Hadouken review published @ Winchester News Online

Hadouken proved that they are not one hit wonders as they sold out the Joiners in Southampton on Thursday the 26th November.

Soft Toy Emergency are the only support band and they did a great job of warming up the crowd for Hadouken’s return to Southampton.

The headline act greeted a rowdy crowd with the first track from their debut album, Get Smashed Gate Crash to kick off their set in pulsating style. Next the band played their new single M.A.D. from their new album 'For The Masses' which is set to be released 25th January 2010.

As the band broke into their most successful single to date, Declaration of War, a series of lasers started beaming lights all around Southampton’s most intimate venue. The lasers featured for the rest of the set with a different colours or styles for each song. The lighting show that the band put on was phenomenal creating a thriving and electric atmosphere catapulting the screaming fans into delirium.

Hadouken kept up the fast paced set with fan favourite songs like Crank It Up and Liquid Lives. As their set came to a close Hadouken stormed into Bombshell, a track from the new album that is produced by Drum & Bass act Noisia.

Considering that the average age of the audience was in the mid-teens the noise and atmosphere created shook the Joiners to its very core, their trademark song That Boy That Girl ended a very impressive night from one of England's most exciting bands.

http://www.winchesterjournalism.co.uk/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=382:hadouken-at-southampton-joiners-261109&catid=43:previewsreviews&Itemid=68 - Link to the review on the WINOL website also featuring pictures courtesy of Benji Walker at Live and Loud Photography.

Winchester News Online Diary (Weeks 3 & 4)

A lot has changed in the last two weeks WINOL wise for me. I have got a lot more involved in my role and undertaken in a lot more work. The first change was to change 'Lucky Dates' to 'Date with Fate', we did this for many reasons, lucky dates has more than one meaning, and date with fate is more BBC, so we thought this would be a more appropriate competition name. We also made the competition real in this week in the sense that the competition could actually be won. Chris Horrie kindly bought three bop (student night out) tickets as a prize for 'Date with Fate'. The competition was a great success and we decided to make it into a video for next week to include an interview with this week's winner. The next change was instead of just having reader response social networking websites called 'Winchester Speaks', the features team and I thought it would be better to have a general 'Winchester News Online' twitter account and facebook group. I feel this works a lot better as 'Winchester Speaks' didn't really indicate it was at all related with WINOL and using these social networking platforms we will be able to publicise WINOL content as well as get reader responses. Needless to say I used the facebook group and twitter account to promote the first live bulletin as much as I could so that we would get a lot of viewers watching it.

So, here is the first live WINOL bulletin, week 1,(or week 3 if you count the two dummy editions) - 18/11/2009



We were lucky enough to have Kay Oliver of GMTV, Sky and ITV as a guest editor for the WINOL live launch and her knowledge and expertise brought a lot to the WINOL news team and I think we all took a lot away from meeting with her. Here are her comments about WINOL and journalism at the University of Winchester:



Week 4 was a very big week for me. I had the massive job of pressing the record button on the tape deck to record the live bulletin! But in all seriousness, it was quite a big week for me as the features team and I decided to run 'Date with Fate' as a video competition, revealing the winning date and featuring an interview with last week's winner. It was my first TV (internet?) appearance so cut me some slack. I think the thing I found most hard was to smile while talking and animate my voice more so I wasn't talking in monotone. We decided to make it a bit silly because we want it to be funny, and we included some cheesy gameshow music, anyway here I am:



Also in week 4 I created a twitterfeed for the WINOL website so every story that was published to the WINOL website is then published to the WINOL twitter page and I set up different feeds for news, sport and features so each story is categorised aswell. I think this is a good way to get the content on the WINOL website read because a lot of focus is put on to the bulletin and not so much on to the stories on the website.

So, here is week 2 WINOL bulletin (or week 4 if you count the two dummy editions) - 25/11/2009, this is where I had the very important and complicated job of pressing record on the tape deck to record the bulletin otherwise there would be no bulletin.



I think this bulletin was our best yet and we are improving more and more week after week. We also had Andy Steggall of ITV and Sky, as the guest editor for this week and I think that the guest editors are fantastic for feedback from people who work on bulletins like WINOL in the real world. The expertise and responses that they give the WINOL team are invaluable and it's always a great experience and great feeling when they praise the work that you are doing.

Bring Me The Horizon review published @ Winchester News Online

Bring Me The Horizon entertained a sell out crowd at the Portsmouth Pyramid Centre on Thursday the 19 November.

Support came from two great American bands: August Burns Red and A Day To Remember. August Burns Red greeted an excitable crowd with a tight set of metalcore songs. A Day To Remember’s fans were out in force and the band did not disappoint. Despite a short set, ADTR pretty much stole the show and a lot of people left the show after ADTR’s set.


Bring Me The Horizon took to the stage with an illuminated backdrop displaying the massive letters ‘BMTH’. They kicked off their set with the popular single Chelsea Smile, which really got the crowd going. Despite the transition from deathcore to metalcore from the first album to the second album, the set still flowed incredibly well with a range of material from both albums.

BMTH lead singer, Oli Sykes, demanded extremely big mosh pits for songs such as Pray For Plagues, Medusa and Diamonds Aren’t Forever. The band have recently released 'Suicide Season: Cut Up’ which features remixes of songs from their latest studio album. They cleverly use clips from this as intros and outros to certain songs.

Bring Me The Horizon sent their fans home happy by ending the show with a party on stage for their last song Football Season Is Over with the anthemic chanting of “Party ‘til you pass out / Drink ‘til you’re dead / Dance all night ‘til you can’t feel you legs”.

http://winchesterjournalism.co.uk/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=345:bring-me-the-horizon-at-portsmouth-pyramids-191109&catid=43:previewsreviews&Itemid=68 - Link to the review on the WINOL website also featuring pictures courtesy of Benji Walker at Live and Loud Photography.

WINOL LIVE AT 5

The first ever WINOL news bulletin is LIVE at 5 today! Tune in for all the latest news and sport from the Winchester area:

www.winol.co.uk

Winchester News Online Diary (Weeks 1 & 2)

Winchester News Online (or WINOL) is an online newspaper and weekly bulletin produced by my university which I am a part of. My job title is "Commissioning Editor for Reader Response/UGC Editor" which basically means I am in charge of getting feedback from the viewers of the bulletin and visitors of the website.

I started this role by starting up a Facebook group and Twitter account, both titled 'Winchester Speaks' as two easy ways for the people of Winchester to contact Winchester News Online. To publicise the site I plan to run some competitions over the nest few months.

The first competition is called 'Lucky Dates'. For this competition I developed lucky dates 'tickets' which said: "It could be your lucky day with lucky dates. All you have to do is check here: www.wincesterjournalism.co.uk. Your lucky date is..." and then put a certain year on each ticket. The corresponding piece on the website (which hasn't been uploaded yet, otherwise I would just post a link to it) says: "Is it your lucky day? Check if your lucky date is a winner here! This week’s lucky date is based on the now cult series of films: Star Wars. But when was the first ever Star Wars film originally released?" I then included a picture of the Star Wars logo, which is free from copyright because the 'image, or text depicted in it, only consists of simple geometric shapes and text. They do not meet the threshold of originality needed for copyright protection, and are therefore public domain'. I then reveal the answer: "The first film: ‘Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope’ originally just titled ‘Star Wars’ was first released in 1977. If your ticket has the year 1977 on it then you are a winner! Email winchesterspeaks@hotmail.com for details of your prize." However this competition cannot be won as I never printed a ticket with the winning date on it, cunning, eh?

The second competition that I am running is a basic 'how many sweets in the jar' competition (pictured right). However, this competition can actually be won and the prize is the jar with the sweets in which I paid for out of my own pocket, all for for the promotion of Winchester News Online! I also sat and counted the sweets out which took an awful long time! The corresponding piece for the competition of the website reads: "How many sweets in the jar? Guess correctly or guess the closest to the actual amount and this large jar of sweets could be yours just in time for Christmas. Email your guesses to winolonline@googlemail.com. Competition closes Friday 18th December 2009, winner will be announced later that day and informed by email. If there is more than once correct guess, the winner will be picked out of a hat." I then provided a little background as to why I am running these competitions: "The competitions that we run here on Winchester News Online are our way of promoting our website in the hope of creating a bigger awareness of it and making it the most popular source of news for Winchester and the surrounding community." When this competition is posted on the website I will post a link to it on here so you can all be in with a chance of winning the jar of sweets!

As for the weekly bulletin's that Winchester News Online puts out, I don't really have much to do with them because I am part of the features department. However I help out where I can and pay a lot of attention to the process of making the bulletin as I know I will have a more news based job next term. I would have liked more of a pro-active role because I tend to feel a bit redundant when it comes to bulletin day. However it is amazing just watching all the elements of the bulletin come together.

We did our first dummy bulletin on Wednesday 4th October and it was a complete shambles to be honest. Two of the packages that were in the running order were not finished in time and therefore could not go in the bulletin so the bulletin was significantly under time. Everything was just a bit too last minute, I don't think anyone knew what to expect or how much work the bulletin would entail. We also did not include headlines in this bulletin. Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately) this bulletin was not recorded, however I think we still all learnt a lot from the many flaws in the bulletin and it did show a lot of potential. The presenting was very good despite the presenters having no practice run-throughs and of the packages that did make it into the bulletin, some of the camera work was very good.

As for this past week's bulletin it was a lot better, the entire team was a lot more prepared and set earlier deadlines for all packages so extra time was available for technical difficulties etc. The only problems we had this week were a few timing issues where certain packages were not the length they said they would be or were labeled wrong, this meant that we have two black holes in the bulletin. We were also lucky enough to have Ian Anderson, the former deputy head of BBC News and editor of the BBC 10'O Clock news, as a guest editor for our bulletin. This a great help for us, with an industry professional giving us feedback on out second ever news bulletin.

Here is this past week's bulletin (11/11/2009). As noted by Chris Horrie this bulletin uses the old title sequence (we are hoping to get even newer titles for this coming week's bulletin) and the first few minutes of the bulletin were lost because the tape was corrupted. Nonetheless here it is:



Next week we go live at five for real. Dummy bulletins are over. There is no room for error now. I will post a link to the bulletin on Wednesday so you can all watch it, we're trying to get as big of an audience as possible for the first bulletin so the pressure is really on!

Conspiracy Theories

I have always been fascinated by conspiracy theories. The more believable and unexplainable the better. However, I've never really been naive enough to actually believe any of them, or have I? But is it a question of naivety? A conspiracy theory would have you questioning yourself on why you don't believe it. Is it just ill-educated people that believe these conspiracy theories, or extremely well educated people that have outsmarted world leaders and exploited the dominant ideology that they present.

One conspiracy theory that I used to be fascinated by is the 'Paul Is Dead' conspiracy theory, a theory that believes Paul McCartney of the Beatles died in a car accident in 1966 and was replaced by an imposter. The evidence for this theory is a selection of clues in albums released by the Beatles. The story of Paul's alledged death is said to have been revealed through certain Beatles' songs:

• "He didn't notice that the lights had changed" ('A Day in the Life')
• He then crashed (a car crash sound is heard in 'Revolution 9' and 'A Day in the Life').
• He was pronounced dead on a "Wednesday morning at 5 o'clock as the day begins" ('She's Leaving Home')
• Nobody found this out because the news was withheld: "Wednesday morning papers didn't come" ('Lady Madonna').

An example of a visual clue - on the cover of the "Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" album if you hold a mirror horizontally through the middle of "Lonely Hearts" message on the drum on the album cover it reads: "I ONE IX HE <> DIE" - the "I One" is said to mean 11, and so the mesage reads "11 9 HE DIE" or the 9th of November, the date of the accident. The <> is a diamond shape that points straight up at Paul McCartney, demonstrating he had died.

There are a lot more clues to back-up this theory and you can see the full list of clues on this page on the BBC's website.

One of the most popular and most publicised conspiracy theories is the theory that the 9/11 terrorist attack in America was not actually a terrorist attack, but instead an orchestrated attack on it's own people by the US government. At first this seems highly unlikely, why would the US government do this? But with all the evidence that proves it wasn't a terrorist attack, the conspiracy theorists do have a good case.

This clip from 'Zeitgeist, The Movie' shows the 9/11 myth that is commonly believed and deconstructs it to show that there is proof that the attacks were orchestrated or allowed to happen by the US government to create fear and justify the 'War on Terror'. It is a very interesting video and does bring up a lot of interesting evidence to prove that the World Trade Centre buildings were brought down by controlled explosions and that there is no real evidence that proves that Osama Bin Ladan is responsible for the attack.

This clip from 'Zeitgeist, The Movie' proves that it was impossible that a plane could have crashed in to the Pentagon judging by the wreckage. The fact that the CCTV that would have shown what actually happened was confiscated by the FBI is all the proof I need. If a plane crashed in to the Pentagon and the CCTV showed that then why would this footage be confiscated, this seems very suspect to me. So maybe I do believe this? But what can I do about it? Nothing, is the answer.

The full film, 'Zeitgeist, The Movie' can be seen here.

There is a conspiracy theory for pretty much anything, and there is no way we will ever find out if the 9/11 conspiracy theory, or any other conspiracy theory, is true because that's why they are conspiracy theories. Most people just sit back and take what they are spoon-fed by the mass media. If more people thought for themselves and drew their own conclusions from the other sides of the stories, not only the story shown by the media, which is presented as the 'truth'. If this were to happen then maybe people in charge (the world leaders, or whoever they may be, did someone say lizards?) might think again before trying to fool nations upon nations of people.

No Modern Warfare 2 DLC in development until after the game’s release - Published @ Video Game Reviews

As I reported here, a special Modern Warfare 2 brand of Monster Energy drink revealed that DLC for Modern Warfare 2 was planned to be released in spring 2010. However Infinity Ward responded to this by saying that no Modern Warfare 2 DLC is in development and will not be until after the game’s release.

You can read my article about it here.

Batman: Arkham Asylum Review

In recent years Batman has taken the movie world by storm with the great success of 'Batman Begins' and most recently 'The Dark Knight'; but Batman has never really had a good game interpretation. However, Batman: Arkham Asylum is just that; the best Batman game to date and it actually makes you feel like Batman.

The whole game takes place on Arkham Island, home of the Arkham Asylum where all Gotham city's criminals/insane characters/Batman's foes are kept. The game starts as Batman catches the Joker ready to imprison him in Arkham Asylum once and for all. But nothing is ever that easy for Batman, the Joker escapes and creates hell for Batman as you play out the longest night in Batman's life.

The gameplay is simply phenomenal. Detective mode is genius and the game has a great variety of combat where you can take out your enemies one by one in stealth mode or take them all on at once with a simple but effective 3 button fighting system. Quite simply, you will love playing this game. I don't want to give too much away but Batman's altercations with Scarecrow, where Batman is faced with his deepest darkest fears, are presented incredibly well.

What's also unique about Batman: Arkham Asylum in the Batman sense is that it is not at all based on any recent Batman movie and focuses on just the Batman character. Batman has a very interesting history which is represented well, for example winessing the murder of both his parents at a young age, a memory that is exploited in the game. All of Batman's gadgets are used in the game and you unlock and upgrade them as the game goes on, for example the Batarang can be upgraded to a triple Batarang to take out three enemies at once.

Furthermore any Batman fanatic will love this game; it is so well researched featuring all of the characters from Batman's illustrious comic book career. Character's biographies are unlocked throughout the game along with tapes of interviews with patients at the asylum creating a tremendous back-story.

Batman: Arkham Asylum was developed by London-based Rocksteady Studios, a relatively unknown developer that has only ever produced one game before this; Urban Chaos for PS2 (anyone remember that? No, didn’t think so...) Yet this game is still up there with the best action/adventure games available.

Batman: Arkham Asylum is almost the perfect game, the only thing that lets it down is that at times it can be repetitive and the boss battles could have been improved. However, these are small flaws in this very fresh game. The game also has great replayability with 240 riddles to be a solved all over Arkham Island and the very challenging, and aptly titled, challenge mode. More challenge rooms are unlocked as you solve more riddles. Even more challenge rooms are set to be released at downloadable content with two free sets of DLC already available.

Overall Batman: Arkham Asylum is one of the best games out this year so far and if you haven’t played it yet, what are you waiting for?

9/10

PES to “aggressively” incoporate Natal/Motion Wand - Published @ Video Game Reviews

Konami have announced that they are looking into “very aggressively” incorporating the use of Xbox 360’s Project Natal and Playstation 3’s Motion Wand in future Pro Evolution Soccer releases. Whatever “very aggressively” means, maybe it’s what PES needs to win its yearly battle with FIFA.

You can read my article about it here.

Modern Warfare 2 DLC coming Spring 2010 - Published @ Video Game Reviews

A special Modern Warfare 2 brand of Monster Energy drink has revealed that one of the downloadable map packs for Modern Warfare 2 is planned to be released in spring 2010.

You can read my article about it here.