JordanH.net

eXpansys

I’m really ticked off right now. I should be writing a post about how I’ve installed OS X on an Acer Aspire A150 but instead the damn netbook hasn’t even arrived. On Sunday, I ordered a Acer Aspire A150 netbook from Amazon, apparently via eXpansys, and opted for the £5.50 “Express Delivery” option. I thought it’d be great – here by Wednesday or so and I could start playing around with it.

On Tuesday I got an email from Amazon telling me my order had been dispatched. Apparrently I could expect it either yesterday or today. However now I’ve just got an email from eXpansys saying the netbook won’t even be dispatched until tomorrow, quoting “overwhelming demand” for the problem. I’ve never known “Express Delivery” on a small item to take 6 days! Oh, and the only thing I’ll be getting back is a £5 voucher to use on eXpansys’ website. Oh great. I’ll save it for something I could do without for a few weeks.

Ideally I’d like my delivery charge refunded – this is scandalous and even though Amazon say it shipped yesterday and should be here today at the latest, it’s not even been dispatched.

Well I know who I won’t be buying from in future.

Cool Artists You May Never Have Heard Of

So, I’m a big fan of music, and quite a big fan of some stuff which isn’t entirely mainstream (or that popular nowadays). I’d like to list a few artists I reckon you should check out which you may or may not have heard of, but who I think are quite good for particular reasons (:

Foals

I love Foals a lot, their music is just really inspirational and unique that I love listening to it. It’s described as “math rock” by Wikipedia and the guitar in it is great. Take a listen on Spotify.

Modest Mouse

These guys have been round for a long while but still seem to be on the indie scene. I think some of their songs are really good but I have to agree with someone’s comment last week that their songs can be a tad bit depressing (:  Anyhow, I think they’re worth the listen, and they’ve released a ton of albums over the years so there’s tons to listen to! Spotify them.

Maxeen

Yeah, these guys broke up a few years ago, but their debut (and only) album, Hello Echo, has some really cool alt-rock songs on it. If you’re into alt-rock, I recommend you give it a listen! Here’s the link.

Ben Folds Five

I have to say that I think Ben Folds is an amazing piano player and singer, and some of his songs he performed with his group are good, namely One Angry Dwarf and 200 Solemn Faces and I like Jackson Cannery a lot also. Give them a listen too.

Paramore

Hmm I’m on the fence with these. I quite like Misery Business but some of the other songs seem a little Avril Lavigne-ish and a bit too American (: Nevertheless, they’re worth a listen for a song or two!

ELO

I know this one just throws the post title completely out the window… but I really do like their music even if they were rather popular in their hayday. Evil Woman is probably my favourite, the beginning piano part is fantastic. Check it out.

Any other good artists do you think are worth a listen to? I’m quite interested in finding out some more artists, especially those who are quite ‘unknown’ but have an awful lot of potential. Drop a comment

EDIT: As zerojay pointed out on Twitter, I can’t exactly call much of this music mainstream. But it’s still cool music anyhow and I don’t know a ton of people who know these artists.

Nazi Zombies!

I first off must admit that if this bonus game mode did not exist, I would have sold my copy of Call of Duty: World at War yonks ago. The game itself isn’t something I enjoyed playing – the online annoys me so much and the campaign missions are almost impossible to complete on Veteran… however the bonus Nazi Zombies game mode is so addictive to play that it has effectively saved my copy of the game from being on Game’s pre-owned shelf.

The game mode itself is simple: you’re stranded in a building and you need to stop the zombies from getting in. If they kill you, you can be revived. If you’re all killed, the game ends. However, you can earn points by killing zombies, which you must spend on new weapons, perks and rooms to keep yourself alive and see whether you can get to the next level. The game never ends, it becomes harder each level and soon you’ll find that the zombies quadruple in number and gradually become immune to your weapons.

I really don’t know why it’s so addictive, but it is. My highscore on the original map is to level 14, however I’m sure with a bit of effort I can beat that! Treyarch, the makers of the game (not to be confused with Infinity Ward, who make its predecessor Call of Duty 4 and the upcoming Modern Warfare 2), realised that the mode was taking the gaming world by storm, and so they made it available to everyone – previously you could only play it if you completed the game. They also added a new zombie map called Verrukt, an abandoned German asylum, as part of their best-selling Map Pack 1. Nazi Zombies must be now one of the most popular online co-op game modes of any Xbox 360 game.

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And I'm Back!

After a little bit of downtime (you can blame some bloody Turkish hackers for that), my blog is back on new servers. Everything pretty much was salvaged but I wanted to move it somewhere where security might be a bit tighter so it’s now sitting on what is hopefully a rather secure VPS!

I am hoping to post more often on here now – I get so many ideas for posts and by the time I get round to writing them, I think to myself that the idea has probably been and gone, and that I’ve probably missed the boat with it. Maybe that won’t happen so much in future.

I would like to write more about some of the music I’ve been listening to recently as I’m quite a big fan of indie artists and move through different groups quite quickly. I’m also willing to take some suggestions of new bands to try!

Well it’s 1:30am now and I’m falling asleep. Before I go, just want to send some link-love over to Francis’ new blog – A General Repository. He’s jumped aboard the WordPress bandwagon now and I’m looking forward to reading some of his upcoming posts! Check it out at http://ageneralrepository.wordpress.com/

Jordan