By definition trade shows are far from exciting, what with being all about just one thing and generally just an occasion for people to showcase their new products, technologies etc… in whatever field it is that’s the focus. I can think of a few expections, having done my fair share of trade shows in the last 10 years: music and video games. Well ok they’re not boring to me because I’m into both things heavily. But really what other subjects could make a trade show appealing? What’s that? the sex industry you say? Perverts… :lol:

Anyways, I’ve been going to DJ/music trade shows for the last 4 years regularly, mainly PLASA in London, which used to be the most interesting of all the European trade shows but has in recent years become a ghost of its former ‘glory’. All it offers these days is the chance to catch up with people you haven’t seen in ages and piss about with new equipment and also pretend to be remotely interested in whatever marketing BS the reps come at you with. I also went to ECTS a few times while I lived in London, which was the European equivalent of E3 or Tokyo Game Show. Good fun but on a really small scale. By and large I learnt soon enough that trade shows are only really good for one thing - catching up with people, getting drunk and pissing about (ok and sometimes actually doing some work).

With the last PLASA being quite disappointing (actually it was shit) I was really looking forward to Tokyo Game Show - the second biggest video game trade show on the planet after E3 and by the sounds of it and stories from my mates, quite possibly the most fun you can have with geeks in one day, in a enclosed space. TGS takes place yearly, at Makuhari Messe a giant exhibition hall just outside central Tokyo, in Chiba prefecture. This year the show ran for 4 days, with the first 2 open to trade only and last 2 open to the public. I opted for the trade days, purely because from my past experience trade days tend to be better - less people, more exclusive stuff to be seen, and more importantly more (and easier) freebies to be had.

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Popularity: 2%

written by Laurent \\ tags: geeking, storytelling, TGS, video games

Birthday celebrations are behind us, so it’s time for the next instalment of Back to Chill. Lucky number 13 will take place at the usual venue, Saloon at Unit, on Thursday October 4th.

Goth Trad’ll be back in town from his extended European escapade, alongside regulars and guests Keihin from Honcho Sound and MC Mal from Rub-a-Dub market. I’ll be playing b2b with Goth once more.

If you come down, don’t be a stranger. It’ll be heavy as usual, and I’m sure Goth will be packing a heavy bag of dubs fresh from his European trip.

Full details on the flyer below. Oh yeah and this one starts at 8 not 7 as before.

Popularity: 3%

written by Laurent \\ tags: back to chill, clubs, dubstep, goth trad, Music, night life, Tokyo

Multi tasking is a funny thing. It’s something I’ve always done and been kinda good at, or so I think anyway. But recently I’ve realised that maybe, just maybe, it’s actually more of a hindrance than anything else. And the more I think about it, the more I think that’s the case.

I was reading a report thing I got after doing this personality test the other day and it was on point, saying that I’m the kind of person who likes to multi-task and actually enjoys it. It’s something I do without even really thinking - my brain’s just buzzing and if something can be done at the same time as something else I will. No matter what it is. My mind’s always racing around, thinking of what to do next, what can be done etc…

Lately I’ve come to realise that I should try and control it a bit more because while it’s a useful skill to have, it’s also one that leaves me doing 55 things at once and never really finishing one in the time it could have taken had I concentrated on that one thing only. For example the recent update to this blog could have been done much quicker, but instead I was always working on it alongside something else.

Thing is not only do I like multi-tasking, I’ve also got a short ass attention span, so my mind also has a nasty habit of wandering off while I’m doing something. Working on the internet doesn’t make this any better - if something is taking too long to load, I’ll be opening a new tab and checking something else rather than wait for the page/command/whatever to finish :oops: . I’ll blame that one on drugs and video games…

Anyways, I was listening to an interview with The Bug the other day where he mentioned that he spent most of the last year trying to do 3 albums at once, multi-tasking to save time and only ended up not finishing anything at all. So he’s now decided to focus on one thing at a time. And I think he’s right and I’ll follow his decision too. Let’s see how long it lasts and how well it works eh?

And cos it’s funny here’s a video of men multi-tasking (toilet humour)

Popularity: 2%

written by Laurent \\ tags: bad, good, multi tasking, time, tired, wasting, work

No you’re not dreaming, the site has suffered a drastic makeover and update. Which is part of the reason why I haven’t been posting much for most of the month. The other reasons being: I’ve had an surge of work (paid work even, the best and most urgent kind there is! :lol: ), I’ve got totally sucked into Heroes season 1 (catching up on 23 episodes before the new season started this week - tv marathons ftw) and I’ve been working on updating this blog as well, which was a slow process due to the aforementioned bits and other things.

Finally done did it though. New design, layout and a fresh new Wordpress version too. Which I must admit is actually nice - probably the first time I’ve felt genuinely pleased with it since I’ve started updating WP. I really wasn’t happy with what had been changed in the previous 2.0x versions, but this one seems to have fixed a lot of things and added a lot of good stuff. So far anyways. Having spent the best part of 6h doing everything today my brain’s probably just too frazzled and I’ll start seeing stuff I don’t like tomorrow after some sleep (and more episodes of Heroes, yes I’m hooked).

So anyways sit back, relax and enjoy. Have a play around, there’s lots of new little nifty things added: the snap shot preview for all links, the gallery’s had a face lift, there’s a new archive page (link at the top) which is lovely and easy to use, you can now share any post on this blog easily by clickling the share this! link which will open a pop up menu giving a choice of options like digg, delicious, emailing etc…, you can also navigate posts by using the calendar or the tags cloud (which will be updated this week to include all posts) or the search function, I’ve added the Turntable Radio podcast feed, and there’s a wicked little thing at the top which you can use to scroll through all the posts on the front page. Whoo hoo for geekery.

If you see anything broken or have any comments/feedback on the changes please drop us a comment. More posts coming up tomorrow too, got a backlog of writing!

Popularity: 2%

written by Laurent \\ tags: bloggin, computers, geeking, tired, update, wordpress