Reading through the Saturday paper and found a review of a doco about Nokia’s manufacturing operations in China, ‘Nokia: A Decent Factory’. (Review by Ian Cuthbertson).”And then it’s into the meat and potatoes of the doco, as we see, first hand, the depressing conditions the mostly female staff work under. They work factory lines so deafening that the audio on the tape becomes inaudible. They work six days a week. They work compulsory overtime. When not at work, they must live and sleep huddled eight to a room. Read the rest of this entry »

In the first few opening minutes of Metallica’s documentary ‘Some kind of Monster’ James Hetfield roars down a Bay Area freeway in his bucket hot rod. He and his passenger sit awkwardly in the open wheeler, dangerous stick shift vibrating, chrome ‘German’ style helmets shining in the sun and noise roaring from the straight pipes coming right off the block. Read the rest of this entry »

Do you remember the time you saw your first video game? For us it was at a shopping center and we must have been around 8 or nine. On the way out we passed a brand spanking new Space Invaders machine. After a brief glance we were dragged away but it was too late, even without playing it we were hooked. Read the rest of this entry »

We had this great interview with Karl Nicolai conducted by our mate Nick when he was back in the UK. If you’ve been reading, you’ll know that Nicolai are still in out top 10 fave cool ‘things’, so it made sense to put this interview up for all to read.

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It has come as no surprise that Australia has hit a water major crisis. It only goes to figure that the driest continent on the planet could not sustain the insane ways in which modern Australians use water and finally but probably too late, lots of noise is being made about it. I find it funny though that we are making noise about this now, when for decades modern (and not so modern) Australia has spent most of its time being conscious about long term sustainability about as much as a coma patient spends thinking about what to say next. Read the rest of this entry »

With Gran Turismo 4 about to hit the retail shelves, and complex games with stunning graphics such as Halo and Half Life 2 ruling the roost, here’s something so (with apologies to Tricky) brand new it’s retro it will knock your socks off… the Atari Classics 10 in 1!� Read the rest of this entry »