Author: admin

2011 – MC Lars – Lars Attacks

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You can’t talk about nerdcore music without mentioning MC Lars. He may not be quite as well known as folks like MC Chris and MC Frontalot, but I can tell you one thing: he works just as hard as, if not harder than, either of them.

Lars should be known as the hardest working man in Nerdcore. He teaches, he raps, he makes videos, he supports causes that are close to his heart, and he’s even taken to writing editorial posts for HuffingtonPost. On his website, MCLars.com, he promotes things his fans are doing, and offers up instrumental recordings from his albums (making it easier for fans to make remixes), and likes to share what he’s been listening to.

His most recent full length album, Lars Attacks, proves that you can stay true to nerdcore while still being taken seriously as a musician and a rapper. As evidenced by the second track, The Gospel of Hip-Hop, where he is accompanied by special guest rapper, KRS-One. It doesn’t get much more “legit” than that, kids.

My exposure to MC Lars came through his other collaborative work, but the fact that his albums are inexpensive or available on a “name your price” kind of basis, it’s hard to resist. He’s been hard at work for over a decade and it’s fun to listen to him evolve musically. As with most bandcamp websites, you can stream before you buy and see what you like from his collection of works, so I don’t see any reason for you not to give MC Lars, and his latest full length album, Lars Attacks, a chance!

Delete a profile on your Xbox 360 & more account management

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I’ve gotten this question a few times, and I usually need a little clarification from the person asking. To delete your Xbox 360 Profile from your Xbox 360 is simple. But if you really want to ‘purge’ your gamertag from Xbox Live — well, it’s not entirely possible. More information on what you can do is below.

Let’s start simple. Let’s say you have a Gamertag you don’t use any more, a friend’s gamertag that was “recovered” to your console so you could play some games together, or just a local account you have no intention of using ever again. To delete the profile so that it doesn’t show on your Xbox 360 all you have to do is sign in to an existing account (OR, from the sign on screen of the most recent dashboard (Metro UI), you can even select “Skip Sign In” and get to the Dashboard without signing in to any profile). Once on the dashboard, move to the far right menu, “System,” then click Storage, All Devices, and Gamer Profiles. Then you can select the profile you want to delete, hit the “A” button and choose DELETE.

As with most of our Xbox Tip of the Week articles, Microsoft has a simple how to guide on their website.

Note that the process above deletes the profile and details from your specific Xbox 360 console. The account still exists on Microsoft’s servers and can be accessed via Xbox Live from another console, Xbox.com, Games for Windows Live, or Xbox Live for Windows Phone. In other words – you can’t see it and it’s not wasting space on your console, but if you wanted to delete it for security reasons, you’re not done. There are literally millions of ‘abandoned’ gamertags and Xbox Live accounts, so for most people, you’ve done all you need to do. But if you’re security concious and want to ensure the account has been blown away, well then I’ve got bad news.

It has become pretty clear that Microsoft will NEVER delete a Gamertag. Even after this process, the Gamertag you remove is essentially locked down from the system, but it is not entirely purged. Nobody else can register and take that tag, but you can never get it back, either. If you want to keep using that gamertag, you should not use the steps below – the tag will essentially be locked from the sytem. What you may want to do is change the Live ID associated with the Gamertag.

If you are certain that you’re 100% done with Xbox Live, your best option is to let your Gold status expire and let your Gamertag go in to “Silver” status. This is the free tier of Xbox Live. To ensure you’re not set up for auto-renewal to Gold status, check out the support article for canceling Xbox Live Gold. If you’re done with the Live ID that is associated with your Gamertag, you can go to Account.Live.com and log in with the LiveID you want to close. Then, at the bottom of the page, click the link that says Close Your Account. At the very least, I would ensure that you’ve disabled your gold renewal and removed any payment options from the LiveID.

If you have questions, post them here, and I’ll do my best to clarify some of these steps!

Bug Village on Windows Phone 7 Black Screen Solution

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Weeks ago, another free game landed on Windows Phone 7. This time it was Glu’s Bug Village. The game itself is a fun little time-sink with the idea of making their money back through microtransactions. You build up your small town, harvesting acorns as your primary currency. Fun and simple.

Recently, however, problems have plagued the free title. A recent update for the game seems to have made things worse than the original launch title, breaking random occurances of some of the bugs which you need to tap in order to obtain certain achievements in the game. More annoying, still, is this flickering black screen issue which has caused many people, based on the reviews in the marketplace, to stop playing the game entirely. Lucky for you, I have a solution to keep the lights on.

The problem occurs because of a glitch in the game overpopulating the with sprites. Too many graphics loaded in to memory, and the game begins to fall apart, leaving you with a black screen unless perhaps you pan around to a secluded corner of the map. I can nearly guarantee that the people who are having the problem are people who went for an achievement included in the game, entitled “Great Decorator” – where you get some gamerscore for placing 50 decorations. If you love earning achievements, I suggest you earn the “Great Decorator” achievement before reading further in this article.

To fix the black screen issue with Bug Village on Windows Phone 7, simply click the ‘store’ icon in the lower left corner of the screen, then tap one of your decoration items, and finally click the purple ‘upward arrow’ icon which will uproot and remove the decoration item. You’ve already unlocked the achievement, right now all of those items are just for decoration – and they are what is causing the problem.

Removing the majority of my ‘decorative’ items hasn’t fixed the problem 100%, but it has made the game much more playable, and it is possible that removing all remaining non-essential items (houses / piles / flowers) might fix it entirely. However, I’m still one of the few experiencing the problem with random characters not popping up – meaning I’m stuck unable to get a few achievements until a patch is released. Some people have suggested ‘moving’ your bug’s homes (click the store, click a house, then drag it to a different location) might “uncover” these random characters which may have spawned in to a location where you already had a structure built, but I have had no such luck.

So there you have it. Although very niche, and not much, it’s my quick gaming post of the week, and hopefully a few people (Glu included) will find this helpful and get things working again.