Klowns in my Koffee

Daily Kup (My Life on Expert Mode)
It's -10 degrees, but who's counting? I've been feeling a bit pudgy lately. I wonder if it's due to the three shirts, long underwear, heavy jeans, and a blanket that I'm wearing.

While My Plastic Guitar Gently Weeps
Let's have a moment of silence for Guitar Hero. Activision today announced the end of the division that produced the Guitar Hero franchise and its spin-offs. Sales had declined for the game series in recent years.

While scoffers chide the game genre for causing legions of wannabe rockers to spend hours practicing with controllers shaped like faux musical instruments instead of learning to play the real thing, the argument is never extended to other games where players spend hours shooting animated zombies with plastic controls when there are so many real zombies out there to dispatch.

It seems obvious that these killjoys with no rock-and-roll in their souls have never experienced their avatars hoisted into the night sky on a pillar of rock while Through the Fire and Flames wells up.

And I can play a real piano, guitar, drums and a few other instruments just as badly as I play their plastic counterparts. So there.



While this seems to be the end of the arc for rhythm-replication music games, sales for games that simulate killing people continue to show growth.

(Sigh)

Good to the Last Drop
The BBC announced that 1,000 hours of children's programming will be eliminated from Radio 4's spin-off station for children's programming, Radio 7, after it was discovered that the average age of listeners was 48.

Radio 4 cancelled its only children's series in 2009 after finding that its average audience was aged over 50. Ironically, it seems that Radio 7 was successful in its goal of attracting a younger group of listeners than its predecessor.

The BBC plans to replace the axed programs with those aimed at older children and their parents. This should pretty much guarantee a new audience of 70-year-olds.