Every month or so a release for Rock Band sparks up my interested. Be it a band I like or one that other people might like, I always debate whether I should pony up and buy a few more tracks. The truth is that I always decide against it because this whole weekly download business isn’t working.

I’d be one of the first ones to bemoan the annual releases after EA promising that Rock Band was a platform not a franchise, but I’d also never buy those extra tracks. Obviously during the beginning I downloaded anything I was vaguely aware of but something has happened, either my interest has waned or buzz surrounding the game has waned.

This week The Futureheads – one of the few I’ve seen live – are putting out two tracks. I still know I won’t buy them because Rock Band has lost its appeal. We all knew it wasn’t going to last for ever but it’s definitely petered out quicker than I thought.

I guess the real question is, does anyone care about Rock Band in 2010?

I’ve just passed the half way point on my degree in Graphic Design and I’ve finally come to the conclusion that design shouldn’t be taught within these academic parameters. The main problem is that design is subjective. What resonates with one person might not with another, so who is to say whether work is good or bad – it might not be aimed at them.

That and essay writing doesn’t lead itself well to design and the arts in general. People should be made to improve their writing and do case studies on important designs or events but essay writing doesn’t seem like the logical choice.

Personally I would like to see a private design school set up, similar to one in Scandinavia (the name escapes me). There every month, new designers come in, impart wisdom, leave and repeat. You get multiple points of view, variation every month and make more contacts with people working in the industry. If a similar school was set up outside the parameters of the BA or MA system, it would quickly get a good reputation with consistently good work that isn’t based on academic grading.

I don’t have buyers remorse or anything but the more I think about it, the less this structure makes logical sense. How can you apply a traditional degree structure to a non-traditional subject?

Picture courtesy of IDN’s infographic special.

You might have noticed that the last few posts have been about a PC I’ve speced out and bought. Well today, within 3 minutes of each other, my two orders arrived from different couriers and soon I was knee deep in screwdrivers and computer components.

The build didn’t go without a hitch but it never does. Although for what was my first PC build from scratch, I thought I did alright. It would have been flawless if it wasn’t for the flimsiest CPU cooler that snapped and probably won’t support itself if I put the PC up on the side. Otherwise the build went smoothly.

I guess I had some problems while installing Windows 7 because of the default BIOS settings. Windows 7 was looking for a floppy disk drive and instead of telling me it was having problems, it just kept looking for it while showing me nothing. Not a please wait message, not a loading bar, nothing. Google fixes all though.

The entire thing was worth it when I started to play Colin McRae Rally 2.0 on the highest settings. Yes, I know but the only PC games I actually own now are from my retro PC gaming fad of 2007 because at the time that’s all my PC could handle.

Naturally I downloaded Trackmania soon after along with my Steam version of Audiosurf – the only game I own on Steam, something that I look to remedy pretty soon – and ran them at the highest settings. Surprisingly I haven’t done much tweaking and they run at a smooth 30 and 40 frames per second, respectively.

I’m waiting until I can get some serious gaming on though, I’ll get downloading some demos tomorrow. For now, sleep.

I’ve just been told that both my Dabs and Overclockers orders are on the way meaning that tomorrow I should be set up with a desktop PC. Well providing nothing goes wrong while building it. I’m not really sure what to expect, I’ve installed every part of a computer before, but never from scratch.

The only thing I’m expecting is photos, loads of photos, tons of photos… Don’t worry I’ll post them on here. I know you want them.

For all the six cores, or whatever it has, and for all the powerful graphics chips the Playstation 3 still couldn’t figure out that this year isn’t a leap year. It just makes me laugh that something ridiculously complex, fails worldwide because of something so basic.

For those who don’t know what I’m talking about, today nearly every Playstation 3 woke up and presumed that today would be the 29th of February (In case you were wondering, it isn’t). The firmware knew better but got confused when the internal clock said it was the 29th and rather than just resetting the clock, the system failed meaning people can’t connect to Playstation Network, access downloaded content or even play games.

It’s happening to every Playstation 3, at least the original ones anyway, and nobody knows what will happen tomorrow when the system clock will be showing a legitimate time. We’ve got 30 minutes before we find out…