This week’s Stuff to Watch doubles up as a Stuff to Listen To in the form of six carefully chosen documentaries exploring the music, lives and talent behind some of the world’s most famous live acts. Each documentary has one thing in common – the guitar. We’re not just talking rock and roll here either, as blues, country and punk music are also on the menu.

Notorious BitTorrent tracker The Pirate Bay has today dropped .torrent files completely from their site in favour of magnet links instead. Labelling .torrent files a “waste of space and our time”, a blog post on The Pirate Bay explained the move will not affect the way users make use of the service. Magnet links are [...]

The next iteration of Microsoft’s answer to flight simulations, Microsoft Flight, has finally been released for free on the Games for Windows platform. In December we reported that MS had put out a call for beta testers, and now development team Microsoft Studios has deemed the “freemium” title ready for public consumption. It won’t cost [...]

A cinemagraph is essentially the marriage of still photos and moving video, except only a portion of the scene is animated. Typical examples include a tree swaying in the breeze, water flowing from a tap or the flame on a candle. In case you’re still confused, here’s a cinemagraph that I have made using the very app I’m about to talk about.

The Internet has been awash with hype about Clear since it was first announced and demoed by developers, Realmac Software. The app finally hit the App Store last week and is already proving itself a worthy competitor to the hordes of other list-making apps available for the iPhone. It’s cheap, simple and very easy to use but is Clear worth a dollar when a pen and paper has served us so well in the past?

All good things must be mocked, and the latest epic fantasy RPG from Bethesda is no different. Today we’ve got a selection of parodies and in-game videos that will hopefully amuse, inspire and tickle you in the right places. For many who have played the game on a console (myself included) the PC version is beginning to look better and better thanks to all the fun of modding and console commands.

Something big has been brewing in the university town of Cambridge, UK. For the past year a team of academics, businessmen, lecturers and programmers have been making final amendments to a very exciting project indeed. Raspberry Pi is an ultra-affordable credit-card sized computer that will be finally making its way into the sweaty palms of excitable programmers, hobbyists and students come the end of February 2012.

Today we’re going to be exploring the final facet of chiptune creation – using VST plugins (Virtual Studio Technology) in the form of instruments and effects to achieve that 8bit sound. We’ve already had two articles exploring chiptune software trackers and how to make chiptune with hardware, so check those out first if you’re interested in this kind of thing.

Laughter is medicine for the soul and body. It been linked to healthy blood vessel function, a reduction in stress and can even have an effect on physical pain thanks to the endorphins released when you crack up. Stand-up comedy is a great way to get your fix, and many comedians turn to music in a bid to make us laugh.

A little later than advertised, it’s time to take a second look at chiptune creation, this week focusing on using hardware in the form of native music trackers that run on original systems. If it’s software trackers you’re after then check the previous article, and if you’re just interested in listening to chiptune then we’ve got some great resources for that too. Today might just be the day you dust off your old Game Boy, dig out the Commodore 64 and start creating chiptune like a pro.