360 and Wii Going to do Just Fine

Been watching a lot of the videos of 150 people queues outside stores in America and I am thinking that come December the fact that Sony hasn't been able to provide is going to sell a lot of Wii and 360 units. I think that Sony will drive more customers away from their band and if they had of launched in 2007.

Hardcore Gammers Waiting to Shellout

So I am watching the below video of some American news footage on Kotaku and the news journalist said "Hardcore gamers are waiting to shellout for the PS3" (ok not EXACT words) and that got me thinking. Because I don't think many hardcore gamers will get a PS3 at launch because hardcore gamers know that there is little to play on the PS3 and are probably too busy with other platforms to bother.

Student Exchange Trip From Hell

It is said that when the apocalypse comes all the people who have taken Jesus into their hearts will be taken by god and freed from this world. That leaves everybody remaining to fend for themselves and somekind of anarchy. But after reading Michael Gromek's Student Exchange Trip to America with Christian Fundamentalist host parents, it makes me question wither the apocalypse is such a bad thing after all.

It should be noted that throughout history people have always believed that the apocalypse will come in their lifetime, still waiting.

PS3 Disassembly

Firstly if you haven't seen an XBox360 disassembled then you should have a look Here First.

Some Japanese folks took it upon themselves to quickly disassemble a PS3 and post the video on YouTube:
Part1

Part2

Part3

Part4


From watching these something becomes very obvious. The PS3 is a very difficult console to put together. There are a few silver cables that look like they need to be connected by hand and the whole thing has so many parts that it looks like production must take many hands.
Obviously the 120mm fan is why it cools so efficiently and quietly, it is a shame that the 360 doesn't have one too, but when you look at the 360's design you can clearly see that it has been designed for mass production with the arrangement seems to require little more than the motherboard to be fitted and it's case to be screwed on.
Sony said the PS3 was a complex system and that was an understatement.

Most Dangerious Road in the World

The MOST dangerous road in the world is the Yungas Road between La Paz and Coroico in Bolivia (South America). You can see that first link to read how dangerous the road is or checkout These or These images to see for yourself.

Here is a quote from the Wikipedia Page:

Because of the extreme dropoffs, single-lane width, and lack of guardrails, the road is extremely dangerous. Further still, rain and fog can make visibility precarious, the road surface muddy, and loosen rocks from the hillsides above. On July 24, 1983, a bus veered off the Yungas Road and into a canyon, killing more than 100 passengers in what is said to be Bolivia's worst road accident.

And I have found the road on Microsoft's Live Maps if you want to see exactly where it is. Which is really why I am linking to this because I think being able to fly around the earth with a 360 controller is cool.

Large Skate Ramp

If I went down this thing I would hurt bad:

Geometry Wars High Score and Five Rings

I have been reading The Book of Five Rings by Musashi Miyamoto (I actually bought a printed copy) and the other day I read "The Frame of Mind For The Martial Arts" from the book of Water and the first sentence of that section reads:

In the way of the martial arts, do not let your frame of mind be any difference from everyday mind.

and then he finishes the section by saying this should be investigated. So I being the gamer that I am fired up Geometry Wars.

I have been playing Geometry Wars fairly regally since I Got all the Achievements and Almost Beat My Highscore, but I have found myself struggling to get even one million points as my motivation to do better isn't there, but after reading Miyamoto's section on frame of mind I thought I would give it another go not thinking I would beat my very respectable highscore of 2,158,680 points.

Well after just one game I got 2,664,455 and I seem to be able to have a good run on my highscore now quite consistently. So the book might have been written in the 1600's but it's teachings are quite relevant.

New Levels of Internet Evil

First there was discussion boards, then IRC, then personal websites, then Instant Messaging, then YouTube and other personal video sites, but now something even worse and yet more time consuming called Stickam has emerged. It is essentially Video Chat rooms made easy which I am sure will bring new time wasting opportunities to many people.

This kind of stuff I actively avoid. I don't use IRC because you are just talking to complete strangers and conversations are always guaranteed to be dumb. I don't Instant Message anymore because that just wasts hours talking about mundane stuff with main the problem being that most people will talk about stupid stuff just for the sake of talking because obviously if you are logged on and not talking to someone you know, you are upset over something and actively ignoring them .

The site is also good for voyeuristic tendencies so I am sure many people with personal pages and rooms will end-up having a group of stalkers that watch, but never interact and that is socially very bad.

PlayStation 3 Launched in Japan and Resistance Fall of Man Reviewed Good

The PS3 has launched in Japan with the usual flair of Scalpers and Disorder, god help anybody queueing to buy one in the US on the 19th. Since the Wii is launched on the same day I suspect that will make things worse. Still the first guy in the world to buy a PS3 was Chinese, didn't speak Japanese, didn't buy any-games with his PS3 and was seen exchanging it for money just down the road, probably to some Japanese guy who will sell it for a big profit eBay.

Anyway Resistance Fall of Man according to IGN who has both a ">Written Review and Video Review is a killer app that is worth buying a PS3 for. Maybe they where drugged or maybe they have forgotten how much the PS3 costs, but IGN said they liked it and the 40 person multiplayer is sweet. I am a little-bit surprised by that because it looks just like any-other WW2 FPS, but with Aliens instead of Nazis.

Blog Labels

I have been putting some labels on some of my archived posts, but by doing that it makes them showup as new posts in the blog RSS Feed and pushes todays stuff off. So I have stopped doing that for the time being. This blog has a large number of posts (1,566) and I am not willing to add labels to them all in one sitting and I am not sure if that is worth it. But I would like them all to have labels for consistency's sake. So as compromise I will probably do a few everytime I go a few days without posting just before I post something new.

Non-newtonian Fluid

A Non-newtonian Fluid is a fluid that responds like a solid when put under strain. Such a substance can be created with a mixture of Corn Starch and Water.

With this knowledge I am sure you can imagine the hygienics that would ensue if you where to ever fill a pool with such a substance:

New Version of Blogger

I have just migrated the whole Blog over to the new version of Blogger and the right navigation bar is no-longer pushed down the bottom of the page when viewed in FireFox. However all my post titles are underlined and I cannot find where that is specified. Otherwise I am happy with the changes. Like I can now publish posts instantly, make template changes instantly (that used to take a good two minuets), editing the Blog template is now easier and I can add post category labels.

Spiderman 3 Trailer

Hmmm New Trailer.

Apethetic

Don't really feel like doing much right now (can't get a job depression related), but I thought these two bits where interesting.

Microsoft has released a closed survey (a copy can be found Here) asking people if they would pay for an Premium 360 Controller with rubber grip pads, a better D-pad and LED lights under the ABXY buttons. If I filled out that survey I would have ticked the "Hell yes, who have I got to sleep with to get one" box.

And Princeton has A Demonstration of Voting Machine Hacking which is presented very well. And even John Steward Has a Jab at the whole issue.

Hacking Democracy

There is a HBO documentary called Hacking Democracy which documents the crusade of Beverly Harris and associates to expose the issues with the American electronic voting system. And I just finished watching it on Google Video, but is also available as a Torrent.

There are several brands and type of electronic voting machine in the US. In the UK we still use hand counting and paper based voting because it is a known proven technology, but the electronic systems in the US are essentially black boxes. The voter approaches the machine, puts in their vote and then nobody knows what happens until the central tabulator declares a winner. It is even illegal to have a look into how the system works. To me this stinks because I don't understand how something that is unnecessarily secret, can be trusted. The voter's vote should be secret, but certainly not the counting process.

Anyway the documentary exposes several critical flaws in the electronic voting systems that would allow real-world vote tampering without detection and yet nobody in control seems to be concerned by this. To me voting systems should always be in a regular state of review, but this documentary shows officials actually showing distrust towards an open discussion of the process.

And another thing. Don't be put off by the opening line of the documentary "America, the world's greatest democracy" everybody knows that America isn't a true democracy so that statement is like saying that a Double Decker Bus is the greatest Car ever made.

Apple Fixes iTunes

Since as long as Last Year since I started using iTunes, whenever I clicked the update podcasts button iTunes would use up 100% of my CPU (Pentium 4 2.2Ghz) just to download the RSS feeds for my subscribed podcasts. Then in version 7 iTunes started to not only use up 100% of my CPU for updating the RSS feeds, but also 100% of my CPU when downloading new podcasts.

Well in version 7.0.2.16 they have finally gotten around to addressing the issue. I have always thought that it was somekind of unnecessary Do...Loop process running in the background, but I don't care now because it is fixed. iTunes still uses a lot of my CPU, but no-longer 100%! YAY!

Firework Fun

Just stuck my head outside and although I didn't buy any fireworks, the air is thick with the smell of gunpowder and there are sounds of explosions all around. There is stuff occasionally hitting the roof which must be the sticks from the rockets, but it's like being in somekind of warzone and I can even see a little bit of fog coming from the houses setting off fireworks.

Bonfire night fits in well with our modern consumer driven society, but the fact that it isn't a national holiday is a bit of a shame.

Happy Bonfire Night

I missed Halloween so I guess I can at least wish everybody a happy Bonfire Night, not that I am letting off any fireworks off or anything. Still Carl Franklin did an Amazing Halloween trick to greet Haloweeners coming to his house this year and he has a link to a video of his setup on his Blog Intellectual Hedonism. Essentially he used a projector and a clear projector screen attached to his door to achieve a very cool effect.

I went to the National Exhibition Centre yesterday to the graduates fair and talked to a few PR people. Nothing much to report on the job front, but I will do a big job hunting post when I find a job because there is a lot of boring stuff to talk about and I don't want to drag that crusade across these pages too much.

Random Fact

Ants don't sleep.

Bursting the Wii Controller Bubble

I know a lot of people have high hopes and dream about the possibilities the Wii controller represents. I have reserved excitement because those Wii ads with GAP Models hiding behind sofas, rolling around and generally looking goofy are obviously not people playing any games. I need to see this stuff working otherwise I don't believe it. And this I have unfortunately learned over the years the hard way by following the work of Various Designers.
Many people have envisioned a true sword fighting experience with the Wii across continents and very real possibilities for applications for Serious Games to do with training. Well I am about to deflate a few bubbles slightly because the Wii Remote isn't what you think it is.

What everybody seems to think that the controller will do is choreograph motion made by the player directly into the game, and this does happen on pointer games that require infared input with the controller bar, but games that use accelerometer data don't which is a surprise to a lot of people. What Wii games do is recognise the orientation input from the remote and translate that into in-game commands. So in a sword fighting game you can swing from the right, swing from the left, block and thrust, but you can't actually sword fight with the in-game sword choreographing every motion made by the real world remote.

Actions like swinging a bat in a Wii game are event triggered just like they are with a traditional gamepad's button press, analogue input through a stick or even an analogue trigger. The player performs a motion and the game activates the corresponding in-game event.

This is mentioned in Ryan Garside's bit-tech Preview where he talks about how quick wrist flicks respond to stronger arm motions than real strong arm motions like those with ball bowling. Matt Casamassina's IGN Blog mentions this too. He praises WII Sport's Bowling game, allowing the player to control when the ball is released and the ability to spin the ball, but I have watched videos of the game being demonstrated and it isn't possible to aim the ball in any diagonal direction direction. So again choreographed motion captured motion of the player bowling the ball isn't there. Motion is not translated directly into the game as you would think, but is instead a rasterized interpretation of the action being preformed.

So not what a lot of people had assumed, but still nifty. And Nintendo isn't marketing the Wii at hardcore gamers anyway so you got to give them a lot of credit for that. My Mum wouldn't buy one but someone else's Mum might.