English (UK)

Everytime I see this or something similar, a part of me screams in disgust. But it is ok, really, I am fine with it, for now, but come the revolution, THEY WILL ALL PAY!



On a more serious note, I have wondered if there is anything special about English that makes it so universal. A quick Google resulted in an interesting piece by Wendy Wang from China:

Because countries like US, British, Canada, Australia, etc are of powerful economy. Some of them even are of strong military power. Any a country wants to develop their economy or cooperate with these countries in military has to know English, or how could they communicate with these countries?
Besides, History proves that the country of strong economy is sure to have a great cultural influence. Due to the overwhelming economic power of US, American music, movies, TV programmes, even Mc Donald's, KFC are spread all over the world and attract youth throughout the world Which motivate many people especially youth to study English.
PPL say we are living in a global village nowadays. On one hand English is accelerating the process of global village, because ppl can communicate with each other in English. On the other hand, Global Village is making english an obligation to the ppl who want to integrate into the present global village. For example, open the website you will find the vast majority of websites are written in English, so how could it possible if you don't know English?

[EnlishBaby.com]

Uncle Jay Explains Deficit

An inspired update from Uncle Jay.

Awesome Fonts Collection

There are some websites that I instantly bookmark when I see them and then rarely visit. One of them is the fonts websites DaFont probably has the best fonts collection site out there. These aren't fonts for reading, but more fonts to play with. They have a great video game section, movie section and even a food/drink section with fonts such as the CokaCola and PES fonts.

Cinemassacre's Star Wars Review

James Rolfe, better known as The Angry Video Game Nerd is a big movie buff and has done a retrospective review of the Star Wars films. I like James have seen them a lot throughout my life, but he mentions a few things in the first part of his review that I never realised before. I always knew that Star Wars followed a very classic Hero/Villain story, but I never knew how much of a melting pot of classic archetypes it was. So worth a watch.





In relation to James' comment on the optimum order to watch the films in, I think it has been well established now that watching them in the order they where filmed, results in a better first viewing.

Eve Online Video Tutorials

Eve Online is both a very good and very difficult to get into MMO. But there is a very large helpful player base, including some people who have made videos on some aspects of the eve universe.

paradigmblue
Fleet Ops 102
Fleet Ops 101
Goonfleet 0.0 Mining 101
Goonfleet Safespotting 101
Goonfleet Tackling 101

1stStepsAcademy
Tread Alliance Test Video
Jet Can Mining Test
Turrets Tutorial
Map Tutorial
Low sec mining

Eve Online Tutorials Search Index

Windosill

Windowsill is a very simple puzzle game come toy. It would be nice if it was longer, but it is a very well designed flash game.

[Jay Is Games]

National Cybersecurity

I felt like I needed to comment on This BBC News Post about America's national computer security. It is full of statements like "we need leadership" and "it is upto industry to provide better solutions". Well the truth is, and has been for many years now, that industry and governments have all the solutions to protect their data and their users, but are too lazy to implement them properly. The tools that help organisations sleep at night are:

Antivirus
Firewall
Strong Passwords
Common Seance/Training
Backup Policy
Asset Management
Disaster Recovery Plan

The final two are not the kind of thing home users can implement, but the rest are good things for everybody to know about, and should be implemented on every computer on the planet. Why there are still organisations and governments floundering over IT security annoys me as it is not rocket science.

Stand By Me, By Verious Artists

You has best visit the Gizmodo Post on this video, but it demonstrated the universal nature of music.

What America Does With It's Tax Dollars

An artist named Mibi On Deviantart has created A Graphical Representation Of What America Spends It's Tax Dollars On.

The surprising thing is that 68% of what Americans pay in tax goes to Security, either military or none-military. I don't know how much of the tax I pay goes to security, but looking at the size of the US army and the equipment that they have compared to to the UK forces, I suspect that it isn't even close to as much as 68%. It is interesting to think wither that money is well spent or not.

I suspect that most people presently will say no because America uses it's military to solve some of it's problems. Problems that could been avoided if less money was spent on the military.

[Source Digg]

Pacemaker Handheld DJ System

ThinkGeek are selling this thing called the Pacemaker Handheld DJ System. It is mega expensive and you might was well get a Korg 10 for the DS or some proper DJ equipment for the $500 price tag, but I really liked the advert.



And then I seen this video below where someone has used a RF output device to listen to the Pacemaker's output on his car stereo system. Which is cool because that could be another evolution of in-car entertainment.

1) In car radio (music chosen for you)
2) In car Tape/CD player (the music you want to listen to)
4) In car MP3 player (on demand audio, music, mixes, podcasts etc)
5) In car DJ system/music game (on the fly music creation)

Incredible Tiger

After watching the Incredible Tiger trailer I was impressed with the selection of movements that have been incorporated into the character. It is as if made by a Kung Fu film buff with complete disregard to actual fighting mechanics, and the fight combinations looks really good. I don't think the game will be any good because it is likely to be just a button masher, but the movements remind me of a few good martial arts films.

StarFox Synchronized Flying Training

I always wondered when I was a kid if it was possible and if there was a reward for doing it well. After a quick YouTube search I now know it is possible and there isn't a reward. My younger self would have been so disappointed.

Star Trek 1 to 6 On BluRay!

OMG! It's HERE!
Not I just need either a new monitor or a BluRay player for the living room.

This Will Blow Your Mind

The rate of technical and scientific achievement of the our people is accelerating all the time. This is both a cause and effect of our global population number, and this video contains some surprising facts around this.



What does it all mean?
It means that we are closer than ever to answering that question.

Cogs

Not my kind of puzzle game, but it does look very interesting and cudos to the developer Lazy 8 for doing proper 3D menus and doing some interesting stuff in 3D.

Dan Ariely On Cheating

Dan Ariely Professor of Behavioral Economics at Duke University (His Papers) did a TED Lecture about Why we think it's OK to cheat and steal.

Essentially people cheat because of the belief that they can get away with it, but I thought it was interesting to hear that people cheat more if they are disconnected from the consequences and less so if cheating questions their morals.



[Source Derren Brown's Blog]

Uncle Jay Explains The Current Economic Crisis

Uncle Jay knows his stuff.

OnLive Another Pump And Dump?

The best place to get info on this is Rock Paper Shotgun, but OnLive is a new webservice where you play games on a server, but not just casual games, the latest FPS and racing games. It is supposedly a Remote Process Service Provider. So the software runs on a remote server, the game is rendered on the remote server, your PC just displays a video of what is running on the server and collects game input signals to send to the server.

The thing that makes me sceptical about this is that I was expecting to see this in the next few years, but not now. Kind of like Phantom which was a download game distribution platform, at the time very cutting edge, was a pump & dump scam to steal money from investors, but retrospectively could have done very well, as online distribution is very much the present and future of the industry. So I just hope that OnLive is for real, but the current day technical challenges seem to me, to be too great for them to do this right now.

Fantastic Aminated Wall Art

Some fantastic animated wall art. I think this video is better without sound, but maybe that is just me.

inFamous

There are two big open world games in development at the moment, Prototype and Infamouse. Ptototype is about a quarentined city and a genetically altered guy who runs around a city absorbing people. Infamouse is about a quarentined city where an event happens that gives some poeple super powers and a guy who has the power to control electricity.

Prototype looks quite forgettable with a main character who absorbs bullets like a fridge, but Infamous really interests me because of the way people you fight have unique powers like teleportation or the ability to control mass. From what I have seen this could lead to some very interesting narrative situations. Unfortunately I will not be playing Infamous because it is PS3 exclusive, and I have no intention of buying a PS3 at it's current price point (as a matter of sanity).



[PS3 Blog via Evil Avatar]

Flash Political Map Quiz

Globetrotter is a great map quiz, not as good as the great Where In The World Is Carmen Sandiego, but I can still give it props for being a short distraction.

The game consists of a world map, a sign at the top of the screen lists the name and country of a place. You then have to put a pin in the map as to where you think that place is. You get points for accuracy and each level you have to acquire a certain number of points to proceed to the next level. Simple yet fun.

It ticks the boxes of improving the players strategy as they play by educating them and by making the player feel as if they are doing well by simply being in the correct vicinity of the place.

I managed to reach level four by cheating with Google Maps; and like to consider myself well versed in different cultures. I hope others do better.

[Jay Is Games]

Barreleye Fish Seen In Wild

I sometimes wonder wither I should have gone into Zoology. So the National Geographic has the First Photos of the Barreleye fish in the wild. This is significant because since the fish was first discovered in 1939 by Chapman, only corpses had been studied, but in the wild it is clear that it is a fish with eyes inside a transparent head. The new discovery here is that it can rotate it's eyes to look up when possibly searching for food or forwards when it eats. What it eats however is still kind of a mystery.

Random Fact

Facebook has a friends limit of 5000.

[Explosm]

Nice Film Trailer, FanBoys

I was over at Apple Trailers when I seen the trailer for FanBoys. It is a road-trip film set in 1998 about some Star Wars fanboys who go on a pilgrimage to Skywalker Ranch; mainly to steal stuff.

There has been many movie spoof films over the past five years. Recent notable enteries have been Superhero Movie and Disaster Movie. Both are horrible slapstick comedies, but Fanboys looks good; I am looking forward to it.



[Apple Trailers]

Science, Primates And Sperm

Jacquelin Nascimento is part of a project to findout which primate has the fastest sperm. Not sure who her funders are, but it is quite an odd project.

Mirrors Edge And New Monitor

Two things happened this week. Firstly I got a new monitor and secondly I played through Mirrors Edge on it.

Firstly this is my old setup:



This is a 16" 4:3 CRT monitor I got more than ten years ago and has served me very well over the years. The reason why I haven't replaced it in so long was because I didn't have any desire to. But the fact that Bluray films didn't look any better or worse on it than DVD or for that matter on my 24" Samsung LCD TV made me want a screen where I could see that extra resolution. Plus the idea of widescreen FPS gameplay was an appealing one. So I bought this:



It is a blue Acer G24, the G24 standing for 24" gaming monitor. 16:10 ratio and very importantly a 2ms gray to gray response time so there is no ghosting on the screen. It has a native resolution of 1920x1800, that's higher than 1080p, well it would be 1800p. This means Bluray films look amazing at their full resolution, but unfortunately DVDs because they don't have as much resolution to them, don't. Games of course look fantastic on and that brings me to Mirrors Edge.

Maybe it was because of my new screen, but I loved this game from start to end. I have read a few opinions and I disagree with almost all of them. And mainly in the area of what kind of game Mirrors Edge is. To me it is clearly an FPS Platformer with shooting elements. Shooting elements that should have been left out, but I can imagine someone seeing seance at EA during development and saying that if there are guns in the game the player should be able to shoot them. Personally I would have left them out all together and replaced them with tasers. Pacing on the game is great, but I would have liked to have played few more basic courier missions to start with to get the player into the flow of the action before the main story kicks off, but then that is me saying that after playing the finished game. It is very difficult as a designer to make such decisions at the start of a project.

The story of Mirrors Edge should have been fleshed out more, although with my interest in writers I was surprised to find that it was written by Rhianna Pratchet, the daughter of Terry Pratchet. I am not familiar with her work, but the story in Mirrors Edge leaves a lot to be desired. The game in general feels very short so my thoughts on this are that if the game was longer, the story would have been better.

Having said all that, Mirrors Edge is by far my most favourite game from last year simply because it offered me a new and original play experience, and maybe my new monitor had something to do with that too.

Dead Snow

Død snø or Dead Snow as it is called in english, is a film coming out later this year about a group of teenagers who holiday in a cabin that is attacked by Nazi Zombies. This might seem very 1981 and even formulaic, but I think the Nazi Zombie angle could hold my interest.

I Won't Miss Bush

In one week Obama takes up the United States Presidency from Bush. Many commentators on the news will probably talk about Bush's legacy, but I don't think anybody, now or in the distant future will anybody call Bush a good president. His legacy is one of death and greed. So Goodbye Bush I am glad to see the back of you.

Random Fact
Bush is responsible for adding more new words to our language than any US president before him.

The Buckingham Palace Guard Band

When the changing of the guard happens (Schedule) at Buckingham Palace, The Guard Band plays as The New Guard is inspected. This is a tradition that dates back to the 16th century, however what the band plays isn't necessarily the same pomp of tradition that the rest of the ceremony is.

Dates For Your Diary 2009

If you where wondering when the big industry events where taking place this year, I have you covered.
I have included the 3DTV Conference on my list because that is looking to be the big technology this year with 3D-Ready TVs hitting the market.

January
8th to 11th Consumer Electronics Show (Las Vegas)

Febuary
10th to 12th Casual Connect Hamburg (Germany)
18th to 20th Dice Summit (Las Vegas)

March
17th GamesGrads North (Manchester UK)
19th GamesGrads South (London)
23rd to 27th Games Develop Conference (San Francisco)
24th to 26th Game Connection America (San Francisco)

May
4th to 6th 3DTV (Germany)
12th to 13th GDC Canada (Vancouver)
19th to 20th Nordic Game (Sweden)

June
2nd to 4th Electronic Entertainment Expo (Los Angeles)

July
14th to 16th Develop Conference (Brighton UK)
17th to 19th Gcdc (Leipzig)
21st to 23rd Casual Connect Seattle (USA)

August
3rd to 7th Siggraph (New Orleans)
17th to 19th GDC Europe (Cologne Germany)
19th to 23rd Leipzig Games Convention (Germany)

September
4th to 6th Penny Arcade Expo (Seattle)
14th to 18th Austin Games Develop Conference (Texas)
17th to 20th Games Convention Asia (Singapore)

December
8th to 10th Game Connection Europe (France)

The Manipulator

There is this game I have been playing called The Manipulator, it is a platformer with puzzle elements. You play a Manipulator, someone who can take controle of a person's mind, read their mind and even kill them with your power of through. It reminds me of Scanners in this respects, but also Metal Gear as you have to sneak around guards and take them out before they realise you are there.

The Manipulator will take about an hour for a complete play through, but you can't save your game (this is deliberate). The thing I like most about the game is that none of the puzzles solutions are obscure, or at least I found all the solutions myself through experimentation. There also isn't a tutorial, just some simple text queues for the controls.

The Manipulator is a surprisingly mature game with many lessons for budding game designers (note the narration, visual setting, environmental setting along with the audio and the simple control scheme).

If you are quite smitten by The Manipulator, you might want to try Messiah (David Perry, 2000) or Oddworld Abe's Oddysee (1997), which have a very similar gameplay concept of playing a weak character with the ability of possession to solve progression obstacles.

The Umbrella Umbrella

Think Geek is Selling An Umbrella that resembles the Umbrella Corporation logo from Resident Evil. So it's the Umbrella Umbrella. The funny thing about this is that it isn't official Resident Evil merchandise so they are being very coy in their description.

The red and white alternating panels? It just says "corporation" and "umbrella." Umbrella. Corporation. Doesn't that just have a nice ring to it?

If sued I think it would come down to who had the better lawyers.

P.S. Merry Christmas

Man Killed in Black Friday Stampede

Black Friday is the day in America after thanksgiving when all the Christmas Sales start. Where as in the rest of the world Christmas shopping becomes gradually more intense from October through to Christmas day, in America Black Friday is when Americans try to get all their shopping done. This is mainly because they are afraid of not being able to find presents and because the big shops encourage shoppers to binge spend just after thanksgiving.

So it does not surprise me that a temporary Wal-mart employee, Jdimytai Damour (34) Was Stampeded To Death in a rush by some 200 shoppers. Here are some photos of the crowed.

I understand that the crowed of people where in a frenzy and their actions are part of Human nature, but it is a part of Human nature that has always sickened me.

Team Fortress 2 Video - Mass A.I.

I was reading the excellent Rock paper Shotgun and seen the below video posted there. A very impressive video put together by Manta Engie, a group who seem to have an affinity for good music.
The track in Mass A.I. (the video below) is Propane Nightmares by Pendulum. A band that has been growing on me very much recently.

Some People Just Enjoy Christmas More Than Others

I would dearly love to do something like in the below videos, but it is so very much out of my skill set.

Mirrors Edge Music Video

I love the music in Mirror's Edge, so when I seen the title for this video, Mirror's Edge Music Video, I was a little excited, but still sceptical because I thought it could be a fan made project. However it isn't, so enjoy.
Available in Standard and High Definition resolutions.

Pizza Machine

I watch looking around the BBC news site and I seen This Video About A Frozen Pizza Factory.

I didn't realise that some frozen pizzas receive such little human contact. I always imagined they are all made on a conveyor belt system with people sticking stuff on as a pizza base went by.

Activision Do Some Creative Guitar Hero Marketing

Activision has done some creative marketing and created a video called Bike Hero. They have tried to disguise it as a student thing, but the cuts between takes can be seen when the rider looks away from the path. Nice video though.

Mr Blazinskie Has A Twitter Feed

Cliff Blezinsky creator of such titles as Unreal Tournament and Gears Of War has a Twitter Feed and it is so awesome.

Some of my favourite quotes so far:

Mark is trying to instate a "no high-five" policy here at Epic. He says I'm hurting too many people that need their hands.
- Cliff

I'm a renaissance man. My goal in life is to make everything I do bigger, better and more badass. If that means opera, so be it.
- Cliff

I keep having this reoccurring dream where my future-self rides in on a badass bright red fire-unicorn and tells me how awesome I am.
- Cliff

Everyone keeps telling me I'm a better Mark Rein than Mark Rein is...
- Cliff

Sometimes I catch a glimpse of myself while walking around Epic, and I start to cry at the beauty. If someone asks, I say my eye itches.
- Cliff

Interactive Fallout 3 Map

Fallout 3's main quest might be a little short, but there is a lot to see in the wasteland. Planet Fallout has put together an Interactive Fallout 3 Map With Google Maps, making it easy to navigate and find something of interest. And when you find something you can always look it up on the Fallout 3 Wiki, that has guides and descriptions to most things in the game.

[The escapist]

99 Blocks Is An Interesting Take On Tetris

99 Blocks is a twist on the traditional block stacking game of Tetris. Instead of stacking blocks to clear lines your objective is to create the highest tower you can with just 99 blocks. The twist is that this is a Tetris variant with physics. So if you don't stack carefully, your tower will fall.

I myself have come back to 99 Blocks a few times after first playing it to try out different stacking strategies, but ultimately 99 Blocks remains a very casual experience with possibly a too steady pace of gameplay.

[Source Wired]

Fallout 3 Graphics Comparison Guide

I like This Graphics Comparison Guide they did that shows you what all the game's graphics settings do and wither it might be time for an upgrade.

One of the main arguments about PC gaming is the need to upgrade every six months, but that isn't true if you buy good hardware and certainly isn't true if you are prepared to run a game like Fallout 3 with some of the settings turned down.

Nintendo Talks Again About Price Cuts

I thought this was funny.
Nintendo President Iwata Said In An Interview:

This is my personal thinking, but when the model's price-tag drops over time, manufacturers are telling consumers it's better to wait, and I've always thought that was a mistake.

I have to partially agree with him as I have traditionally (as well as a lot of other people who aren't myself) waited for a console's first price cut before running out and buying it. Nobody likes to buy a console and then just after a price drop is announced. But that reminded me of something. When the N64 was released in the UK in March 1997 it was only a few weeks before the price was dropped by £100 (The Only Reference I could Find) so Nintendo are uniquely positioned to talk about such things.
However the N64 unlike the Wii and DS, doesn't print money.

Some nostalgia:

Grim Fandango Design Document

Tim Shafer has unleashed the Design Document for Grim Fandango onto the web. It is an interesting read, but ultimately Grim it suffered from a couple of the symptoms that Caused The Death Of Adventure Games although Grim was hardly the worst offender. And I also don't think Grim was as good as Tim's other works, buy maybe that is just me.

Obama Won!

And The Resident did a dance.

McCain Voters

Next week is the US Elections where the United State's Federal Subjects, vote for a new president. At the moment Obama is the favourite to win and why not. Obama is a young (for a presidential candidate) charismatic leader who has a background in community projects, comes from a diverse background giving him a broad world view (something America desperately needs), has a very optimistic view of the future, wants forward thinking changes made in the US, is softly spoken and is an exceptional speaker. Clearly these are a fantastic combination of qualities to have in a politician. All I know about McCain is that he is old, he spent a few years in a prisoner of war camp and no idea why he feels that he is qualified to lead a country.

President Bush has been one of the worst presidents in American history. I am still reeling from when the American people re-elected him four years ago. I keep telling myself that is was because Kerry didn't put up a fight, but if I take a bight out of an apple and it tastes sour, I will not take another just because another apple in the bag doesn't compete as much for my attention.

If the American people vote for McCain and elect him, although they will have a new President, they will not have changed the party that is running the country. McCain doesn't seem to want change, so I don't feel that McCain will be much better than Bush.

So I ask myself, who would vote for McCain?



I have voted on the If The World Could Vote website, but if I could vote for real, I would vote for Obama

[source Digg]

Random Fact

Fingernails grow slower as you get older.

One Hundred Days Before Bush Leaves

FYI, Bush is leaving soon. I just hope that they don't make a mistake when choosing his replacement.

Wii Music Is Just Lame

Rarely do I use the word lame to describe anything, but for Wii Music I think I will make an exception.

Google Chrome Auto Updates

Google Chrome is awesome, but in a seemingly controversial decision Google has chosen to auto update without the user's consent. There isn't even an option to turn updating off.

Rob Mensching has more on this and a very interesting selection of comments to his post.

I think Google has made a good decision in doing this, but as a power user I would like to know when this happens and what has changed when it does. The only reason why I am ok with this is because Google Chrome is a self contained platform and not a symbiotic piece of software like iTunes. Plus I recognise the security benefits and the benefits for Google in only having to support a single current version

Free Powered By Ubuntu Stickers

If you have a system running Ubuntu and don't have a 'Powered By Ubuntu' sticker on it and want one. Send an empty envelope addressed to yourself with a stamp on inside another envelope, with a stamp on addressed to the relevant place on System76's Free Ubuntu Stickers Page and you will be sent four.

Sexy PCs

There is a company called VoodooPC and they make the sexiest PC and Laptop I have ever seen.

360° Views of the LHC

Some 360 views of the LHC where taken while it was under construction and they Really Make You Feel Like You Are There.

Someone should make a game about a physicist in a Large Research Facility. That would be way better than all these street combat FPS games like Half Life 2.

Some Pictures Of The LHC During Construction

Sometime today the LHC comes online and a new toy is available for Physicists to play with. Here are some spectacular picture taken during the machine's construction.

BBC Radio 4's Coverage Of The LHC

This Wednesday the LHC is officially turned on and the full machine will be used for the first time. BBC Radio 4 will be covering the event live throughout the day.

If you are interested, but don't have a radio (I know I don't) then Wednesday just visit the BBC Radio 4 Homepage and click the Listen Live link at the top right. To listen you will need a real player compatible player. If you are a Windows user I can recommend Real Alternative.

Random Fact

On Windows operating systems, shortcuts are .LNK files.

Spore On The Cheap

The good people at Amazon are doing Spore for £26.98. And that includes P&P. Just so you know.

Google Chrome

Google Chrome is my new default browser. It is too awesome to try and convey with mere words. It is lightning quick, on EVERYTHING. Even my Yahoo Mail account which is always sluggish due to the heavy scripting. It is, the browser I have always wanted, right now. Goodbye IE, Goodbye Opera and Goodbye Firefox, you won't be missed.

The genius behind it all is that each webpage isn't just managed well or given it's own CPU thread, but instead managed by the browser like a process. And then for each page there are sub processes. So say a YouTube page will have the page as a process and then the flash object as another.

Chrome uses a relatively HUGE amount of memory to what we are used to from a browser. Right now with four windows open it is using 36MB of memory, but it is SO worth it.

Google have put together a Comic explaining their philosophy behind Chrome and some of the technical 'How We Did It' stuff. And please give it a try.

Google Chrome Download Page

Tweaked Out 911 Space Invaders Commentary

Kotaku did a news article on an artist who created some crappy art piece where (simply to be a media whore) he Combined Space Invaders and The World Trade Centre.

The reason why I mension this is because Dripp was a little tweaked out when he vlogged about it, lol.

Random Fact

A system interrupt (either a hard restart or system freeze) during windows Vista boot can corrupt the boot sector, making Vista impossible to boot into or even do a simple repair on to fix.

R.I.P. Randy Pausch

Randy Pausch, lecturer of The Last Lecture, Died Friday.

If you haven't see either his The Last Lecture or his lecture on Time Management then I suggest you go to his Academic Page and sit through them. As much as students like to moan about how boring lectures are, Randy is one of those pragmatic lecturers who are a delight to hear from. Both of these lectures are inspiring and it is unfortunate that it took a terminal illness for him to come to our attention.

Below is a brief clip of Randy addressing members of Congress regarding funding for Pancreatic Cancer research. I know he will be missed by many people.

Windows Vista's Speaker Room Correction

Very expensive speakers have this feature called Room Correction. This is a calibration system where each speaker plays a test signal and uses a built in microphone to listen to the signal coming from the other speakers. By listening to this signal, delay and room frequency response from a room can be mapped out. This creates an automatically calibrated listening environment that compensates for a lot of room features like furniture and has many advantages over a manually calibrated equaliser system (mainly the fact that it is automated).

Windows Vista has Room Calibration built in. To do a calibration:

1) Connect up a microphone to your computer.

2) Setup your microphone so that your computer can listen through it.

2) Open up Playback Devices window.

3) Open up the properties window for your speakers.

4) Select the enhancements tab.

5) Select Room Correction and then Settings.

6) Follow the on-screen instructions.

I recommend turning your speakers up so that the test signal can be heard by your microphone. And place your microphone in a similar location to where you yourself will be listening to your speakers.

I don't know if this has made my listening experience better because I am not that well trained in these things, but the alterations applied to my system where to add a delay and slightly turn down the volume on my right speaker. This makes sense when you consider that my right speaker is closer to me, than my left. So logically my speakers should now sound better. Although I should add that this is no consolation to not buying a good set of speakers in the first place.

Mirrors Edge Developer Commentary Disappoints Me

There are a lot of games where I see some kind of preview of the game and from that little snippet I build-up a picture in my head on what the game will be like to play and how the mechanics will work etc. So I can run through my head what it will be like to play just from seeing a very small preview. Sometimes the finished game surprises me and I am delighted and other times the reality of playing the finished product falls short on my expectations. I am sure you too do this.

The concept of Mirrors edge is that of a very clean line art style set in a city where all communication is closely monitored by the state. Because of this runners are paid to carry sensitive information across the city by hand so that the authorities don't get their hands on it.

The game takes the concept and some of the style of Freerunning into itself. This combined with the Currier missions made me think that missions would be given very much like they where in Thief and Assassins Creed. Where you got missions by talking directly to hidden contacts or by finding clues and markers left for you. However for some reason Mirrors edge features a radio, which for me breaks the whole anti-surveillance thing as obviously the state could listen into the radio. They will probably have a plot point that says that the radio transmissions are encrypted, but to me this is nowhere anywhere even close to being as cool as getting a mission from a set of cryptic symbols on a hidden bit of paper, or getting a mission by meeting someone secretly hoping the authorities doesn't find out.

Plus as much as I love story being feed to me during a mission as I am playing through a level, the crackly radio doesn't fit the visual styling of the game.

Nintendo & Sony E3 Press Conference Impressions

I have finished watching all three conferences now and I thought Sony's was the best. Best in presentation and best in all round content. No big announcements, but what Sony needs is games.

Nintendo's conference left a lot to be desired. That woman (whoever she was) on-stage to me felt as if she was addressing some parents PTA meeting, not the specialist press and other people from the industry. Her presentation style felt very clicky and wooden.
The Wii music game looks as if it will sell very well, but the Drum section that was played didn't sound good at all. And that surprises me because Nintendo has always had such a high quality bar.

As always The 1Up Show had some nail on the head observations, but to sum it up, all the conferences where lacking in one way or another.

Microsoft E3 Press Conference Impressions

Microsoft's E3 press conference was a little dull and very light on news. Three big announcements.

1) Completely new dashboard interface coming this fall. Yet no news on wither that is going to make finding stuff on marketplace easier.

2) XBox360 Miis coming this fall. A direct rippoff translation iteration of one of the Wii's most successful features.

3) Final Fantasy XIII. Not that I care about this, but I expected a proper (i.e not Crystal Chronicles) FF game to come to the 360 a year or two ago. Why did this take so long!?

Update: I almost forgot.

4) And Netflix support. This really is one of the final nails in Blockbuster's coffin.

BMW Did Something Truly Innovative

Innovation is about taking two technologies that might not necessarily have anything in common and combining them to produce something new or solving a problem by applying a technological technique or idea as a solution. In the early years of aeroplanes, they where constructed from wood and cloth. In later years aluminium was used and now we use composite materials. Cars have always used hard body shells, so BMW tried using a flexible cloth-like material as a concept design and they have produced something fantastic:



No I don't think we will all be driving clothed cars in ten years time, but as a concept this is has all the hallmarks of an iconic design.

Alone In The Dark 5 Looks Better Than I Thought

I take it back, I am interested in Alone In The Dark 5. The main character can't remember who he is, and is possessed with a demonic entity. This gives the plot a high probability that the protagonist turns out to be the antagonist or blood related to the antagonist. Yes it has all be done before, but from the looks of things the bits between the big predictable plot reveals look really fun.

Bernie, About That Car You Wanted

Freerunning Awesomeness

Surprisingly there is a difference between Freerunning and Parkour. Parkore being a philosophy of "be strong to be useful" and Freerunning being a type of gymnastics.

So even through this video is titled "Best Of Parkour/Flips/Tricks", what is really on show is Freerunning.

Republican Space Rangers

In GTA4 there are many TV shows to watch and on of them is called Republican Space Rangers. Next to Team America World Police it is one of the best US Foreign Policy parodies I have seen. If you want to see it in the game just watch Weasel (the one with those two guys on) for long enough and it will come around.

Super Mario World The Musical

People can do some strange things in their spare time. I never thought Super Mario World could be used in such a way. Although I have seen similar videos, none of them are anywhere near the length of thisone.



And Here is a link to the acustic version.

[ Via Digg ]

XBox Live and Gaywood

There is this guy named Richard Gaywood and he had an XBoxLive gamertage Gaywood. Microsoft forced Richard to change his gamertag because:

Gamertags are visible to everyone and it would be hard for me [Stephen Toulouse] to defend to a parent of a young child who saw it that the name did not contain content of a sexual nature.

'Gay' was originally another word for happy. During the 1800's and early 1900's homosexuals where seen as unhappy, lonely people with an unhealthy sexual affliction. So when the UK sodomy law was abolished in 1967, homosexuals called themselves 'gay'.

The word 'gay' in our modern interpretation is interchangeable with 'homosexual' and is probably why Microsoft wanted Richard to change his GamerTag. But I agree whole heartedly when LesbianGamers Writes:

It does not take a genius to work out what all of this negative affiliation does, not only for the language itself, but for the rebound effects that language has on gay people in society as a whole. The more we accept people using gay in a derogatory manner such as “that’s so gay” to denote something is bad, sub-par, stupid or unworthy, the longer the hatred will flourish. The more we sit back in blinkered silence as the word gay is linked time and again to something sexual, deviant or negative, the longer the hatred will fester.

And another quote to leave you with:

Fear of a name only increases fear of the thing itself.
- Hermione granger

The BBC WiiFit Coverage Sucked

This News Report by the BBC about the Wii Fit sucks on several levels.

They failed to mansion that BMI does not measure fat. They failed to get to the bottom of why WiiFit is telling her she is overweight since her BMI is 18.5. When an ideal BMI range is 18.5 to 24.9.

Video game coverage on all the news channels is bad, but the BBC just keep making themselves look like poor journalists everytime they carry a video game related story. Simply because they only understand the issues at a 'my mum' level.

Microsoft Axes Underperforming XBLA Games

Microsoft Has Stated that they plan to axe games on XBLA that are underperforming. Meaning that:

• They have been out for over six months


• They have a Metacritic score below 65


• The trial purchase rate is less than 6%

Initially I was disgusted by this because I believe all the games on the service have value to someone and have archive value. But that 6% conversion rate suggests to me that some titles might be costing Microsoft money in bandwidth and server costs. If a new title came out and nobody bought their trial version, then Microsoft would make a loss on distributing those free trial versions.

Eurovision Aftermath

Russia won and there was so much political voting going on between nabouring counteries that I don't think western countries are going to see a win for many years to come. The winning track wasn't bad, but I thought there where a few tracks that where much better. And that includes the runner up, Greece.

Russian Entry


Greek Entry


Sergey Lazarev, a runnerup that didn't make the cut to become the Russian entry for the competition, but I prefer his entry to the winner.


I wouldn't even have been annoyed if the Swedish entry won.

Eurovision 2008

It is the Eurovision Song Contest tonight, that yearly slice of euro-cheese that I love to hate.

This year all the entries can be heard right now over at the Official Eurovision YouTube channel.

I think the German entry has a very strong chance of winning:

Mirror's Edge is Looking Awesome

Mirrors Edge puts the player in a Tokyo looking future city where you freerun across skyscrapers. From a ludology perspective I love how the developers have used colour to communicate interactivity to the player. It is suttle, adds to the clean visual styling of the game and negates the need for a HUD or floating icons.

Problem Solving With Video Games

There is a Video Interview With Peter Molyneux where he talks about not being able to do much else but design games, and he wonders if he could apply his knowledge of gaming to other human pursuits and endeavours.

I thought this was an interesting idea, then I realised that I had meant to post about a project that does just that. So here we are.

There are some problem domains in the world where to solve a problem or improve something you have to understand a process completely. Programmers of Artificial Intelligences have been known to spend exorbitant amounts of time looking at quite simple issues so that they can create AIs that model intelligent behaviour. Good examples of this are anything that uses Fuzzy Logic. That is anything from Rice Cookers to Lifts, Thermostats and a huge amount of Control Systems.

There are some problems that are so difficult to understand that they can't yet be translated into software, because we don't fully understand what is going on. The problem I am referring to here is Protein Folding. We know what the acid code of the protein is, we know what it looks like in 3D when it has finished folding, but we don't know how it folds into it's final shape or how it moves, so we don't know what it does.

This is where Fold It! from the guys working on Rosetta@home comes in. It is a game where you as the player are tasked with folding a protein. Higher points are rewarded by finding a structure that requires the lest energy for the protein to fold into. The idea of this is that players will eventually discover general tactics that can be worked into protein folding algorithms and a rosetta method of protein folding be found. From this new drugs could be created in the lab fit for purpose artificially and our understanding of our own bodily processes greatly increases. We might even be able to find a cure for ageing.

Game of The Year Contest Starts Now

GTA4 has received a continuous stream of extremely good reviews placing it as a firm contender for Game of The Year, but it now seems like MGS4 Could Topple It.

Gametrailers did a video reviewing years of gaming and this makes me wonder if thisyear could topple the previous champion.

Pen & Paper Notes

I remember talking to someone who wrote their final university paper with a typewriter and hearing how difficult that was makes me glad that I had a word processor. But even though it has only been two years since I graduated, my Pen & Paper note-taking might be considered Oldschool Already!

Do Narratives Have A Place In Gaming?

I have heard this question over and over again. So let me try and put this one to bed right now with some recent examples.

Crackdown, Assassins Creed and GTAIV are all very similar games.

Crackdown was awesome, but the mission structure sucked because all you had to do was keep killing mission selected people over and over.

Assassins Creed was an awesome set of gaming building blocks with the roof jumping and wrist blade assassination time action, but sucked because all you did was the same killing of mission selected people.

GTAIV is awesome and doesn't suck even though all you do is the same killing of mission selected people, because there is a strong narrative. I have completed over seventy missions in the game and it doesn't yet feel repetitive at all.

To me anything that doesn't have a narrative should logically be considered an abstract game. Although even abstract puzzle games like Puzzle Quest are made better with a stronger narrative. Making a game with a weak narrative is like making chicken nuggets and then eating them with the cheapest/nastiest barbecue sauce you can find. It shouldn't be done and wrecks the whole experience.

GTAIV Websites

I have been playing a lot of GTA4 this week and I don't think I am going to complete it in under 30 hours (you get an achievement for that). But there are two awesome websites inside the game that I need to tell you about.

Goto an internet coffee and lookup:

www.bruiesexcutivelifestyleautos.com

www.whattheydonotwantyoutoknow.com

The second is a website detailing GTA4 secrets. This is a first, a website made by the game's developers detailing secrets about their own game, on a fake in-game internet. Which is funny because I always look at websites for cheats and secrets, but now I don't even have to leave the game to do that (yes I do know EVE Online has it's own built in web browser, but that is for the real internet, not a fake one).

Warfare in the 21st Century

Russia has shot down a Georgian unmanned recognisance drone over the Georgian side of the Georgian/Russian boarder. Which isn't necessarily interesting unless you are surprised that Russia would do such a thing despite signs for months now that they want to be see as a strong global military power again.

Anyway the BBC has some News Footage On The Incident which shows the attack from start to finish from the perspective of the drone and a radar station.

This is interesting because the Georgian military has two different records of the same attack and thus know precisely what happened. I see this as significant because when The Bomb Was Dropped On Hiroshima the reason why communications with Hiroshima was cutoff was only discovered three hours after the attack, and the real truth of what happened was only learned sixteen hours after the attack, in a WhiteHouse press release. So this is why I feel the incident in Georgia has some historical significance and is a sign of things to come.

Plasma Speakers

I thought Musical Tesla Coils where cool, but the sound quality from Plasma Speakers is so much better.





Apparently you still need a traditional subwoofer for low amplitude sounds, but Plasma arcs are brilliant for higher tone sounds. Unfortunately microphones don't seem to be able to record the audio well, I don't know if this is because they are effected by the plasma's electromagnetic field or if they just can't record higher pitched sounds.

Buyer Beware of TeleBid

There is a new auction site in town called TeleBid. The idea is that all the products on the site are new and that each time a bid is placed just 7p is added to the total cost of the item and a few seconds are added to the auction end timer. When the clock on the auction reaches zero whoever is the winning bidder gets the item.

On the surface it seems too good to be true. Yet the auction system is clearly designed to make you place many small bids instead of allowing you to place an initial maximum like on eBay. TeleBid will even give you £20 when you register to use on auctions.

The thing that makes the site profitable and which isn't stated dearly enough is that although winning an item requires you to be the last person to have pressed the Bid button when the auction timer runs out, you are charged 50p everytime you press the Bid button. I hesitate to call the site a scam because the 50p charge is very clear on the help section, but it a scam and people are getting very burned by it.

World of Warcraft + Portal + Music = The Device Has Been Modified

WeGame.com - WoW Videos

Uncanny, Wii and XaviXPort

Firstly watch this (warning, do not turn your volume up):



This is called the XaviXPort and it was released in 2004. That is to say two years before the Wii, but like rockband each game requires an expensive addon, so the XaviXPort hasn't done so well.

I don't think that Nintendo has plagiarised anything that SSD has done with XaviXPort because motion sensing technology has been experimented with gaming for years and looking at the history of motion sensing it seems amazing that it has taken so long to be worked into a successful product, but I do find it interesting that I knew NOTHING about the XaviXPort until just fifteen minuets ago.

Dr Byron's Video Game Industry Review

So some Dr of physiology was paid a large sum of money to Write A Report that would give some recommendations to the UK government on how to protect children from violent or harmful video games.

She has two main recommendations:
1) All games should carry a BBFC certificate.
2) All game consoles should have parental lockouts.

The response from the video game industry has been a big "meh, we told you so".

The Responce From The Government has been very much "This well conducted review has exemplified our commitment to the safety and well being of our nations children".

My response is this. The government should claim back the money they spent on this usless review and invest it into a "Just Say NO!" campaign to educate parents about saying NO to their own children.

Last Gen > This Gen?

Ideas of gameplay transcend generation gaps as our understanding of gameplay progressively improves, but there is an argument out there that the current generation of console's graphics don't look much better than the last generation's later games. This comes from the fact that some people believe that this generation's graphics are just in a higher resolution than the last generation's. And that if it wasn't for the increased output resolution then this generation wouldn't look much different from the last, and I see their point after playing a few current gen games on an old CRT. But that was until I watched this video of the GTA IV trailer rendered in GTA San Andrea's graphics engine:



And the same trailer in GTA IV's engine:



After watching theses two videos back to back I was actually surprised on the leap that has been made since last gen. One that looks just as significant as the leap from the N64 to GC or PS1 to PS2.

FireFox 3 Beta 4

Despite FireFox having thousands of happy users, I have never been one of them. I am one of those people who will sometimes have more than ten webpages open at any one time and then leave them open on my computer overnight. This meant that FireFox's memory issues always blighted my attempts at using it as my primary browser. So it was with absolute delight that I discovered FireFox 3 (currently Beta 4 with Beta 5 coming soon) has solved all of that.

FireFox 3 Beta 4 is fast and responsive under all conditions. Websites like Google Maps, Digg and IGN that used to be super sluggish under IE and FF2, are now just as fast as any other website. I will even go as far as to say just as fast as a plain text blog.

So if you want to give the beta a go, you can Download A Copy Here. But be warned, I have found that it doesn't work with the new Yahoo Mail (I am using the classic view) and I have had the beta crash twice in the few days I have been using it for no apparent reason. This hasn't been a problem however because it remembers the pages that where open at the time of the crash, but despite all that FF3B4 is my current primary browser over IE7, FF2, Safari and Opera.

A Quick Note To Website Builders

If you build websites for a living. Now is the time to Go Here and download a preview copy of Internet Explorer 8. The important thing is that you do this BEFORE the browser is launched and not AFTER. This will prevent a future incident where your inbox will be filled with complaints from customers.

That being said IE8's standards compliance is much better so problems (if any) will be minor, but it always annoys me when companies use the "It wasn't out so we couldn't test against it" excuse when there was a preview build (specifically for compatibility testing) available months before the official release.

Brave or Stupid

There is a fine line between bravery and stupidity and I think these people crossed it twice.

People Don't Need (Disturbing, NSFW)

People Don't Need Fur

Mordeth13's, I HATE China.

People Don't Need Dolphin-meat

The whole animal meat eating thing is a difficult issue and I wish meat could be grown in plastic containers like plants, but the truth is that animals have to die to make meat and if you (including the hypocrite who wrote this) eat meat (be it a ham sandwich or whatever) you are part of the issue. But at least promise me that after watching this next video you will refuse to ever eat or try dolphin-meat and maybe we can call it a step in the right direction.

The Worst Gaming Tattoos

Here is a collection of bad gaming tattoos. Although I will say that I don't think 19, 16, 9 and 8 are so bad.

I am a fan of many products by companies, but I would never have a tattoo of a company logo on my body like the people in photos 15, 14 and 1. Branding yourself with a company logo as if you where a product. The guy who has branded himself with the Nintendo logo even included the little Registered Trademark (R) on his tattoo. I don't know if this legally makes him the property of Nintendo like it does with cattle farming, but I would be eagerly following the caught case if one should arise from this.

The New Pace of Technology

The pace of technology is ever increasing and we can see this in the Fisher Price Tickle Me Elmo toy series. There has been more versions than what I am showing here, but look at the dates and leaps in technology and you will see my point.

1996 - The first TME toy is relased allowing a stuffed toy to interact with the child playing with them.



2006 - Motors controling Elmo's limbs are added to create animation.



2008 - Improved motor skills give the Elmo toy much the same characteristics of movement to that of his on-screen puppet counterpart.



2010 - Dissatisfied with being treated like disposable play things an army of indestructible Elmos rises up.



2011 - A new order is established.

Programmer Puzzle Games

There is a subset of puzzle games which for the purposes of this post I am calling programming puzzle games. The basic idea is that there is a level and you have a guy that you can control to complete whatever the objective is in the level to progress, but you can only control him by giving him a set of rules to follow by programming him (empowering him with a rule based AI). I love these things, but only independent developers seem to be doing anything with them.

Currently the best set of these games is made by Epsitec Games with their CeeBot series. In the case of CeeBot there is a programming language for the player to learn. This sounds hard, but it is aimed at a 5+ age range audience so everything is explained gradually with each level building on the lesson of the last and you can only progress once you have understood the concept the level is teaching. The game even comes with a better debugging tool than what most Java and C++ developers use today, so when your programs start to get large the game emergent teaches about logic errors without ever explicitly covering them.

Anyway today I played Spuds another Programmer Puzzle game that uses pictures to do the programming with. It was made by two brothers and apart from being a little overpriced ($19.95) and forcing the player to sit through a long tutorial, it's very interesting.



Again these games might sound boring, but I suffer from timeloss whenever I play them.