Just read an interesting aricle on Sky’s new talent show, Must Be The Music. In it, Stuart Heritage rightly makes the point that the the producers should be applauded for seemingly producing an anti X-Factor that puts talent before all else.

However, regardless of it’s merits, I can’t help but feel any serious act shouldn’t touch such things with a barge pole but should instead work there way up through traditional roots. Am I just being curmudgeonly or is it right to expect real artists to have come up through more grass roots avenues?

I recently had a Tascam US-144, USB audio and midi interface, gifted to me by my awesome sister and her boyfriend - thanks guys. However, I’ve had an absolute nightmare getting the thing to work so just wanted to share my experiences with the world.

Essentially, I wanted a device that I could hook up to my laptop and it provide professional quality mic and jack inputs alond with a midi interface, which is a remit the US144 fills exactly - it’s powered over USB, has two XLR inputs, two 1/4in jacks inputs, a line out, and midi in/out. The problem is, the US144 is deprecated and seemingly no longer supported by Tascam and as such the company hasn’t developed Windows 7 64-bit drivers for it.

That’s pretty much the long and short of it. My laptop was running Windows7 64-bit thus it didn’t work. I’ve now put a 32-bit version on and it works fine. Now some people have had success getting this device working in 64-bit Windows 7 but I think the general rule of thumb is that it doesn’t.

So, to summarise. If like me you’re scratching your head as to why your US-144 won’t work on Windows 7 64-bit then don’t hold out much hope. Either install a compatible version of Windows or get the US-144 MKII, which may work, or the Roland (Edirol/Cakewalk) UA-25, which is still being properly supported by its manufacturer (there are other alternatives as well but these are the ones I know).

So today finally saw the launch of Apple’s take on the tablet PC, the rather dubiously named iPad. It’s essentially a giant iPhone with a 9.7-inch glass touch-screen, aluminium back, and thickness of just half an inch. Internally you get a new Apple A4 processor, optional 3G connectivity, and Wi-FI while HD video playback will be doable, and it’ll have 10 hours battery life. Apple has even hooked up with several publishers so, as well as the usual music and movies, you’ll be able to download ebooks over-the-air wherever you are.

All of which sounds quite nice but, if you’re anything like me and my colleagues at TrustedReviews, you’ll realise that this product doesn’t really have a place in most of our lives beyond being a luxury gadget. Not even accounting for basic problems like the fact that it lacks Flash support in its web browser and it can’t do multitasking, it’s not pocketable so you’ll still probably want a smartphone that can already do a large number of the things this can. Neither does it come close to replacing a laptop due to countless things. Without seeing it in the flesh we can’t say for sure but, we suspect we’ll still prefer to read ebooks using devices with e-ink displays as well.

All in all, it’s not for us.

However. I’m loving its arrival for three reasons.

1. With countless companies having tried and failed in the past to make something of tablet PCs, there was always a thought in the back of peoples minds that, ‘maybe Apple could finally crack it’. The iPad finally proves that the tablet PC is not for the general public and that Apple can’t polish a turd. Fooling people into thinking it was lamb when it was clearly mutton, maybe, but miracles, no.

2. It will finally sort the men from the Apple fanboys. With Apple having made some genuinely great products recently, the line between long time Apple lovers and those that just recognise something good has become blurred. Now, with a device that is so clearly unsuited to serve any particular purpose other than being something ‘cool’ to have, the lines can once again be marked out. If you buy this you’re a fanboy or someone with cash to splash, if you don’t you’re sensible or skint.

3. Along the same lines as 2, when we eventually get an iPad in for review and find it lacking, the readers of TR will finally get off our backs about us all being Apple fanboys!

First things first, I just want to say congratulations to Rage Against The Machine for getting their top spot. Regardless of anything else, it’s probably quite a nice feeling for them and I for one revelled in the moment having a good dance round my room as th4e single was played on Radio 1. Also, well done to Jon and Tracy Morter - it couldn’t have happened without you. Perhaps most importantly, thumbs up to all the people that donated to the charities involved. A significant amount of money was raised and that’s certainly something that Joe McElderry, or more importantly, Simon Cowell and the X-Factor empire can’t say!

My reasons for posting this, though, are not just to congratulate the various people involved but also to point out one particular flaw in the nay sayer’s arguments against this campaign…

It means entirely nothing that RATM and Joe/Cowell are on the same record label. Simon Cowell’s label is a subset of SonyBMG as is Epic, the label to which RATM are signed, as such there isn’t any direct crossover and even if there were there’s nothing to suggest Simon Cowell makes any money from Epic’s sales. The only way that could happen would be if he was also in charge of that division of the label or if he were a share holder. Whether he’s the latter or not is irrelevant as the share price of such a large corporation has very little to do with the sales of one single. As for the former, well I’m certainly not aware of him having any direct involvement in Epic.

Think about it like this, if you’re head of the software division of Microsoft (Simon Cowell) and the hardware division (Epic) makes a load of money, you don’t see any direct benefit.

Also, to all the people saying it’s just as sheepish to have followed this campaign, you also seem to be missing the point. Just because a large number of people followed a suggestion, it doesn’t mean we’re all highly suggestable halfwits. If the suggestion had been to put Rick Astley at number one I’d have told them to go stick it. It was my decision to buy the single and I’m very happy that I did. Of course, I’d rather they picked something even more extreme and less cliched - ‘they swear a lot, that’ll be funny’ - but I’m, willing to forgive that becuase people needed a song they were familiar with and could latch onto for this campaign to work. Suggesting You Suffer by Napalm Death would have been more extreme - a 2 second grindcore songwould certainly have got people thinking - but somehow I don’t think it would’ve worked.

So there we go. All I need now is to get hold of a ticket for that free gig next year…

Just noticed this paragraph was lurking in the draft section of my blog and thought I’d share it with you. It’s a subject I’ve not thought about for a while now but looking back it definitely still rings true.

“It’s been only a day since I went from being a beanpole with three-foot long hair to a beanpole with one-inch long hair but already I’ve noticed a huge difference in the way people react to me and what my attitude is towards them. For a long time my long hair was, to a certain degree, a symbol of what I was. Just to see me briefly allowed you to understand a little bit about me. I wore it as a means by which to have people assess and judge me and subsequently a means for me to gauge them based on their reactions to my hair. Now my hair has gone that identifier has disappeared and all of a sudden I’m a blank canvas. This simultaneously frightens and delights me.”

A week or so ago I made a Facebook update stating that I’d completed the much talked about Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 and that I was rather dissappointed with it. To quote “Just completed MW2. Took me 5.3 hours. Value for money? I think not.”

Well, it seemed to provoke something of a strong defensive reaction from those that liked the game. So now that I’ve had time to mull things over and play some of the Spec Ops and multiplayer, I thought it was about time I more fully explained my thoughts.

The first thing to note is I played the PC version of the game so all my opinions are based on that experience. This is probably in contrast to the vast majority of people that played the game (or at least those that actually bought it). Nevertheless, I think a fair number of my comments will still stand up for the console versions as well.

Also, I’m not going to explain anything about the game. There are millions of reviews and blogs that have already done that. If you don’t know what it is, go read elsewhere.

The crux of my disappointment, then, is that while Call Of Duty is now largely considered a multiplayer game, reviews I’d read before buying it said the single player was so good it was worth buying just for that (all the talk of PC multiplayer being nobbled didn’t really bother me as I had no particular intention of doing a lot of MP gaming). However, I found this to be far from the case. Thus why I was so peeved.

What didn’t I like about the single player campaign? Well, pretty much everything. For a start, the story was utter horse shit. Utterly unconvincing, unengaging, and generic. Oh sure, there was enough going on to give the action a setting and it certainly kept you guessing but within a few missions I’d pretty much given up caring and was just mindlessly moving from one level to the next. Well, apart from THAT level, which was merely a despicable piece of calculated marketing; ‘hey, you know how all those games that get band get loads of press coverage? Well why don’t we do a scene that get’s everyone talking in the same way? Instant free advertising!’ Note, not compelling story telling.

One of the reasons the story fell so flat on its face was the fact that so many of the characters you play die. How the hell am I supposed to care about the people I’m playing if I only get to do three missions with them before they die? Of course, you can see why Infinity Ward (IW) did it. One of the most memorable sections of the first Modern Warfare was your character being killed in a nuclear explosion. It was a truly epic moment. So IW simply had to throw in a similar set piece in the new game. Unfortunately, not only did it feel a bit old the first time (because the first game had already tried that one) by the time it happens a second time you’re postitively sick of the trick. As Yahtzee of Zero Punctuation fame so eloquently puts it. “It’s a rather a dim attempt to capture the same shock and awe, and that’s the thing about shock, once you’re doing it every five minutes, it just stops being special”

There’s plenty of other topics I could touch on, like the ridiculous ease of the game and it’s linearity but I can’t be bothered, frankly. No, my final complaint is that of the length of the game. Five point three hours! WTF! That’s without rushing, playing the game for the first time on normal difficulty. That is unacceptable for a full price game. Were the game based on a brand new graphics engine, or if it introduced some significant new game mechanic (and, of course, if the story were more compelling) then maybe I could accept it but this is a game that is essentially just MW1 with a bit of spit and polish and a new single player campaign. For that campaign to be so short just doesn’t stack up for me.

Okay, so that’s why I got narked.

Having played some of the Spec Ops and some multiplayer, I accept that these are fun and if you were to play a lot of the latter then you get your money’s worth but, personally I don’t think it’s unreasonable to expect there to be a modicum of value based on the single player alone.