Congratulations
So it appears my brother got a job at PC Gamer and is moving to Bath at the beginning of November.
Congratulations to him. More proof that blind luck and raw talent is better than a degree any day of the week.
Archive for September, 2005
Jamie
And no, not the one with the magic torch.
Listened to the new Jamie Cullum album tonight. Not as good as twentysomething, but maybe it’ll grow on me.
People who can play the piano that well still continue to annoy me.
Thursday, September 29th 2005 at 11:11 pm / Music / Permalink / Post Comment »
Lacquer
I got sent this very nice video for the song Behind by Lacquer, co-directed by Michel Gondry, the man who directed the fabulous Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.
Not only it is a cool video, but it’s a great song too, and it even made me buy the album it came from, Overloaded. It’s not a bad album either.
Wednesday, September 28th 2005 at 11:35 pm / Music / Permalink / Post Comment »
Nanowrimo
Last year around this time Graham pointed me at National Novel Writing Month, a site that encourages people to write an entire novel in the month of November.
My goal for 2005 was to have written a book, so finding myself about to enter October with just as many words written as I had at the start of the year is depressing. So this year I might just try it, as nothing motivates more than a deadline.
I’ll just need to set everything else aside that month. Like you know, eating. And washing.
Tuesday, September 27th 2005 at 11:32 pm / Books / Permalink / Post Comment »
Famous
Danny Baker used to play a game on his Saturday morning Radio 1 show where listeners had to call in if they had a name like a famous person. Not exactly the same, just close enough that people might raise an eyebrow should they hear it. For example, Ron Connery.
I’m sure the IMDB is full of them, but here’s one I stumbled across today that fits the bill perfectly.
Monday, September 26th 2005 at 11:06 pm / General / Permalink / Post Comment »
Canines
Walking the dog back from the park today I got about half way home before another dog appeared beside us. I’ve seen the dog before, Hamish, but I turned around and his owner was nowhere to be seen. He must have followed us all the way from the park in the hope that Fury would give him some loving.
Fury shunned his advances as we walked back down, hiding behind me and continually checking behind her.
She’s been trained not to be a whore.
Monday, September 26th 2005 at 9:33 pm / General / Permalink / Post Comment »
IRC
The closing date for IRC Bear has been announced, 31st October 2005. You can see more details at the IRC Bear site.
It just never really worked, IRC is too complicated for the average user and it’s never going to take off in a world of blogs, instant messaging and simpler web based services. Keeping it supported and providing the server resource for it is just no longer viable with all the other projects coming up shortly.
It was fun, but these things can’t last forever.
Monday, September 26th 2005 at 9:10 pm / Tech / Permalink / Post Comment »
Wishlists
More work on the Bearkey rewrite this weekend, just thought I’d post some more screenshots of what things look like right now.
- Bearkey Admin Home
- Private Messages - with friends highlighted in green
- Friends - don’t need to hop around profile pages anymore
- Edit Relationship - with further meta data optional
- Messages Side Bar - a bigger version of the sidebar
Everything you see in all these shots works, but I’m about to do another pass and add even more. This is where wishlists start to turn into reality.
Sunday, September 25th 2005 at 11:15 pm / Tech / Permalink / Post Comment »
Bunny
Yes, today is my birthday, the ripe old age of 26. Do I feel different than I did yesterday? No. Do I think I’ll feel different tomorrow? No. In fact it’s pretty much passing my by just like any other day, except I’m being handed packages that aren’t in turn being charged to my credit card.
Somebody should be here, but they’re not. And that’s not really a surprise. The “you suck” bunny never seemed so appropriate.
Friday, September 23rd 2005 at 11:08 pm / General / Permalink / Post Comment »
Leeching
Too. Many. TV. Shows.
My Name is Earl shows potential, the return of Lost was incredible, Kitchen Confidential is probably the best new comedy, How I Met Your Mother is ruined by Alyson Hannigan (sack her, please) and the last minute of the episode - but is worth watching a second episode because of Neil Patrick Harris. Everybody Hates Chris relied on it’s narration too much, but still made me laugh.
Daily Show continues to entertain, Attack of the Show continues to have useless new hosts, and the new dramas… I haven’t even started viewing them yet.
As for UK TV… it’s still standing in the corner with it’s head hung low.
Thursday, September 22nd 2005 at 11:07 pm / TV / Permalink / Post Comment »
Looking
I got The Search this morning, a book about Google. Or so I thought.
Although it’s clearly using Google as an example throughout most of it’s discussion, with the author having spent some time with the people there, it’s not really a book about them per se. Instead it’s a book about searching itself, and how important that is to the Internet and society, and the knew opportunities it opens up.
Frankly, I’m disappointed it’s not the Google book I thought it was going to be. But it does leave me intrigued at how he’s going to spin that out for the entire book. Searching important to society? Hmmm.
I shall report back.
Wednesday, September 21st 2005 at 7:02 pm / Books / Permalink / Post Comment »
Ludicrous
As I may have already said, I pre-ordered the Xbox 360 from Amazon as soon as it was available to do so. It took until today however before I suddenly realised that I should probably pre-order some games as well.
It’s difficult to know what to order, considering the launch lineup isn’t even confirmed yet, let alone the quality. But I went for Project Gotham Racing 3, since it looks cool and the original was pretty fun, and Kameo: Elements of Power, because it’s Rare and because the recent 42 minute presentation video on Gamespot made it look really great.
Speaking of those presentation videos, there was one for PGR3 as well, of the same length. The difference however was that they didn’t show one single second of in-game footage. There were some menus at the beginning, and a brief look at the the track route designer at the end, but in the middle was nothing but a developer talking for half an hour.
What a horrible way to promote your game. And it can’t be in that bad of a state either, with two months to go until launch and them hapilly showing it to the press, not letting Gamespot actually film the game itself seemed ludicrous. It’s not like they even have a story to protect, it’s a racing game. That’s what made the Kameo video so good, they were quite happy to show it off, simply skipping past the plot parts so they didn’t ruin it for anyone. And it worked too, seeing the game in action got me interested enough to go buy it, something I wasn’t really considering before.
Naturally what’s going to happen is that come launch day I’m going to have two games and no console, due to the expected shortages. So let’s hope the boxes are at least pretty.
Tuesday, September 20th 2005 at 11:46 pm / Games / Permalink / Post Comment »
Loosened
I mentioned just over a month and a half ago how part of my tooth had fallen off, with me swallowing it in the middle of the night.
Ever since then I’ve been getting bits of good stuck in the newly created gap, the kind of thing that annoys me constantly until I manage to get it out. I spend ages trying to do this with my tongue, but usually give up in the end and use a toothbrush.
But tonight I was still in the tongue stage when I decided to try sucking the offending item out instead. Finally I felt as if I’d loosened something and went at it with the tip of my tongue again, finally pulling it free.
It was at that moment I felt a little nip of pain and felt my mouth filling with a bit of blood. That wasn’t food. That was another part of the tooth.
Monday, September 19th 2005 at 11:40 pm / General / Permalink / Post Comment »
Advertising
I’ve decided to switch the ads on Chatbear and Bearkey from Google to Amazon and have started adding my favourite products into a list it can randomly select from.
The Google ads do OK, but it’s nothing spectacular. I’m hoping that the return from Amazon will be better, but there’s still the issue of getting people to click on them. But I figure that Google ads are now so common that people are just mentally filtering them out, so a different looking box certainly can’t hurt.
What would be great is if every Chatbear user did their Christmas shopping via Amazon after clicking one of the links. That’d be a great present.
Sunday, September 18th 2005 at 10:45 pm / Tech / Permalink / Post Comment »
Messaging
Simply working on the Bearkey Private Messaging system, preview screenshot of which is here.
It’s nice to have some standardised modules for drawing forms and lists etc now, it makes all this stuff so much quicker. A few lines of code and I’ve got a form with full error checking, nicely drawn boxes and all the other things that you need to create a friendly UI.
Slowly building up the list of things that are going to be in the Chatbear v3/Bearkey update. Currently looking at over 35 items, some small tweaks, some major upgrades. Things are going to look pretty different over there pretty soon.
Saturday, September 17th 2005 at 11:36 pm / Tech / Permalink / Post Comment »
Controller
So…. the Revolution controller then. Who saw that one coming? Who guessed they were going to release a remote control?
If you haven’t seen it already, head over to Gamespot.
Now I have to say that this looks incredibly cool, and is exactly the kind of thing I talked about in my whatinterest article. Nintendo seem to be the only ones to realise the importance of the controller. Think of how many new avenues this thing opens up, the new kinds of games you can make, the new experiences they’re opening people up to.
Now, there is a chance that I’ve misunderstood what the controller is capable of, but from the promo video it seems like it can not only detect it’s distance from the screen and where it’s pointing, but it’s position and speed in 3D space. Pretty much any kind of game is going to benefit from that. To be honest it’s like some sort of weird futuristic thing, so it’s amazing to think it’s probably only six or seven months away.
Bring it on I say.
Friday, September 16th 2005 at 11:02 pm / Games / Permalink / Post Comment »
Dated
So the official UK launch of the Xbox 360 is December 2nd, a scant 2 and a half months away. Seems like nothing at all.
I’m a big fan of this worldwide release within a couple of weeks methodology, saves me an absolute fortune in import costs. Of course my console has been reserved at Amazon from the moment they started taking pre-orders.
No word on what games are going to be there at launch, there are rumours that PGR3 isn’t going to make it, which will be a shame considering it’s one of the games I really want. Although after the speed of the Burnout games, other racers do seem slow in comparison.
Thursday, September 15th 2005 at 11:50 pm / Games / Permalink / Post Comment »
Rooms
Rather than describe what I spent all day and night doing, I shall simply point you towards this Perl Monks thread where I appealed for help.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I think I’ve gone crosseyed.
Wednesday, September 14th 2005 at 11:26 pm / Tech / Permalink / Post Comment »
Office
Microsoft showed off some features of Office 12 today, particularly the UI.
It’s nice to see a different approach to the UI problem, instead of simply rehashing previous efforts. Let’s hope they do better than recent Microsoft UI “improvements” all of which have actually made the products harder to use. Mail Merge in the recent versions for example is now a nightmare, with a wizard based system that comes off as much more complex than the old single dialog method. XP changes like grouped taskbar buttons (now two clicks to find a window instead of one!), the updated Start Menu and the horrible file sharing dialogs do nothing to help their cause either.
Dropping the menus from Office is certainly a step in the right direction, because it helps put all the options in front of the user instead of hiding them away. There’s just one problem, brushed metal windows.
I know they’re fond of borrowing features from other operating systems, especially Apple, but did they have to borrow the one feature that even Apple users themselves hate with ever increasing passion?
Tuesday, September 13th 2005 at 11:12 am / Tech / Permalink / Post Comment »
Strange
It can certainly be said that I partake in some strange early morning eating habits. Many people don’t quite understand how I can eat pizza before 8am (and I don’t mean leftovers in the fridge from the night before either).
But today even I found the selection odd. 7:50am and starving after returning home from the park, I looked in the cupboards and found them to be bare apart from a single packet of Thai Bites. Which to be honest, I don’t even like. I kept on looking without much success, before eventually finding salvation in the fridge.
A Sainsbury’s Chocolate Steam Pudding. Designed to feed at least 2 or more. Into the microwave, couple of minutes, chocolate sauce running down the outside.
MMmmmmmm. Breakfast.
Monday, September 12th 2005 at 11:59 pm / General / Permalink / Post Comment »
Recent Purchases
