Insufficient Funds: Scott Sigler

Insufficient Funds is a regular post in which we feature a free, or very close to it, piece of media that you can enjoy without overdrafting your bank account. So if you're low on funds, stay tuned to Cerebral Pop every Friday morning.

With new technology comes new forms of distribution and ways to get your name out there. We've seen this a lot in the musical field with everything from smaller bands trying to get attention to big name acts like Radiohead just experimenting. But author Scott Sigler's model might be the first I've heard of this sort of experimentation with tech when it comes to literature.

When I started delivering newspapers, I quickly became invested in audiobooks as a means for keeping my sanity when my music collection got boring. Have you ever looked at the price tag on an audiobook lately? I mean, I guess $20 to $30, or even more, is an understandable price when you think of the hours of audio you're getting, but when you think about the actual book cost it doesn't make much sense to punish those with limited time that would like to listen instead.

The HD/SD Situation

My friend has been a gamer his entire life, but in the last several years it has been hard to keep up with his hobby. He's been working until he has enough to pay for a semester of school, signing up for classes, and heading back to work when he needs money for the next semester. It's safe to say that this lifestyle doesn't exactly result in much of an expendable income, but awhile back he managed to buy an Xbox 360.

Still, getting himself an HDTV to play it on is kind of out of the question at this point, so he's left to play it on their old SD set. I never really thought much of this until I recently got a PS3. I have an HDTV that came as a bonus from the used car dealer when I bought a car back in November, but I never got around to setting it up. So I just popped the PS3 onto the SDTV where I do all of my gaming and set to work on The Saboteur. I quickly realized that the text was going to be an issue as I couldn't really make out most of the main menu, but it got even worse.

Unoriginal Soundtracks: Civilization 4 Edition

Every other Wednesday I share a playlist of songs tangentially related to a single game or series. Songs about alien sex for Mass Effect, songs about world leaders for Civilization, and so on. Searching for random terms on Spotify is a great way to discover new music and rediscover old classics.

Civilization 5 is just around the corner, taunting me from Steam's "Coming Soon" list. I know it'll consume me, swallow my free-time whole just like Civ 4 did. After hours of empire-building, I start to perceive personalities in the algorithms of my artificial opponents, and create my own stories from a game that has almost no script.

Catching Up to the Industry Part 1

As I have mentioned numerous times in my writing, I'm pretty far behind with the video game world. I've followed a very set path through this industry, and it is time for me to venture out and spread my realm of knowledge around a little bit. I need to catch up on the classic franchises I've completely missed out on and play through the landmark titles that I've yet to touch. Feel free to read along as I do. This time, I'll be covering Metroid: Zero Mission, Portal, and Flower.

Shuffled: 4/5ths Edition

Every other Wednesday I hit the shuffle button on my 90 gigabytes of music and post the results. I might have to justify some of the stuff in my library, but hopefully it will help inform you of new music -- Or at least be entertaining.

So, I cheated a bit this week. Two of the original songs that came up on shuffle weren't on YouTube already, and after everything decided to work against me to upload them myself, I just gave up and found two more songs that were already there. But don't worry, I'm sure those songs, or at least bands, will come up again eventually.

Until then, we have four straight punk songs (one in German), and then a dramatic shift to a serious song about the genocide in Darfur. Yeah, it's an abrupt turn, but at least you'll get to rock out for a majority of it without thinking about famine and death. So, enjoy!

Is Twitter Phasing Out SMS Support?

I don't own a Blackberry, an iPhone, or a Droid, but I tweet like nobody's business. I do it all via SMS, meaning that all the tweets of people I follow are sent to my LG Verizon enV as plain old text messages. Yeah, I know, I'm probably part of a dying breed. I'm sure that the vast majority of people that use Twitter have some sort of smart phone with a fancy app to gather up their Twitterfeed for them. Still, I do exist.

I never really thought about the drain on Twitter's servers it must be to send every single tweet to someone's phone until one of my Twitter buddies mentioned it, because I never had much of an issue with the system. Sure, every once in a while during big events like the Super Bowl or E3, Twitter would get hopelessly behind on their messages and be sending me stuff an hour or more late, but otherwise things worked pretty great on a day to day basis... until recently.

Video Round-Up: Cute Zombies(?) Edition

Video Round-Up is a weekly post collecting an assortment of videos from around the web. Whether they be music videos, creative viral marketing, just plain cool, or just plain ridiculous, they will all be found on Video Round-Up.

While there are no cute zombies in this week's Round-Up, there are psychophonic transforming cows, crazy crabs, toked-up founders, and this one other thing.

Movie Review: Inception

With a list of films like The Dark Knight, Memento, and The Prestige, it’s quite easy to say that Christopher Nolan is a top talent in today’s film industry. His latest offering, Inception, certainly earns him high praise, and will, I believe, catapult him to even greater heights.

Inception’s surface plot is about a group of people who steal important information from other's dreams. But just underneath that glossy veneer lays a complex multi-layered maze that shows how our goals and ambitions have a tendency to unravel themselves uncontrollably, much like in our dreams.

Insufficient Funds: Borrowtime Films

Insufficient Funds is a regular post in which we feature a free, or very close to it, piece of media that you can enjoy without overdrafting your bank account. So if you're low on funds, stay tuned to Cerebral Pop every Friday morning.

Stop Podcasting Yourself is one of my favorite podcasts around, and one of the things I like best about it is the guests they have on. They all seem to be friends of theirs from a local scene of comedians or other creative types. So when one guest, Lauren Martin, mentioned a website for some films in which she'd appeared, I decided to check it out.

Darren Borrowman, the filmmaker behind the collection of short films found on the Borrowtime Films site, is certainly one of those creative types. He's shown off an impressive range as well, from humorous, to silent film homage, to disturbing and creepy.

The "World" Cup Looks Sternly At US

Americans like to dominate. Some evidence is as follows: McDonald's, Coca-Cola, Disney, Wal-Mart, World War II. We like to be the best, the most prolific, the most ubiquitous, the winners. But sometimes we fall short; and sometimes we miss the boat entirely. See: soccer. Even the name of the sport indicates a schism from the rest of the world. (The Japanese call soccer sakkaa, but since it is a loan word, and since there is nothing that they call "football" [American football is called just that: amerikan futtobooru] it seems that they just want to copy America.) No, we didn't want soccer, or "association football," to keep its original name. We had a new sport for that, a sport with a lot more beer and hot chicks.

But our general ineptitude regarding soccer and the culture that surrounds it is the really truly astonishing thing here. Why did baseball and American football win the hearts of Americans while soccer won the hearts of rest of planet Earth? And why, since that is clearly the case these days, do we suck at pretending to like soccer?

Unoriginal Soundtracks: Mass Effect 2 Edition

Every other Wednesday I share a playlist of songs tangentially related to a single game or series. Songs about alien sex for Mass Effect, songs about world leaders for Civilization, and so on. Searching for random terms on Spotify is a great way to discover new music and rediscover old classics.

Mass Effect 2 would be this generation's Star Wars. If games were art, that is. Regardless, the characters join you on a suicide mission to explore the galaxy, loyalty, love, and sometimes levity. But, of course, games can't do that.

Reverse Review: Grown Ups

When something is so terrible that a score of 1 doesn't accurately describe it, it crosses over into the Reverse Scale, offering it a chance for redemption. You see, a 5 on the Reverse Scale is still awful, but in a ridiculously entertaining way.

Do you ever wonder what goes through the heads of comedians after they have no need to worry about their income? I mean, there is obviously a point when they realize that movies don't actually require much effort once you're a bankable name. Just slap together a loose plot that involves you hanging out it some vacation destination, hit record, and voila!

Clearly Vince Vaughn has realized this fact -- as evidenced by Couples Retreat -- so I guess it was about time Adam Sandler did as well, right? And maybe he got right on the phone and called up his buddies, Kevin James, Chris Rock, Rob Schneider, and David Spade.

Movie Review: Toy Story 3

I've yet to jump on the Pixar bandwagon. I guess I was just confused as to why so many grown men and twenty-somethings were completely obsessed with kid's movies. I saw and loved their first movie, the original Toy Story, but that was when I was 10 years old. After that I missed every single one of their movies until I took my niece to see Cars, what many consider to be their worst release.

But now, no one will shut up about them, and I've got a kid that is just about movie-going age. One day I was bored on a weekend and watching one of those Madagascar movies that was on TV, and I started missing the type of movies I saw in my youth. The ones that weren't afraid to dip into dark territory. In Lion King (which came out a year before Pixar's theatrical debut), the main characters father is trampled to death, and I wasn't emotionally scarred watching that at nine years old.

Music Review: Against Me - White Crosses

Against Me divided a lot of their fan base when they moved to a major label and left behind anyone who wasn't willing to accept that bands mature and evolve their music. They probably caught a lot more slack for it because of their staunch denial that they would ever go that route, despite major label types buzzing around them like bees. Just go watch their DVD, We're Never Going Home, to see numerous scenes of them wining and dining on record company recruiters dimes, only to turn them down afterwards.

Still, all of this "sold out" crap is stupid. The simple fact of the matter is, that Against Me always played a variation of punk that had twinges of influence from plenty of more mainstream genres of music. And as they've grown and matured as a band, some of those influences have emerged a little bit more than they were before. They can still write some of the most creative lyrics, and catchiest hooks I've ever heard from a punk band.

Video Round-Up: Russian Spy Edition

Video Round-Up is a weekly post collecting an assortment of videos from around the web. Whether they be music videos, creative viral marketing, just plain cool, or just plain ridiculous, they will all be found on Video Round-Up.

In light of recent news that blasts us back into the Cold War, Cerebral Pop brings you videos that have not an iota to do with it. Instead, modern/postmodern art, and further (possible) proof that Da Vinci was the greatest person ever.

Apple's Own Cottage Industry/Milliamp Repair Review

Full Disclosure: I was contacted by Milliamp.com and offered a free repair of my iPods in exchange for a review here. Since a review of a repair is pretty cut and dry (Either it was repaired or not), I thought I would weave it into an article. If you have any objections to this whole exchange, please feel free to raise them in a civilized manner. It could help decide how things like this will play out in the future here at Cerebral Pop.

Apple's iPod is easily the standard when it comes to mp3 players. Whether it be marketing, design, or actual hardware, they've pretty much become synonymous with the tech. The problem is, they aren't exactly built to last.

Insufficient Funds: Virtual Apple

Insufficient Funds is a regular post in which we feature a free, or very close to it, piece of media that you can enjoy without overdrafting your bank account. So if you're low on funds, stay tuned to Cerebral Pop every Friday morning.

As technology advances, new ways to preserve the video games of the past continually emerge. Virtual Apple has collected almost all Apple ][ and Apple IIgs games for play in your browser. I played a lot of Oregon Trail in the computer lab of my elementary school, but there were plenty of other classics that graced the Apple. From Pirates! to The Bard's Tale, there are a bunch of great games to kill your boredom.

I'm sort of wary to feature sites like this, as it is usually unlikely that they have all of those pesky legality issues wrapped up nice and neat. While a lot of these games have probably crossed into public domain territory, there could still be someone holding the rights to some of them. Either way, I figure I'll just let you decide your own morals.

Interview with Adam Goren (Atom and his Package, Armalite)

Adam Goren created Atom and his Package almost by accident. Quickly, the goof project involving only him with occasional guest appearances by his friends, writing joke songs on a synthesizer to make his friends laugh, began to grow exponentially. Soon, he had a fan base well over anything he'd ever imagined, as well as detractors that assumed he'd concocted the project as a mere gimmick to try to become a success.

In 2003 Adam called it quits for the "band", after he learned his wife was pregnant. Still, in the six years that Atom and his Package existed, he managed to write a slew of songs still meaningful today, and leave quite a legacy. Songs like "If You Own the Washington Redskins, You're a Cock," and "Lord, It's Hard to be Happy (When You're Not Using the Metric System)" still speak to ridiculous things in our society today, while songs like "Mustache T.V." (The act of drawing a mustache onto a piece of scotch tape and sticking it to the TV.) still make me laugh.

He was nice enough to exchange some emails with me recently, and answer all the questions I had about songs he had written, the entire experience, and what he's up to now.

Shuffled: German Edition

Every other Wednesday I hit the shuffle button on my 90 gigabytes of music and post the results. I might have to justify some of the stuff in my library, but hopefully it will help inform you of new music -- Or at least be entertaining.

With each edition of Shuffled, I realize more and more that there is a lot of music in my collection that I never listen to. It's a good thing shuffle exists. Let the Gods of randomness decide my fate, and by extension yours if you're listening to this.

This week we start off with three selections that I completely forgot were in my library, and then close it out with two of my favorite bands ever, that, strangely, are pretty similar. Is iTunes shuffle smarter than we thought? Well, if this feature teaches us nothing else than that, it'll totally be worth it.

Music Review: Kill Kenada - From Maggots to Flies

Kill Kenada are from Bognor Regis, England. You might say they are the UK's answer to Sonic Youth, and the answer is "get the fuck on with it!" Their new album, From Maggots to Flies, provides 30 minutes of noisy art-punk, bookended by two slow songs devoid of drums or amplification.

If you're a Regina Spektor fan, then maybe you've already heard them -- they featured on "Your Honor," from Soviet Kitsch. If not, then imagine three skilled punks playing for their lives. They've had three drummers since forming in 2001, and it's easy to imagine them dropping out due to the pace.

Insufficient Funds: Jonathan Mann

Insufficient Funds is a regular post in which we feature a free, or very close to it, piece of media that you can enjoy without overdrafting your bank account. So if you're low on funds, stay tuned to Cerebral Pop every Friday morning.

Jonathan Mann is a singer/songwriter that has decided to put himself through the ultimate test of writing a new song every single day. He puts these songs up on YouTube with a corresponding video -- sometimes just him playing, other times more creative (They're all collected here). How long has he been doing this? A couple months? A year? No, he is currently on day #548. A pretty impressive feat, to be sure.

While these songs are about any topic off the top of his head -- and sometimes contest entries, because, why the hell not if he's already recording songs all the time -- gamers might know him for various other reasons. He is sometimes known as GameJew, though I don't think he does those video blogs anymore, but you may have seen his tribute song to EGM after it closed, and he wrote the theme to Area-5's CO-OP show as well.