For a long moment I looked at the hand-crush warning icon at the top of VM and wondered what the hell it was. I thought for a long moment it was a dog caught in the cogs of some horrible machine... which I found very amusing.

Anyone out there want to buy a tone of PC Format magazines? Issue 14 (1993) to Issue 97. All include cover CDs / 3.5" disks / 5.25" disks. All 5.25" disks copied to 3.5". Really, I'm not kidding. Email me. The crap I used to collect...

Subject URL: Invader Zim cancelled

I know people that got into Faith No More in early 1998, only to hear that they just broke up. At least they'd been around for 12+ years. At least they managed six albums. Nickelodeon only gave us two Invader Zim seasons before giving it the axe, replacing it with Butt Ugly Martians. Nickelodeon is pure evil.

It's possible Cartoon Network could pick it up. It's also possible it'll end up on the Nick archive pile never to be released again, never to be sold to anyone, rotting in eternal cartoon hell. I loveded you Zimmy, I loveded you.

The chances of my dreams of owning Zim on DVD and displaying Zim figurines coming true have been reduced significantly. I sigh large consumer sighs.

Lucky I only wear red and blue shirts.

"It's a war. A war on terrorism. A war you know it! They declared war on America. A war!" um... ok, if that makes you feel better. "The inmates are not formally prisoners of war because they were not fighting as conventional soldiers with a uniform and visible arms." [therefore we can treat them like crap]. Um... what?

Meanwhile, back in the non-TV world, Phillips is standing up against those wacky "copy-protected" CDs, claiming they're not CDs at all and refusing to allow such discs to be stamped with the official Compact Disc logo. Apparently the new copy-protect scheme isn't a protection system at all but "but simply a mechanism for stopping the playback of music", and therefore not covered by the Digital Millenium Copyright Act. So Phillips are making CD burners that can read (good) and write (bad) copy-protected CDs.

Thought for the day: So, a password protected ZIP files is mearly a mechanism for stopping the viewing of uncompressed data?

Saw some of the Big Day Out on Channel V yesterday, and if it wasn't for the heat (or rain), millions of teenagers, terrible sound and $100 price tag I might think about going. Tomahawk on Tuesday the 5th Feb (Palace, Melbourne) will just have to do for my rocking this month. This Monday will be filled with music composing goodness.

The stories of skipping during playback of the Smashing Pumpkins DVD are all true. I noticed reproducable skips in Rocket (damn!) and Adore (whatever). I've completely ignored the Pumpkins since the Adore single came out. Perfect wasn't as bad as I remember it, and Stand Inside Your Love was alright, but Everlasting Gaze is crap. And I'm just talking about the music... The "extra" short film "Try" used extensively in the "Try to Try" video is a depressing "doco" on a drug addicted girl and her boyfriend, tailer made to make the teenagers watching this horror on daddies DVD player in their airconditioned two story suburban home feel much better about their life.

I swam yesterday. I havn't swum in ages, years. And it's been much longer since I've been in a public 50 metre pool. I'm so at home in the water. I'm so unfit. I used to swim 50 metres in 31 seconds. I couldn't even finish 30m freestyle. But I can still swim underwater for 25 metres. Water is fun. I think I'm a fish.

And on the crazy life of 80's pop stars vs. their 70's peers, I say to Andrew, wait 10 years. Seems obvious to me.