framheim

That is true, but still the numbers don't lie. You could argue that the PS3 was facing an uphill struggle against an already established console with a large fanbase and draw of exclusive titles and lower prices though...

i think the ps3 as cheap blu-ray player coupled with the large playstation fanbase has helped it along quite nicely. still a long way to go before it catches up with 360 though in terms of sales and games sold. looks like there's room for all 3 this generation though.

PS3 has been out a little over a year and as an interesting side it sold 1 million units quicker than the 360 (and also the PS2) in the UK.

the 360 suffered from being unable to meet demand though which undoubtably prevented it from acheiving sales as quickly as the ps3 has.

indeed, and they have plans for an internal hd dvd player as well. instead of that un-necessary add-on.

either or you're taking the piss or you're a little behind the times on the technology front. hd-dvd is to be discontinued.

xbox live is better than playstation network though which is why you pay for it. though home looks interesting but rumours abound that live will be getting a very large makeover this year.

personally i think the 360 is a better games machine. but now that blu-ray is the winner then if you're interested in watching hidef films then a ps3 is a great buy as a cheap blu-ray player. though i'd expect microsoft to announce a blu-ray add on this year. also many games apparently run faster on xbox and some ps3 games apparently take ages to install onto the hard drive whereas you just stick the game in and off you go on xbox, devil may cry 4 being an example but i've not seen this myself so could just be internet heresay.

No, but the 360 looks like a ridiculously large letter of the alphabet

er? which letter?

The 360 with its external psu is actually bigger than the PS3.

maybe but it doesn't look like a george foreman grill.

you won't get an unbiased comment. everyone will just tell you to get the ones they like.

to be honest though, both are good and you should pick it based on the exclusives available on each platform. you should be able to get your xbox replaced as i believe they have a two year warranty for certain faults. try taking it back to where you bought it from too and see if you can get an exchange.

alternatively, buy a wii.

ps3's break too you know. in fact it might surprise you to learn that stuff breaks all the time! crazy huh

360's do have a nasty habit of it though.

you should have a two year warranty though do you nae? and also if you bought it locally try taking it back with your receipt, might get lucky and get an exchange if you're nice enough. otherwise off to microsoft it goes so you should only be without for a week or so i think.

I'm not gonna get into a discussion about why I make music or put it on the net or whatever, but it's got absolutely nothing to do with ego.

It's not that I don't like bands, I just think a lot of the points of view presented in this thread are a bit detached from the reality of living in a city as small as aberdeen, the reality of what these bands themselves are doing, and reality itself on a whole.

Naivity and idealism is fine to a degree, but it only ever pays off if you take risks. If pestering the local press to generate some publicity about your band is too much of a risk or hasn't occured to you, in a city where a seagull stealing crisps is headline news, then what hope is there? More to the point, it makes you wonder what a band which is that apathetic really has to communicate? Nothing of value IMO, and that is what leads me eventually to conclude that so many aberdeen bands are just about people fulfilling adolescent fantasies rather than any kind of artistry.

if you're not prepared do discuss your own reasons for making music then perhaps you shouldn't continually question other peoples? but i'll let it go. i don't really want to turn this into an argument about who's got the least ego or anything like that

i dunno, maybe most bands are just about fulfilling adolescent fantasies. i guess that's why a lot of people pick up guitars in the first place but then they grow as musicians and people and their goals change. at the end of the day we all make music because it's something we're passionate about and we think we can create some good compositions be it using loops and computers or using guitars and drums. i know i don't perform live to massage my ego because quite frankly i'm not that good a guitarist to impress anyone.

i think this thread's been interesting and been for the main quite a good discussion. to recap, can we all agree that it'd be nice if aberdeen journals were to run some kind of regular critical music column but perhaps bands and artists in aberdeen don't do enough to encourage that. and we can continue to disagree on whether there'd actually be any interest in such a thing or if we actually want the rest of aberdeen to be interested in our music in the first place.

..."benefit" in that supposedly more people would come to gigs to clap along at local musicians indulging themselves in having "fun". Then what? Tell all their mates what an awesome band they saw and go out and buy their cd's? (which might not even exist given the amount of bands in aberdeen that gig before doing any recording).

The whole idea is quite straightforward narcissistic behaviour.

It just doesn't serve any purpose because aberdeen is a tiny city, how many people out of 250,000 ( or whatever it is before some pedant corrects me) do bands expect to hold in their thrall exactly? Frankly the number of people going to gigs is probably determined more by the size of the population and the niche nature of the bands than any kind of promotion.

or 'benefit' by all having fun together. meh. as i pointed out earlier in the thread but you flat out ignored it, if you think all this is narcissistic or merely massaging a bands ego then you need to take a look at why you even make music available for people to listen to. surely everytime you put music up on this site or anywhere you're just massaging your own fairly inflated ego right?

anyway, we get it. you don't like bands. ah well.

If it's about you having fun, then why do you think the local press, or the local community for that matter owes it to you to indulge you in this?

i've already said i don't think that they owe it to me or that they have any obligation to cover the local music scene. it's just my opinion that if they did everyone would benefit for reasons i've already laid out.

It's going that way. If you hear about a mass slaughter at Cineworld it'll be because one more dozy bastard has asked me for 'a drink'. What kind of fucking drink....Petrol? Rat's blood? Mountain Dew?

dude, leave! only job i've ever walked out of and i know i'm not the only one. i only got a job in ugc so i could see films for free and they wouldn't even let me do that till i'd been there for 3 months. worst job i've ever had for a variety of reasons.

get out while you still can!

I don't know why anyone gives a damn about the locality of anything, if you don't think of yourself in a global context I feel sorry for you. Frankly most aberdeen bands probably get more unique plays on myspace than people coming to their gigs anyway. With the internet you've got absolutely no excuse to not get your material out to loads of people or get signed to a niche label in some country in the world. So why give a shit about the local rag when the world is your proverbial oyster?*

*Oops, I'm forgetting how important prancing about on a stage playacting your childhood rockstar fantasies is.

i agree, people should look at the internet as ways to get their music out to people all over the world. kartta have in the past been contacted by people in spain, portugal, america and other places all asking for cd's to play there or interested in maybe releasing stuff or if we're touring.

the other bit about rockstar fantasies is just silly. what's your beef with bands and playing live? it's fucking fun! that's all there is to it. it's not about ego or fantasies it's just a good laugh and completely different from the recording process.

Now there's a song that I wish never existed. Mainly for one line in particular.

oh god, yes. it's amazing how original and funny people can be eh?

Not at all. The reason I asked is that Dave's reply comes across as a statement of fact when in fact he was just expressing his opinion. As was I.

Anyway, back to the topic at hand...

it is a fact that the evening express covering local music is not comparable to the nme covering an oap being knocked down by a bus. unless the oap is paul mccartney or something.

How do you know this? Do you have any stats to back this up? Because I agree with Ross on this one. I strongly suspect that any local music scene coverage would only appeal to a small minority of their total readership.

And has been mentioned before, Aberden Journals are a business and that business is selling newspapers. They don't have any obligation to provide coverage of the local music scene, or indeed anything else for that matter. They cover what they think will sell their newspapers.

why would i need stats to back up common sense? has anyone provided stats to counter that argument? why the sudden interest in stats? have you developed a cloud complex?

the circulation of the p&j and the evening express is huge and it stands to reason a portion of that readership listens to music and goes to see bands live. you know yourself that there is a decent interest in local music just from the site visits you get here(and that's with a reasonably small amount of promotion). increased coverage of music could also lead to a higher readership amongst certain age groups, particularly for the evening express whose target market is likely to include younger people anyway. i'm sure it wouldn't be hard to find the circulation figures(they're published regularly in trade magazines) including age breakdown.

i don't know why people keep saying their under no obligation to cover local music. no one has said that they are, all i've said is that the music scene would grow and be more diverse if they did and that it was something that i wished would happen. i also think they're missing a decent business opportunity.

Im not saying their coverage is great' date=' its limited, but to be fair the average reader of that particular paper isnt really all that much the target of local bands. How many 16-22 year olds or whatever read this? They are run by a pretty big company who is only interested in selling units and so have to feature articles of interest to their target. It would be like NME or whatever other crappy music mag having an artcile on an old lady being run down by a First Aberdeen bus or something.[/quote']

no it's not. it's nothing like that at all and also i'd say a large portion of those who are interested in local music are older than 22. the music scene in aberdeen quite obviously could be something of interest to sections of aberdeen journals target circulation.

Best. Band. Ever.

that was quick!

ah bloody hell, i'm on me honeymoon. which is obviously a good thing but damn.

That is a very good point. This collection however, seems so unusual due to the volume of LP's, 7"s, CD's etc... that is has. Wasn't John Peel's record collection around 30,000? This one is 100 times that, so there must be a few anomalies like Pat Benetar or Ugly Kid Joe in there.

I don't have space in my flat to buy it anyway...

ha, you should ask your 1864 in art guitar partner about ugly kid joe

Fair dos then. Why should fattys be subsidising the likes of Elwood opening up his own branch of Subway in row s?

My wife slagged me off for bringing in a tube of Pringles with me, but 73p in Asda or 2.40 at Cineworld, there's no comparison.

Can't believe they've started searching bags. It'll be a body cavity search next.

it's a bit extreme searching bags. most cinemas seem pretty relaxed about it though. i openly take a bag of juice and sweets in with me everytime and no ones ever stopped me.

popcorns the big rip off, costs pennies for a huge bag of kernals. they even have cctv to stop staff from eating it.

and stay clear of the cheese sauce and the hot dogs. eurgh.

i've taken sandwhiches and chocolate digestives before. surprised anyone ever got away with taking a full pizza in, those were normally turned away at ugc when i worked there.

incidentally the food directly subsidises cinema tickets, if it weren't for food you'd pay a tenner to go the cinema. but it's still incredibly overpriced.

I'm fairly sure you could use your own one if you wanted. You just need to get the username and password details for the account. They don't give you that in the paperwork you get sent though as they assume you'll use the router they supply with that info already entered.

so just call their support once it's installed and they'll give me that right?

that is an awesome poster!

that's the kind of poster we should've had for valhella back in the day.

Yep, we're still with Pipex although like Nildram and Freedom2Surf they have been bought up by Tiscali, so are effectively one of the same. Have to say I've not had any problems with them and certainly had no need to contact their customer services dept. (thankfully it would seem).

A word of warning about Sky's broadband deal (which includes Sky TV and telephone line) - they force you to use a Sky branded Netgear router running their own specific version of firmware. So you can't use your own router with Sky's service or upgrade the router they provide. You just have to stick with it. Which may or may not be a problem for some people.

you sure about that? i told the guy on the phone i wouldn't need the router and he said not to worry about it and they'd send it anyway but i could use my own one.