands. I feel sorry for smaller, local companies because I used to run one with my family, well established for 60+ years. But we lost out in the end to bigger names, and so I know it’s a tough world out there. A recent trip to Shepton Mallet proves this exactly. High street – dead. Just outside of town is a whopping great big Tesco and an Argos, busy busy busy. Everything the common man needs I guess. After all, Tesco now do EVERYTHING it seems.

At a time where disposable income is low, people have to be careful where they spend their money on luxury goods. So, rather than spending £1000 on a new sofa, people are quite prepared to pay for a £100 from Ikea (another big name, don’t you know?) and use it until it falls apart, then buy a new one, as an example. As such, bigger companies have bigger budgets and can sell goods at highly competitive prices (sometimes to the expense of the consumer as 9 times out of 10 they are being ripped off. I can give you a fantastic example of Dreams selling a £1095 that only costs them £99. Trust me, I still have contacts in the Industry. So that Half Price deal isn’t so good to be true is it now?).

But there is one thing I simply do not understand, and it’s why people keep on buying products from a company called Apple.

I read somewhere recently that, in light of Steve Jobs departure, that Apple have changed the way people live in terms of technology. I can safely say that I will never buy an iPod, iPhone, or an iPad, and yet they sell millions of these things day in day out. How? Why are people buying these products? Because it’s a craze? Its a bloody expensive one if you ask me, £300-£500 is the going price. I would have been gutted if I had bought an iPad 1 last year for the same money, only to find that the next year, they bring out iPad 2. But like every other large company, their marketing strategy is fierce, unwilling, trying to drum into our heads that we want one, we need one to keep up with everyone else. It’s obviously working on most, not on me. Why do I need one? I have a PC, works for me? I have an Android phone, why do I want something else to give me information on the go? In reality, its a ridiculous idea that should have never worked. However, it did, and has, and people are left with even less disposable income, having bought something that is totally not necessary.

Do you know what I would rather buy? A real apple. I mean, a nice, juicy red one (or a green one, I’m not fussy). One that I can sink my teeth into, and hear that satisfying ‘crunch’ as I bite into its sweet, succulent contents. And it’s necessary, not only is it food that helps us stay alive, but think of all the added health benefits to it. They are rich in antioxidant goodness and help prevent cancer too apparently.

Oh, and of course, I mean an apple from my local grocer, not from Tesco.

If I said I was a true fan of the series, then I would be to some degree lying. This is because I never played Napoleon Total War, nor Empire Total War. Neither did I play the spin off, Spartan Total Warrior. I did however play the others extensively. Rome Total War introduced new graphics and animation, albeit it was incredibly difficult, Medieval 2 Total War was the first to sequel a previous release and was, in my opinion, the best of the series. But now, we have Shogun 2 Total War.

The first thing you will notice is that the game looks as good as the rest of the series, if not better. Also, the gameplay has not changed – you have the turn based campaign map which allows you to deploy units, build your bases and perform diplomacy with other factions. A new feature has been introduced here – Master of the Arts, allowing you to develop your faction as a whole, from building better units faster, reducing the cost of buildings and troops, to performing diplomacy with other factions in a more effective way. Taxes on settlements are dealt with faction-wide, rather than individual settlements, making it far easier to manage the taxation of your population.

The Battle Interface has not evolved a great deal – deploying and issuing commands are still the same. The scenery is, as ever, looking great. But the most important element that has not been lost is the feeling you get when two huge armies collide on the battlefield, the battle cries, the clashing of swords, the whooshing of arrows as they fly through the air. It’s all there, and it’s as good as ever.

Besieging a settlement is not so anal this time round either – you don’t have to sit around waiting to build siege equipment, you either burn the gates down or climb the walls. This also means you can waltz on in and take a settlement first move round. Unfortunately, this also means the enemy can do this to you too, which can sometimes take you by complete surprise.

The one thing I do not get in this game at the moment is the Multiplayer. Now, perhaps I should spend a bit more time trying to figure it out before writing about it, but first impressions tell me that it could be great, but it’s not entirely clear from the outset what you have to do, or indeed, what you can do.

What Total War have done with this game is what they do with every release – they make minor changes to the gameplay while sticking with what they know works. On top of that, they improve on everything else. This is what makes the series popular, and this is what makes their games incredible every time round.

Overall verdict – once again another great addition to the Total War series. Buy it, very quickly.

Prediction? Rome 2 Total War is the next one.

I have been a huge War of the Worlds fan for some time now. The films, the books, the musical version, I’ve read / seen / heard them all. I’ve also been raised in a musical family who were always part of a theatrical group of some kind and always grew up wanting to be part of the orchestra pit. So I couldn’t really miss the opportunity of going to see Jeff Wayne’s Musical Version of the War of the Worlds “under license” as a theatre production.

A bit of background – as you probably know Jeff Wayne’s Musical Version of War of the Worlds is a popular musical version of the 1898 novel by H G Wells (who, ironically lived just round the corner from the Kings Theatre in Elm Grove, Southsea). It was released in 1978 and became hugely popular. In 2006, Jeff Wayne took it live with an official UK tour. It was lavish, bright, loud and quite simply amazing. One of the best evenings I had out. In 2008, CCADS, a local theatre group applied for a license to perform it and now, in 2011, for the first time ever an amateur theatre group have taken it to the stage in the UK – and was performed here at the Kings Theatre in Southsea.

Having seen the official Jeff Waynes UK tour back in 2006, I simply didn’t know what to expect. Obviously, it wasn’t going to be as grand as the official tour, it wasn’t going to have all of the special effects. This was going to be done on an amateur theatre production budget.

Even before the start of the show the actors were walking around the theatre in their black, haunting, victorian dresses which set the scene nicely. Then the inevitable “No one would have believed..” was heard. Then my nerves kicked in as I eagerly waited for the orchestra to perform the infamous first three chords. The orchestra started, the music kicked in and the dancers came on.

It took me some time to warm up to the fact that this was a theatre production, not in any way how I interpreted the book, nor how the official tour told the story. An actor instead of a heat ray, the lack of lasers and explosions, a cardboard Thunder Child. It all took some getting used to, but throughout I enjoyed it. But then, how do you portray a martian invasion of tripod machines, in the middle of Victorian London, on a stage, with a limited budget? A tripod did eventually make it onto the stage, and I have to say they did a fine job recreating it, together with lighted hood.

The second act suited the theatrical element better – the dancers performed very well in “The Red Weed”. The singing was very good, and that infamous high pitched note in “Brave New World” was pulled off without a problem. The dramatical ending of “Dead London” was again performed ever so well. In fact, I’d go as far as to say the the second act was better than the first. Which is strange, because I always preferred the first CD of the album. I just felt that there was more to give in the theatrical sense in the second act than the first.

For me though, the orchestra was the best part of it all. They nailed the soundtrack brilliantly – the guitar playing was simply spot on to the original, and although there was some backing track going on, they performed well. The martian sound was slightly dissapointing (aplayed by a very simple square synth), and I think the samples didn’t work in the first act, but you got the idea. Hey, I’m a keyboard player, of course I’m going to be critical of the keys! The acting was also top notch.

What did put me off was the ‘modern’ theatre feel to it. To me modern theatre is an acquired taste and not always appreciated by all. No matter at what level, an actor cannot play the part of a Martian Heat Ray turning everyone into fire. A Martian Heat ray turns people into fire, not a human being. He didn’t even have “snake like tentacles”, as described by the narrator. Which was quite dissapointing.

So, was it all worth it? Yes, of course it was. I thoroughly enjoyed it, and without knowing what I was going to see I was pleasantly surprised. “Jeff Waynes Musical Version of The War of the Worlds on a budget” is what I’d describe it as, and it was no bad thing. And for it to be the first of its kind, that made it even more special. A congratulations to the production team for what must have seemed like an impossible task. It was pulled off well and the cast did an excellent job.

If the modern theatre element was taken out of it, they made use of some scenery (there was none, just some black boxes as you’d expect from modern theatre), and replaced the actor with an actual martian (a costume will do) and a heat ray that fired, er, a heat ray of some kind, then I would have been more comfortable. I’m sure other fans of the franchise would agree with me on this one.

Overall, great job CCADS. Jeff Waynes War of the Worlds still does sound amazing, no matter where it is, or how its performed.

Ps.
And hey Jeff, where’s this CGI film (and perhaps a new PC game? Please?)

While I am busy working on that project, I wanted to just get on and play some NES games. So, I found Nemulator and the ROMs to the games I already own and away I went. But using the keyboard just isn’t the same. I wanted to use a controller. but as far as I know, you can’t get USB NES controllers. I do however own a Playstation 3. With the Playstation Network still down, and with no end to it in sight, my PS3 is still not being used to any great extent. So that made me think, can I use my Playstation 3 controller with an Emulator? The answer is yes.

Before carrying on, let me make a few things clear – you do this entirely at your own risk. It shouldn’t break anything, and it didn’t break for me, but its not supported and is certainly not official so only do this if you know what your doing.

1) Download the MotioninJoy drivers and Tool.
2) Install the drivers and the Tool.
3) Now reboot your PC.
4) For 64 bit OS owners, you need to hit F8 during boot up and choose “Disable Driver Signature Enforcement”.
5) Once you are backup and running, plug your PS3 controller in, hit the PS button and Windows will automatically install some kind of driver which won’t work.
6) Now, I will verge off slightly from the guide given on the Motion in Joy website as the following worked for me.
7) Go to Control Panel -> Device Manager and find “HID Compliant Game Controller”. Right click, go to “Update Driver”.
Now, navigate to where you installed MotioninJoy and you will find the drivers some where in there – MotioninJoy\ds3\drivers
9) These should install fine.
10) Now, go into the DS3 Tool and Game Controller Panel and you should see the controller and “OK” next to it.
11) Go to Properties and you should be able to test it out.

To get it working in an Emulator, you need to find out what keys correspond to what buttons in the emulator.

12) Now, create a custom layout and map your PS3 buttons to these keys. For the NES, I used X and O on the PS3 controller for B and A respectively. Map X and O to the keys that are used for B and A in your chosen emulator, map the D Pad to the Arrow keys, and save the configuration.
13) I found that everytime I wanted to use a Custom layout, I had to quit out of DS3 tool, unplug the controller, plug the controller back in and fire up the DS3 tool again so that it can find the controller and map to your custom layout.

Et voila, you should have a working PS3 controller in your chosen Emulator! Ok, its not the same thing as the actual console, and some day I will get it working, but until then, its NES + PS3 controller all the way!

Then again, while Playstation gamers vent their anger on Sony, let us not forget a few core principles here:

1) The PSN is free – we are not actually paying an annual fee for being part of the network, so in my eyes they can be down for as long as they like.
2) This is Sony, not Microsoft – which is one of the reasons we bought a Sony Playstation 3, because we were loyal to the Sony cause, and didn’t migrate to the horror that is Microsoft (who do charge an annual fee of £39.99 per year).
3) They have taken it down for a very good reason (although perhaps penetration testing is something that should be done as a matter of cause).

So, this is why I have a certain amount of patience for Sony, I can still play most of my games offline in one player (back to the old days then!).

The one thing that is frustrating is that I can’t play games that I have bought (or unlocked trials from) the PSN Store, games such as Gravity Crash and the new Back to the Future game.

Still, we’ve got by and I won’t be complaining to Sony – and to those who are frustrated, don’t be – here are a few suggestions of what you can do:

• Invite a mate round – go old-skool and have a split screen shoot up. It can be just as fun.
• Get outside – the weather has been lovely, and fresh air will not do you any harm. Got a dog? Give it a walk. And another. And another etc….
• Catch up on some of those trophies – perhaps some of those trophies can only be obtained in single player? Obviously they won’t sync back to your account online, but at least you’ll get them done and they’ll sync back when the service is back online.
• A board game perhaps? Risk? Monopoly? Design your own?
• Watch this video of some penguins:

Don’t worry guys, PSN will be back before you know it.

First thing to say about Reason 5 is this – make sure you get Record 1.5 too. The Reason 5 upgrade is made more worthwhile if you get the Record upgrade too, and for only another 50 euros you might as well just do it.

Now many will know that I tend to not write in the Dance / Trance / Psy genre and more tend towards Progressive Rock, Classical and melodic synth work. Reason was more developed for the first group of composers, those purely in the electronic scene. But Record turns this completely over – you can now do a whole lot more with Propellerheads popular music sequencer.

I have had a good week playing with it and although I’ve not used all the new features, here is what I’ve liked so far:

1) Kong is good. Thor is still amazing. Line 6 gives your guitar sounds, more patches needed.
2) The ability to edit WAV files by importing them is a nice feature.
3) The new mixer is awesome, the new mastering panel gives you more control over your final sound.
4) All the small little things make a big difference – being able to tap out the tempo being one.

I’ve not had the chance to play with “Blocks”, a new feature aimed at songwriters to organise and arrange their compositions in a professional manner.

Seeing double
With so much going on, the use of one monitor is proving difficult for me. In Record, you have the screen split into The Mixer, The Rack, The Sequencer, and a separate window again for the Tools. On a 22″ monitor, I can tell you that working with all of that is very difficult.

Therefore, at some point I will be investing into a second monitor and would suggest you do the same if you want to spend more time being creative, rather than spending your time moving the window split up and down.

Impressed…
Overall, I am severely impressed with Propellerheads new outing and, although I am about 9 months late to upgrade, I am just happy that I actually managed to get around to it. Its more than an overblown synthesiser machine, its more than just a sequencer, this is a great music making tool aimed at any composer of any genre, with an easy interface for beginners, and the tools to satsify the needs of more advanced, professional musicians.