Nintendo Unveils Alarm Clock

Nintendo

Nintendo has announced a new alarm clock called Alarmo:

In addition to the motion features, a big part of the device appears to be its immersive sounds, which are pulled from five different Switch games: Breath of the WildPikmin 4Splatoon 3Super Mario Odyssey; and Ring Fit Adventure. There are 35 audio “scenes” in total, though you can also connect the alarm to your Nintendo account for more pulled from Animal Crossing: New Horizons and Mario Kart 8, which will be free updates coming later.

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New Robert Smith Interview

The Cure

Robert Smith of The Cure talked with The Times:

“Our songs always had a fear of mortality,” he says. “I don’t feel my age at all but I’m aware of it and when you get older that fear becomes more real. Death becomes more everyday. When you are younger you romanticise death, but then it happens to your family and friends. I am a different person to the last record and I wanted to put that across. It can be trite. People could say, ‘Oh, we’re all going to die — surprise me!’ But I try to find some emotional connection to that idea.”

Howard Benson Talks Early My Chemical Romance

My Chemical Romance

Howard Benson talked with Grammy.com about working on My Chemical Romance’s Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge:

Nobody wanted to produce them because their record before mine was a thrash record. My manager said to me, “You need to meet these guys. Something is going on with them.” [When] I met them, [they had] no songs [to play for me]. But I looked the singer [Gerard Way] in the eye and I’d done enough at that point in my life where I had this feeling about this kid. He was going to be a star. 

I asked him, “Are you worried about the 3,000 fans you have? Or do you want to have 300,000,000 fans? Which kind of record are we going to make?” He goes, “F— the 3,000 fans.” I was like, “Okay, we can do business.”

Their A&R guy Craig Aaronson called me up one night and goes, “At the end of one of these cassettes is a lyric that goes, ‘I’m not okay.'” I remember going to rehearsal and saying, “We have to write a song around that.” [Gerard] wrote the song literally overnight, came back the next day with a half-written song. From then on, the record took shape. 

2024’s Version of the Chorus Update

Chorus.fm Logo

Last year, I wrote about the annual state of Chorus in August. The state of the website was, more or less, that costs had increased, ad revenue had decreased, and supporter revenue had more or less stayed the same.

This year, I’m only a couple of months behind my already haphazard schedule of checking in on everything. Packing up a home and moving will toss everything into disarray like that.

The story of the past year is similar, with a few new bright spots.

The website’s costs have remained flat. I forecast that within the next twelve months, I’ll need to upgrade the forum server’s hard drive space again (we’re a little over half full, mostly from image attachments).

Ad revenue continues to be predictable and predictably less than the year before.

Supporter revenue continues to be strong and growing, which is why I can run this website and community.

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Review: Walking Disaster: My Life Through Heaven and Hell – Deryck Whibley

Walking Disaster

Trauma can come in many forms. Whether it’s watching a loved one going through a tough time, or experiencing the difficulties in our own lives, this trauma is never easy to face head on. Deryck Whibley bravely comes forward in sharing his multiple instances of trauma on his gripping new memoir entitled Walking Disaster: My Life Through Heaven and Hell. Whibley is a gifted songwriter, and while most of us know him for his lifelong work in Sum 41, I was surprised to hear just how deeply involved he was as the primary songwriter for the band. He mentions several times in the book instances where he recalls many fans and critics alike crediting Dave “Brownsound” Baksh as the main writer of Sum 41’s material, when that couldn’t be any further from the truth. Whibley remains poised and positive as he weaves an epic tale of the rise of Sum 41, the backstage shenanigans, key relationships he made in his life, all with an overarching narrative of the alleged abuse of his band’s former manager Greig Nori. The memoir is told in chronological order, while Whibley hints at the future tales that led to his highest of highs (Heaven) and the most dramatic of lows (Hell). Much like a Ying and Yang, Whibley needed to experience both polar opposites in order to determine what he values most in his young life that is starting to regain momentum for the next steps in his blossoming career.

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