Alt.Cardiff

As part of the postgraduate journalism course I am studying at Cardiff University, I have been contributing to the online magazine Alt.Cardiff

The magazine hunts out Cardiff's best off-beat news and reviews under five different categories: Food, Music, Culture, Active and 'No Logo' - a political slant on the Welsh capital.

Over the past 11 weeks I have contibuted two articles to all of the above categories apart from Food where I contributed three.

Clicking on an article's header below will take to you the original story.

Culture:

10. Phil Rogers Pottery Exhibition

The Makers Guild in Wales will be hosting an exhibition of Phil Rogers’s work from 1 December to 31 January next year.

9. Martin Tinney Gallery Christmas Exhibition

The gallery launched its 2009 Christmas exhibition on 27 November and this year’s show will include work by Charles Burton to celebrate his 80th birthday as well as a number of industrial paintings by Glyn Griffiths who died 10 years ago.

Active:

8. Cardiff Lions

The Cardiff Lions, Wales’s only recognised gay friendly rugby union club, are looking for new players before the start of next season.

7. Disability Sport Wales

The Celts wheelchair basketball team may steal the limelight when it comes to disability sport in Cardiff, but the local Disability Sport Wales team offer more than just competitive activities.

No Logo:

6. Controversial Parking Charges at St David's

The new £675m St David’s shopping centre in Cardiff opened at the end of last month becoming the largest of its kind in Wales.

5. Peaceful Progress Graffitti

The community-based Peaceful Progress organisation is hoping to bring its artwork to the streets of Splott.

Music:

4. Cardiff's next best thing

The Sŵn Festival was an excellent opportunity to see Cardiff's music talent. This article discusses the five local bands battling to be the next best thing.

3. Thumping Cardiff

The latest craze to hit New York is called ‘Thumping’; residents banging on railings and bollards to see how they sound.

Watch this space for the full interview with Ninjah Jones

Food:

11. Women's Institute's Christmas Cake

You can do worse than consult the Women’s Institute (WI) if you want to make the perfect Christmas cake.

2. The best named beer in Cardiff

A sign of a truly good pub is a draught with a ridiculous name.

1. All your stomach needs sold here

Not everyone can afford to travel, but Cardiff is a viable destination if all you want to do is sample foreign food.

NB: Articles are numbered according to the order that they appeared on the website. Week 11 was the week starting 7 December 2009.

Interview with Lou Summers

Zero Waste in Wales

I went to St. Arvans in Monmouthshire today which was apparently the first zero waste settlement in Wales.

I am currently writing a feature about waste for my course at Cardiff University, and it will explore the alternatives to landfill.

It seems that St. Arvans' experiment is due to fail as the local council has found that zero waste also equals zero binmen and consequently a loss of jobs.

I will have a video up on here very soon, but before that here are some photographs:

The local pub housed the communal recycling bins in their car park...

All residents were encourged to use the various recycling boxes...

Just as we left, the clouds parted for the first time...

YouTube videos harm music industry

I haven't been able to play music on my computer for about a month now because the poor thing is getting old.

Far from tearing my hair out however, I have just resorted to using YouTube to supplement my listening to radio stations such as Radio 1, BBC 6 Music, Classic FM and Radio 3.

It occured to me therefore, that the decision to allow official music videos back onto YouTube could be really damaging to the music industry.

I have never even thought of illegally downloading tracks that I like, but I similarly hadn't even thought about not using YouTube.

I don't think music videos should be banned from YouTube however. If one type of video is banned due to commercial interests, a precedent may be set that might hinder the free flow of content on the social media site.

Top Ten Halloween Movies

Halloween is soon upon us and there are few things better than staying in and watching scary movies all night on the 31st. But with so many to choose from, where should you start?

10: Alien (1979)

Director Ridley Scott’s dramatical dark lighting and the claustrophobic set create a grungy realism that sucks you in to the detail in this re-imagination of the Sci-Fi genre. You know its coming, but you don’t know when.

9. The Silence of the Lambs (1991)

The best of the Hannibal Lecter movies still chills the spine 18 years on from its release. Anthony Hopkin’s epic Oscar winning performance is the perfect tone for the movie, but the comedy of the bumbling ‘Buffalo Bill’ and the psychotic Lecter sometimes detracts from the scare factor.

8. The Invisible Man (1933)

H.G. Wells’ classic tale of scientific mystery and madness was beautifully shot in this introspective story. The special effects were groundbreaking at the time and still look great.

7. The Sixth Sense (1999)

Often cited as one of the best of this genre, it still ticks all the boxes for a Halloween flick. The creepy and tense atmosphere primes you to jump out of your skin

6. The Blair Witch Project (1999)

The Blair Witch Project’s use of the clever home movie concept challenged everything we thought we knew about scary movies. For the first time the audience felt threatened. That and the great ending make this a must for Halloween.

5. The Shining (1980)

Stanley Kubrick’s film should make any scary movie list. More thoughtful and human than most other scary movies and essential viewing for nothing more than Jack Nicholson’s legendary line: “Here’s Johnny!”

4. Poltergeist (1982)

The Poltergeist franchise is said to be cursed as several of the people associated with it, including stars Dominique Dunne and Heather O’Rourke, have died prematurely. This slightly spooky aside makes this movie all the more frightening.

3. Psycho (1960)

This psychological thriller is clever and evenly paced, making it a perfect slow-burning start to an evening of horror. The plotline keeps you guessing and Hitchcock works his visual magic. Brilliant.

2. Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974)

Some might argue that any of the films in the Texas Chainsaw Massacre franchise would not look out of place on this list, but the original is always the best. The character of Leatherface, one of the most frightening characters in cinematic history, and the almost unwatchable gore, guarantees a night full of bad dreams.

1. The Exorcist (1973)

The argument over whether this film is actually any good will no doubt rage on forever, but it is definitely scary. The religious elements and its unfair association with the so-called ‘video nasties’ earned it a ban in the UK. Scary and forbidden… What more do you want?

This article was published on thefilmreview.com

Review of Pimp Your Vocab by Lucy Tobin

Tobin, L., Pimp Your Vocab: A Terrifying Dictionary for Adults, Portico

Zonino cuz! JSYK I have this really book book that I jacked when you were bi-podding with that dullard arm candy who is obv. skett. It’s quality irritainment IMHO. Hush your gums though. Feel me?

If, unlike me, you understood any of that then you are one of the enlightened few who are clearly street and the world is yours my son, and everything in it.

Fortunately for the rest of us, Lucy Tobin’s brilliantly funny (and also quite informative) dictionary should go some way towards clearing the fog that clouds our brains as soon as we see text speak.

Pimp Your Vocab is exhaustively researched; clearly a great deal of work was required for Tobin to source the root of all the words, acronyms and phrases that appear in it.

My personal favourite is ‘irritainment’, which refers to any kind of entertainment that is addictive but trashy. Tobin suggests The Jeremy Kyle Show as the perfect example of this.

What you have here is a fun introduction to ‘kidult’ speak that would be the perfect stocking filler or silly gift for a Grandparent who wants to embarrass their Grandchildren.

Jog on…

Brain Fade

I thought something was wrong with my radio at first when I was listening to "Raw Talent" on BBC Radio Humberside tonight.

A band called Cosmo Jarvis kicked off the show - which runs from 8pm until 10pm - with a song called 'She's Got You' which was a simple and enjoyable, percussion heavy song. Then a band called Eureka Machines played their tune, 'Living in Squalor'.

I was quite enjoying 'Living in Squalor' and it kept me interested enough to put down the book I was reading for a moment. Then it started to fade out and I walked over to the desk to write down the band's name so I could keep an eye on them for the future.

But as I did, the song faded up again... I stared at the offending DAB radio. Had I affected the signal when I stood up?

Then the song faded down again. Then up again. Then down again.

Why do bands do that?

The first time I noticed it was on the Kooks first album - "Inside In/Inside Out" - with the song 'Time Awaits'. Initially I thought it was really clever and innovative - flouting our normal understanding of how song endings work.

But then it realised that it was actually just a bit naff. I started wondering whether they had made mistakes on the recording and they were just trying to mask it.

Then a more horrible realisation hit me - even more horrible than the Kooks second album - they were trying to be clever. They were trying to be different.

Don't get me wrong here, I think the Kooks are a great band. That first album was the soundtrack to one of the best summers I have ever had.

But their music can be quite samey at times, and I saw the random fading in and out on that track as being a fairly perfunctory attempt to inject some much needed difference.

But Eureka Machines did not need to be different - they had my attention.

Fortunately, the night was not lost to unjustified grumpiness. The next band played, the reasonably well known Saving Aimee, revitalised my good mood with their offering of "We're the Good Guys".

This was foot-tapping brilliance in the tradition of a summertime tune, complete with the obligatory 'wo-oh-ohs', and is also the name of their first studio album to be released on the 26th of October.

Based on that evidence, I would recommend checking them out. They are in Bristol at the O2 Academy on the 22nd of October.