It’s not something I’ve often admitted to in writing, but I am a gamer. Much as I’d prefer to spend my time ostentatiously lolling about with a copy of The Master & Margarita, or loudly boasting to strangers about my unpublished novel, invariably when I want to relax I end up playing games. I grew up playing FPS’seses, violent adventures where your eyes and crudely rendered right arm sway the tide of a WW2 battle, or smelt demons on the surface of Mars, or cut the throats of wickedly brown …

News Stories of the Year – Wikileaks, Acts of God

TV of the Year – Boardwalk Empire, Walking Dead, Spartacus Blood and Sand,

Movies of the year – A Profit, The Social Network, Network (1976), Scott Pilgrim

Games of the Year – Minecraft, Sleep is Death, Pixeljunk Eden (2008) * Dylan Cuthbert

Person of the year – Julian Assange, Bradley Manning, Justin Hall, Plato, Why the Lucky Stiff

Personal Highlights of the year – Andrews trip to America, Johns trip to Italy, Marshmallow Ladyboy Jesus, Cheaper Than Therapy

I’ve been listening to podcasts for about five years now, as well as producing more than a couple of my own, and over that time my tastes have changed quite a bit. Looking back over the shows I’ve enjoyed in the past, I note much less podfade than I might have imagined. More often I’ve simply grown tired of a given shows format (which tends, as with radio programmes, to remain extremely static once a successful approach has been developed). Here’s a list of what I’m currently listening to. I …

I recently gave an email interview, the answers to which were included in a feature on arts funding in Ireland. The article, ‘Art for Art’s Sake’ was published in the January 26th edition of The College Tribune (not yet online), a University College Dublin publication. Perhaps like everyone who’s ever been interviewed, I feel the quotes chosen for the piece slightly misrepresented my answers. This is first time I’ve written at length about my involvement in Exchange Dublin, Exchange Words and ‘the arts’ in Ireland generally, so I’m pasting the …

I’m posting this because I want you to recommend me some movies. Little gems I haven’t seen, but would enjoy. Check out my list (and watch the movies!) and tell me what I’m missing. The mini reviews are from my facebook flixster app ratings.

Whit Stilman Trilogy
Metropolitan (1990), Barcelona (1994), The Last Days of Disco (1998)
Not one film, but three, Whit Stilman’s charmingly barbed portraits of a group of archetypal upper class Manhattan neurotics, rival anything Woody Allen has produced. Stilman manages to effectively satirise his characters, while whilst drawing them …

Prelude – One Hipster’s Story

In my final year at college I helped start a music magazine that briefly went nationwide. For a little while we covered a brutally hip range of ‘indie’ and electronica acts: Interviewing, smooching, listening to a lot of great new music and occasionally finding time to publish some decent writing.
Then, about a year ago, exactly twelve months after we’d started the magazine, and just before the release of our sixth issue and third nationwide release, trouble hit paradise like a leaky tanker with a drunken …

My dear friend Mark seems to being having success upon success with his Wired FM show ‘Cult Friction‘, a “new programme charting the wonderful surreal world of Science Fiction, Horror and all things cult from Movies to Comic Books, TV shows”. Using his nordie wiles, Mark has succeeded in conning his way into some notable award ceremonies, winning brief interviews with impresarios like Jonathan Ross, Rory Bremnar, Robert Webb and Charlie Brooker.

Mark recently posed the shows wonderful jingle (embedded above), which reminded me of the jingle I lovingly crafted many …