Verbal Diarrhea

Good job 'Occupy Wall Street'

2011-10-08T00:16:00.000-01:00

I have to admit I didn't think Occupy Wall Street was going to last. For some time I though Americans need to start sticking up for themselves and protesting but that too many people are too content with just bitching on the internet. OWS seemed a bit unsure of itself too in the beginning.

Now though it's just growing, it seems more focused and prepared to explain its actions. I hope it continues to grow and if it continues to be ignored by politicians and dismissed by the media I can only hope that everyone takes notice to their government ignoring its people and vote accordingly.

Your average citizen is getting a load of butt hurt from corporations and the government. I do think the people are partially to blame. We've been too content with things the way they are. The bank bail outs should have never happened. It's time we get some payback.

I would never advocate violence or damaging property. So long as people keep it clean and nice as they have been it will only help the movement grow and being peaceful is the way to win. That said if someone cut the head off the charging bull statue on Wall street I can't say I would be upset.

Enjoying Source Tree

2011-10-08T00:00:00.000-01:00

I've recently learned about SourceTree which is a Mac GUI client for Git, Mercurial and SVN which has recently been bought by Atlassian. I do still like working on the command line but I like this quite a bit and I can see myself continuing to use it.

Atlassian is currently give away free licences for SourceTree so if you would like to consider I suggest you do it now.

As you may know there is a similar application called Tower but it's Git only. Given that it's pretty similar I can't see myself paying out for Tower. That and I do use bitbucket primarily for my personal stuff (git for work) it's just not for me.

I think I'd be very happy to recommend this to my co-workers and try to get it used at work but unfortunately SourceTree is a Mac only app. I would love to see a Linux port. On the off chance its developers see this please make it happen!

SourceTree has a load of features, many of which I haven't had time to check out yet so I'm not going to talk about them but I really love the visual history and the ability to select various diff tools like DiffMerge, TextWrangler and DiffFork amongst others. I haven't tried it but I'd like to see if I can do diff with Vim just because Vim is awesome.

As I mentioned they are giving away licenses. I'm sure they'll start charging at some point. I don't know how much but I'd suggest grabbing it now to check it out while it's free. If you want a source control GUI application for OS X you can hardly go wrong with SourceTree.

Do people want shorter games?

2011-08-18T19:45:00.003-01:00

Blake Snow has recently written an article for CNN talking about how games should be shorter. He's not the first person in the gaming industry to say this. The article also states that some feel the best compromise is add-on expansions and of course these will no doubt cost money.

I think that is part of the problem. Publishers are looking for numerous ways to make more money out of their games. You can almost guarantee these shorter games will still come with a$50-$60 price tag and we'll be told it still costs a lot to make a short awesome game and then be asked to pay out for expansion packs.

Another reason I think games don't get completed is because there's no good reason to complete the 5th or 6th sequel in a series that doesn't really innovate and uses graphics and violence to mask it's story and dialog that resembles something written by a 12 year old. So people get bored quickly with them but they will move onto the next sequel because all their friends are playing it and they don't want to be left out of the loop.

I feel one of the reasons the quality and innovation is dropping is because of the first point which is publishers being more concerned about milking consumers for every penny they can. They now have an option not to release a finished product. If it's buggy it can be patched later so the company can focus on making as much content as possible and saving some to be a paid for add-on or they'll be cheeky and put it on the disc and yet charge you for it. They feel it's better to just hammer out more of the same crap and then decide which bit ships first and which bit they sell later.

As much as we like to talk about gamers being more mature you wouldn't know it by the games. Their focus is pretty narrow and still caters quite a bit to teenage boys. I just don't think people see value in a lot of games.

Now of course every game doesn't have to be 60+ hours long. Of course you wouldn't finish all of them. But we shouldn't give up on good long games because we feel people don't like them or because it's more profitable to sell the rest of the game later as an add-on. Perhaps rather than having a new game out every month maybe they should spend more time making fewer better games that sell well because they're a standard of excellence.

Of course that's not the easy and more profitable option in their mind. They rather pump out cheesy pop rubbish and drive down the perceived value of games.

If long games are so unprofitable then why make a shorter game and then waste resources on add-ons that very few, if anyone, will buy rather than focusing on a new game? It just seems contradictory and instead they're trying to push this idea onto everyone that everyone else hates long games which to get them to accept buying a shorter game for the same price and then pay more for add-ons.

I don't believe we have that many more games these days to fight for gamer's attention. One quick check for game counts shows that the number of games for current systems (aside from the Wii) are pretty much on part with old systems

800 for the NES (excluding pirated carts)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nes_games

915 for the Sega Genesis
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Sega_Mega_Drive_games

784 for the SNES
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Super_Nintendo_Entertainment_System_games_(A-M)

691 for the original gameboy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_games_for_the_original_Game_Boy

812 for the Xbox 360
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Xbox_360_games

691 for the PS3
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_PlayStation_3_games

1218 for the Wii
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Wii_games

I would even say that if we're making more games for a wider audience (ie more games for causal gamers) then any one market casual or 'normal' gamers have fewer options if their tastes don't cross. Either way it's not a case where we have twice as many games or more.

I wish gamers would wise up to what publishers are doing and boycott the stuff they're trying to pass off but I'm concerned that's not going to happen. Gamers are quite enthusiastic and are happy to settle for less than the best just to get more of their favourite hobby.

Murdock Block

2011-07-21T19:28:00.000-01:00

Someone has created a nifty little Chrome extension that allows to block all Murdoch owned websites. It's called Murdoch block and obviously I think everyone should install it. In my mind it's unfortunate that you can still get to the sites or remove some sites but if it helps wean you off of Murdoch owned media then it's all good.

The creator has also published the source code if you're interested. It's hosted on Google code.

Everyone should boycott News Corp

2011-07-11T20:00:00.000-01:00

I believe with the news of unethical phone hacking done by News of the World and it coming out that News Corp's other tabloids it's about time people stand up to Rupert Murdoch and boycott his 'news' companies. This isn't something that has happened just in Britain. You can go onto Wikipedia and get a list of controversies related to Fox News including things like doctoring photos. If you dig further around the net I'm sure you'll find plenty more information that calls into question the ethics of Fox News.

We're finding out more and more about the ethics of News Corp with stories coming forth of everyone from Gordon Brown to 9/11 victims possibly having their phones hacked.

Rupert Murdoch has already been sued by his shareholders over nepotism over his purchase of his daughter's company Shine. Since the the hacking quite rightly they're modifying their lawsuit. I believe they see what sort of people are running the company and want to try and stop it or limit the damage as much as possible. I would believe by getting his whole family on the board will only lead to more problems. I suspect they agree and don't want that.

I'm certainly not the first and most likely not the last person to call for a boycott against News Corp. I think everyone that disagrees with the tactics used by News Corp should spread the word and ask people to boycott them. If you're in a country where News Corp operates (especially in the US and UK) please contact your government representatives and regulatory bodies and let them know how you feel. The more they hear from people the more likely they are going to listen and do the right thing.

Braid creator on indie game development

2011-07-02T19:16:00.000-01:00

Jonathan Blow, the creator of Braid and the upcoming 'The Witness', gave at talk at UC Berkley on the subject of how to developing indie games. It's a very interesting 38 minute talk (followed by 40 minutes for Q&A).

You can find it on the Witness blog (also includes a downloadable copy of the talk and the powerpoint presentation) and the talk isn't about what tools or libraries to use. It's how how you should go about programming and optimisation. I think it's a very valuable talk. Everything mentioned won't apply to every project but obviously it will be very helpful for tiny teams working on indie games and you may find it helpful in other areas too so I think every developer should listen to at least the first 38 minutes of the talk.

Command line parser for Gumtree feeds

2011-05-24T19:26:00.000-01:00

Just a quick note (I realise I haven't posted too much) but I've created a tiny python script to browse gumtree feeds via the command line. If you would like to use it and or improve it you can grab it from my bitbucket repository.

I will probably provide updates at this page as well. You will note I have a couple things noted in a TODO comment. I'll try to add those in soon. Really the script isn't anything you couldn't have done anyway. I did it in a lunch break but if you're learning Python it may come in quite handy.

Google CLI search with Python

2011-04-20T20:20:00.000-01:00

I found an entry on r/python for a Google CLI search script done in Python which you can grab from here. I think the author did a really good job and I enjoyed playing around with it. I think the only thing I'd change is to add the functionality to open a result in your browser using the webbrowser.open() method.

Some people may ask why you would want to do such a thing like search Google via the command line. I personally like it because sometimes it's just nice to be able to do it when you're working on a remote system and more importantly if you're searching at work it can look like you're busier than you are!

So on that note I've been developing Python scripts myself for browsing reddit and for browsing Gumtree. Again, it allows me to look busy when I'm not but also they're nice little projects to do over lunch breaks.

I will most certainly end up sharing my various CLI apps too for people to use but I would also encourage others to do the same and create their own especially for those just learning and as an added bonus browsing reddit can look like important work.

Globally Sony beats Microsoft

2011-04-05T19:11:00.000-01:00

Edge Online has recently reported that globally the PlayStation 3 has over taken the Xbox 360. This was originally reported by Gamasutra who pointed this happened at the end of 2010.

I think the biggest thing that should be pointed out about this is that Microsoft had a one year lead over Sony, they had the cheaper system (assuming you didn't want to bring it up to PS3-liek spec and play movies, have wireless, etc) and arguably had more grade-A exclusive games and they still couldn't blow away the competition.

The Wii had taken over the Xbox 360 ages ago and Sony has always been on a pretty steady climb towards Microsoft's numbers. Even if the PS3 and Xbox 360 bounce back and forth from second to third place Microsoft can't really be happy about that. They've made one of the best offerings they could and despite the price advantage and time advantage it will be a struggle. That, in my mind is a failure even if they hold onto second place.

My belief for the reason behind this is because Microsoft does nickel and dime their users to make a profit. The Xbox 360's add-ons are proprietary hardware (i.e. the hard drive) and they're expensive. Getting a decent online experience requires an online subscription and you still can not browse the internet unlike every other system including the Nintendo DS. They did eventually add a proprietary way to interface with Twitter and Facebook but again you have to pay Microsoft to access these free services. Quite frankly I think that's ridiculous. It makes me wonder if the Xbox 360 would have made a profit if they didn't, in my opinion, stick it to their customers.

The other revelation is that the Japanese aren't doing as bad as the gaming media has made out. Most gaming media that people will read comes from the west and especially the US. I believe the western-centric media wants to big-up Microsoft's Xbox 360 and as a result it has appeared (if you read most gaming sites) that the Microsoft is a leader and doing awesome. Microsoft isn't doing an awful job but quickly became a second place system and have been on their way to slowly losing that since the Playstation 3 was launched.

Some sites are worse than others. Take for instance Kotaku which, in my opinion, is the gaming equivalent of the Nation Enquireer. For instance two days in a row they had to point out that Nintendo isn't releasing many games in May [1, 2] and these 'fluff' pieces are running along side a story about the price people get for used Nintendo 3DS systems in Japan implying the system isn't doing well because of the cash people get and this was followed by twitter-esque report on The Sun's question report about the 3DS. Of course if you take into consideration what Japan is going through right now the first 3 links make complete sense and in fact a lot of their viewers were wise enough to point this out as well.

I believe you'll find Kotaku generally treats Sony in the same way. Alternatively I believe you'll find no similar stories about the Xbox 360 in the same time period. I went through a few pages of their site and couldn't find anything about the Playstation taking over the Xbox 360 either. I did though find positive stories about Kinect and even some lame limited edition xbox 360 for Japan.

Now I don't expect much from Kotaku because again, I believe, they're quite possibly the worst when it comes to gaming news. But I find western media in general has leaned that way. Even the most excellent Edge magazine has seemed almost fanboyish about the xbox 360 in the past and they as well love to push the idea of Japan losing it's power in gaming.

I'm not sure what the motive is. Whether it's because they just want to create drama to increase revenue, they're being nationalistic about it or Microsoft just gives better perks to 'journalists' (a term that should be used very lightly in gaming media) but as far as I'm concerned that's not the truth. Japan is still doing exceptionally well.

It's the west's Microsoft that's in the weak spot. They are doing well in North America but the rest of the world just doesn't seem that bothered about the xbox 360. As games get more expensive, if I were a publisher, I'd rather go with the systems that have sold the most systems globally and especially in areas like Europe where costs can be higher due to translating costs why would want to bother with the 3rd place guy if he's not doing well?

Will Microsoft even be able to re-create what success they had with the 360 in the next generation if they can't manage a year lead over the competition? What if North America ends up with a real lust for Nintendo and Sony in the next generation? Microsoft's numbers will be abysmal because they just don't have the support elsewhere.

I'll end this by saying I am quite happy this is happening and I hope this trend continues. It is my opinion that Microsoft has been a bad influence on console gaming. In Microsoft's world everything about gaming gets quite expensive even if it's just wanting to use a free service like Facebook. They've helped usher in the PC mentality that rushing a game out and patching it later is completely acceptable and everything about console gaming has to be proprietary in Microsoft's world which gives the consumer no choice for something like a hard drive and it's for no good reason. There is nothing special about an Xbox 360 hard drive.

Lastly, they introduced achievements. That has been one of the worst additions to gaming. In the old days of high scores the score only required playing well. Achievements instead seem to be more about extending the game without adding any content or anything of value. Just take a look at some of the achievements for Team Fortress 2. Some of which, I think, lead to people playing poorly and ruining it for their team. Where is the benefit other than keeping that user playing longer? I'd rather not cater to ADD kids.

Microsoft can't compete and turn to the EU for assistance

2011-03-31T21:01:00.001-01:00

The BBC, like many others, has reported that Microsoft has filed a complaint against Google over anti-competition. You can also get more detailed information on Microsoft's side by reading their blog entry about the anti-competition complaint.

My opinion on this is that basically Microsoft, like on most products other than operating systems and office software has been late to the game and they simply can't compete because they can't make a better product. Take for instance this hilarious little bit of information found in their blog entry's comments.

A Bing search for this page "Adding our Voice to Concerns about Search in Europe" lists a lot of aggregators but the not this site. On Google? #1. Unbelievable. Google are indexing Microsoft content better and faster than Microsoft. (posted by Rhys)

I checked this and he's right. Microsoft can't even index their own content well and they expect us to believe that Google or anyone is stopping them from indexing content? Perhaps they're upset they got caught out for copying search results from Google or maybe they're upset that despite using their superior desktop OS market to force Bing on people that people still go to Google.

I cannot comment on some of the allegations, like those about how Google treats advertisers and their data. But what I do know about Bing's ability to index Youtube is that, from what I can see, they have zero problems with it.

Bing certainly has Youtube videos in their search results and you can filter on all sorts of data, like the video quality, length, standard screen / wide screen, resolution, etc. Bing also show the title, length and other data for each result just like Google. The only thing they don't show is who uploaded the video like Google does. I suspect that is a choice they made rather than a restriction. Bing also lets you preview the video from their page without going to Youtube unlike Google. I'm not seeing where they have a problem and if they have this data on hand what is the problem with using it on their phone?

Is their there an issue that they want to query Youtube in real-time from the user's windows phone 7 device? By doing so I presume they'll remove the advertisements while eating up Youtube's bandwidth. My guess is Google would be happy for them to do that if they paid which would be understandable if they're taking ad revenue away from Youtube.

Again this is coming from a company that from what I've seen abuses their desktop position and functionality to try and force Silverlight on users through Windows update even if silverlight is in no way an update or even necessary. They tying IE (the top browser unfortunately) users to Bing and, at least in the past, has changed non-Microsoft browser settings to point them to Bing. I've personally had this happen on my home and work machine. It was very annoying to find Firefox switched to Bing. That, in my mind is an abuse and anti-competitive. MSN messenger also continues to ignore my default browser choice in at least some circumstances. Why Microsoft? If you're all for letting user's choice and happy fun-time competition then why do these things and annoy people?

Despite all these things people still don't want to use Bing for Youtube or anything and they're not keen on Windows Phone 7. Instead of crying to the EU or doing dumb things like releasing a phone that doesn't have copy and paste functionality why don't you put your time and resources into making great products? You can start by learning how to index your own data too before worrying about Youtube.

It should also be noted while Microsoft says they're joining people in complaining. At least one of the other companies to complain was a subsidiary to Microsoft. Microsoft should have pointed this out if they're al about being open now.

I personally hope people continue not to use Bing and it goes away. Not because Microsoft owns it but because it's rubbish and it's only being kept alive because it's company has the advantage of having a monopoly on the desktop and in office software. It will hurt the small guy who is trying to compete because they not only have to take on Google's superior product but a mediocre product that has virtually infinite money that can be dumped into it.

I'd rather see people support small guys like DuckDuckGo if they don't want to use Google or an 'Answer engine' like true knowledge. You'll help build good competition and you help these newcomers build a better competitor by using them. They will improve unlike, in my opinion, Bing which has had all the money and resources in the world and still can't get it right.

Okamiden is awesome

2011-03-23T21:39:00.000-01:00

I finally got Okamiden in the post from Amazon for the Nintendo DS. I am not far into the game at all (unfortunately I haven't had much time to play today) and yes it fels quite familiar to the original but I personally think that is a good thing. I really enjoyed the original and I'm glad Capcom didn't try to totally re-invent the Okami brand.

I think this is one of the best looking DS games I've played, the brush moves are much more natural on the DS and I personally enjoy the story and the writing in the game. All in all it's definitely a nice treat.

I'd definitely recommend it and I look forward to playing it more.

I am getting the 3DS but luckily all the games I'm getting a relatively short ones (Street Fighter 4, Pilot Wings Resort and Dead or Alive Dimensions) that I can plow through quickly and get back to Okamiden.

50% off O'Reilly ebooks for Japan

2011-03-22T20:46:00.001-01:00

O'reilly Media is running an awesome deal where you can get 50% off all ebooks and as an added bonus the profits (after author royalties) go towards helping Japan. Just use the code DDJPN and get 50% off all your DRM free PDFs.

On top of that John Graham-Cumming is going to give up his royalties for sales of the Geek Atlas through this deal. You can read more about it on his excellent blog. The Geek Atlas is a guide to many locations important to science and maths including The Eagle Pub in Cambridge (which is a nice pub to visit btw) which is famous for the first announcement of DNA and its WWII graffiti.

The Geek Atlas would be a nice read for any reason and while it is the sort of book that I think is worthy of owning a physical copy you can score the ebook at least and help Japan a little more than with the other books and have a good read.

Finally back online

2011-03-11T20:44:00.000-01:00

I have moved house at the end of last month and had to go 3 weeks without real internet access. I had access via my old T-Mobile G1 and I had a 3G mobile dongle. 3G internet access isn't that bad but my local tower was over subscribed so it went from awesome to useless quite frequently. Since it was 'pay as you go' I didn't use the internet as I normally would. I was always worried about how much I was using as I had no real intention of using it that often.

But I'm finally hooked up with some decent DSL and life is back to normal! It's amazing how much I rely on the internet these days for pretty much everything and going without was pretty painful. I'm not sure why it had to take 3 weeks but at least it's sorted and I can hopefully get back into my old routines relatively easily.

The downside is now I can view my credit card statement. Maybe I'll save that for later.

HMV disc protection for a quid

2011-02-26T21:05:00.000-01:00

Today I bought the xbox 360 game Dead Space 2 for someone from HMV. Ohe thing that HMV does, like virtually everyone else that sells games is that they don't give you a sealed game. You take the box from the shelf and give it to them. They pull out a plastic bag of a drawer that contains the booklets and discs and just shove it in the case.

I've ranted about this numerous times around the internet. I think it's awful. Games are expensive and they're selling you, for top price, a disc that has been fingered by numerous people and it will possibly even be scratched and you get it in a case that looks like a used game box because it's been handled by so many people.

I simply refuse to buy games from brick and mortar shops because of this. But in this instance time was not on my side so I had to buy the game from a shop and not online.

This is when I found out HMV has a new offer. For £1.00 you can get your disc protected by some sort of disc repair scheme. Now that seems like a good idea after all it's one pound to apparently ensure your disc is protected for life.

But as I mentioned they don't sell you a sealed game. There is a good chance the disc will be scratched before you even get to play it once. In fact where is their incentive to protect the disc? It's in their benefit to abuse the disc and once you have been burned a few times you then give in and pay the extra pound for the disc repair scheme.

I wouldn't accuse them out and out making it a company policy to mess up discs to get you to pay the extra pound but again I see no reason for them to be careful and it just seems convient not for them to now have a new fee to protect you from something they can do wrong. I shouldn't have to pay extra for their mistakes.

I don't have sympathy for companies that are struggling when they pull questionable tactics like this. I would hope more people will get tired of shops selling unsealed games and boycott them as I do. Having to buy yet another game from a physical shop has yet again strengthened my beliefs to boycott shops that do this.

solarinsiders.co.uk goes live

2011-02-17T19:59:00.000-01:00

I wanted to congratulate my co-worker who also happens to own head energy on launching solar insiders recently.

The purpose of Solar Insiders is to provide you with information on low carbon energy solutions and more specifically solar and wind based solutions.

For instance if you're thinking of using wind power they have a tool to allow you to check your wind speeds to see if it will be of any benefit to you. They also have a solar pv calculator in the works which will help give you figures on what you'll get out of solar panels and when you'll start making money on them.

The is shaping up really nice and their hard work is paying off. If you're in the UK and considering solar / wind power then I think you should give Solar Insiders a quick look

I realise I don't like phone interviews

2011-02-16T17:53:00.000-01:00

I had my first phone interview for a job today. I thought a phone interview would be better because you won't see the other people and possibly read things differently by reading their facial expressions wrong, it's easy to do during a lunch break without anyone noticing and worrying about having the perfect clothes.

But in reality I think I find it harder to do an interview amongst two other people without seeing them. It felt a bit awkward as it's hard for me (and them) not to cut in and talk to early. My biggest mistake was using a mobile phone though. It's incredibly hard to take note of a technical question when it cuts out, they (I assume) shift in their chair away from the speaker phone and get quiet. While I may think too much into it it feels like I'm coming off a bit thick by having to ask to have question repeated.

Still, after it is all said and done I believe I didn't do too badly ignoring the added nervousness and paranoia about the situation. I hope that is the last time I have ever have to do a phone interview especially for a company just down the road from me.

Personally I think interviews should be done in a more neutral area like a pub, cafe or possibly a library. I suspect, given the opportunity to be able to do that then that is how I would do it if I were interviewing people with the freedom to do it how I want. But maybe that is me just looking for a reason to step out of the office.

Good Bye Hudson Entertainment

2011-02-10T20:39:00.000-01:00

Edge Online reported yesterday at Morgan Haro announced (it has been taken down now) on his blog that Hudson Entertainment would be closing its doors at the end of February. It's a shame that this is happening. You can see some of Hudson's history at jap-sai.com.

Hudson was one of my favourite companies and just with their Bomberman series they've provided an incredible amount of entertainment for me. Now Hudson Entertainment is only the US branch of Hudson Soft so Hudson isn't completely going away. Instead it's just their US office.

My concern is more that it's a sign that the westernisation of gaming is taking its toll on some of gaming history's great developers. It may also mean we won't see their games as often if ever in the west and yet again console gaming becomes more like PC gaming. Less variety, less fun and a bigger focus on insecure young males who would get upset if you can't call your mates fag while tea bagging them online.

Hopefully as gaming matures we'll see a better balance and maybe Hudson can enter open up shop in the US again and let their games flow in.

Phone and Home button quits working on Android

2011-01-29T20:28:00.000-01:00

I've had an Android G1. I've thoroughly enjoyed it. I've had it longer than my contract so for the most part it's been awesome. For the last 6 months or so it's been problematic. The last incident was today. For no good reason the Home button quits working. I assume it was broken because there was no error message. Then I find out the phone button isn't working which got me thinking, what are the odds two buttons would die in one afternoon and if it were a hardware problem why would I only see the option to turn off the phone when holding the down the "hang up" button?

I decided to investigate this and I'm not the only one with this problem and it appears to have been around awhile. I have 1.6 and people at least up to version 2.2 have the same problem. For the most part people have suggested the factory reset. I did not want to do that (more on that later) so I searched further and I found quick and easy solution.

These are the steps to fix your Android phone if you find your phone and home button not working:

1. Go to Settings -> Applications -> Manage Application and find the entry for Google Apps.

2. Select it and press the "Clear Data" button and the "Clear Cache" button if you have a built up cache.

3. Hit the back button until you get to the home screen.

4. Go back into Settings and then Data Synchronization and when you get then it will ask you to log back in with your Google Account so do it.

Once that's done your phone will sync up and then everything should work just fine.

Now as I understand this is because the Google Apps data gets corrupt. I can live with the fact sometimes data gets screwed up but shouldn't the phone tell me something is wrong rather than say absolutely nothing and instead make it look like the hardware is broken if you're not wise enough to take notice to the lack options if you try shutting down the phone? Also why should that data then stop you from being able to put the phone into flight mode? That's basic functionality that shouldn't have anything to do with your account.

The thing is this isn't the first problem with the phone that I've had. Like I said I've really enjoyed my phone and I believe a lot of my problems (aside this one) is down to the fact I haven't rooted the phone so I'm on the ancient 1.6 thanks to HTC not wanting to provide for more updates.

Roughly 6 months ago my phone just died. I believe it is because of an app update and only surfaced some time later because I turned the phone off and tried turning it back on. This could only be solved by a factory reset. So now I don't install custom apps because clearly not everything I see will actually be good for my version of Android.

That's bad enough but then I heard about Angry Birds. My initial search said it should run on my G1. So I try downloading it. It won't and gives me an error about being unable to download the app before starting the download. Give the error I received logically I assume it's a network error and keep trying. It keeps failing. So then logically I assume T-Mobile won't allow me to download big apps over 3G and I try over Wifi. Still nothing.

The best I can figure out is that something tells the phone that I'm not going to be able to run the game so it won't download it. Thanks for the helpful and informative message, guys!

I also had an issue where Google Maps wouldn't run and in fact would always crash when the phone started up without me even attempting to use it. That lasted for ages until an update to the app appears to have fixed it.

What annoys me is that Google is supposed to be home to the best and brightest and they still can't sort this stuff out? I don't care so much about stuff not running on my phone but the lack of useful error messages if any at all. With those well paid, well educated and in some cases big names at Google I would expect this sort of thing to be obvious and taken care of and I don't expect that from version 1.6 to at least version 2.2 that the home button will just die for no reason leaving people guessing how to fix it.

Android phones are cheap but I still get locked into a contract and my experience says so far that it can be problematic more so as the phone gets older and the vendor refuses to update it. Not everyone cares to root their phone and they certainly shouldn't expect mainstream consumers to do it. If I don't want to what are the odds my parents or grandmother would want to?

There is clearly an issue even if it isn't massive with market fragmentation and the Android market. I do have an issue with the cost of the iPhone and I'm not really all that happy with Apple's control over their app store. However as I have to consider upgrading my phone at some point I'm really considering the iPhone especially if T-Mobile will be willing to make me a deal and even if I'm not terribly keen on Apple's control I'm starting to understand exactly why they do it.

So I may very well go with an iPhone until Google does something about their problems. I think they do need a stricter system to determine whether the app should run on the phone, they need to sort out how the phone tells (or doesn't tell) the user what the problem is and I really think they need to find a way to ensure vendors provide more updates to the phones. Getting vendors to update alone should sort a lo of the problems.

Richard Dreyfuss on public figures and politics

2011-01-24T20:40:00.000-01:00

I was listening the Diane Rehm show on NPR today and she was interviewing Richard Dreyfuss. There was one small comment on the show which I took notice too and thought yeah I agree with that.

What happened is they brought up the fact some people comment on the fact public figures, celebrities in particular I suppose, shouldn't voice their views on politics. Richard quite rightly states that he is an American too and has just as much right to voice his opinion as anyone else.

Sure a lot of celebrities have stupid political opinions. That goes without saying but that can also be said about people in general.

If you feel that public figures have an advantage by being in the spotlight and therefore should shut up then I think you're not addressing the problem while silencing people who have the right to voice their opinion.

The problem isn't that public figures have an advantage to sway people especially now with the internet and its ability to allow anyone to reach out to potentially everyone. The problem is that the average person treats celebrities and other public figures as being special and yes sometimes believe they're more intelligent.

Anyone in the spotlight is still just a human like anyone else. It doesn't matter if they played your favourite character or not. People need to separate fantasy from reality and realise they are not different from the rest of us. They're just doing their job and living their life. To be honest I think most people probably don't take celebrity opinions too seriously if only for the fact most of the time their views are stupid.

I believe too many people just don't think enough in general. This does cause some people to give celebrity opinion more value but more importantly it allows the government to do whatever it wants and bend the average citizen over. The only reason the wealth divide is growing is because people don't think and don't care so there is no incentive for the government to change anything.

Getting into the government is almost a job for life now. Why should they rock the boat and upset the businesses and rich people funding their way into government every election?

first live python site

2011-01-16T12:07:00.001-01:00

I've bought a VPS instance from Linode and I've uploaded the initial version of a django based site I've been working on to toadwarrior.com (see screenshot below).

It still needs some functionality work which I'm currently doing locally and then I'll upload another release tonight and, at a guess, in 2 or 3 more versions I'll be happy enough to put it onto bitbucket to allow others to use it.

I'm pleased with how it's running so far. I haven't put any sort of caching on it yet and I do have the cheapest Linode instance. So I am sort of expecting it to fall over if it gets any real amount of traffic but we shall see. I'll probably try hammering it myself tomorrow at work where I have larger connection.

All in all though I must say I'm pleased I took the time to learn Python and move away from PHP and Java. Django and Python allowed me to create something relatively quickly without a lot of boilerplate code.

Now I just need to take the time to move over my other content from my shared hosted and stick solely with Linode.

The Wrong Turn trilogy

2011-01-12T20:56:00.000-01:00

The other week I bought the "Wrong Turn" trilogy. This include Wrong Turn, Wrong Turn 2: Dead End and Wrong Turn 3: Left for Dead.

The gist of these movies are that they're sort of Deliverance extreme: the horror edition. They're set in the mountains in redneck country and a group of people then run into these canibal rednecks and death follows.

The first Wrong Turn movies appears to be the only one that was ever in the theatres. It appeared to make a profit according to IMDB. The other two are straight to video. I was expecting Wrong Turn to be good and the other two to be awful.

Of course none of these are going to be award winners and yes Wrong Turn wasn't bad but surprisingly I enjoyed the other two more. The other two had more gore and yes some of it leaning more towards the comical side than the gruesome side but still they were actually entertaining.

Wrong Turn 2 featured Henry Rollins and I'm not really a fan of his. The premise of them also filming a reality TV show I felt was going to make it come off really retarded again I don't think it harmed it.

The trilogy was cheap at Tesco. If you're looking for some horror movies to pass the time and aren't expecting the greatest movie experience ever then don't think you can go wrong with these movies especially when the three are less than half the cost of what Tesco is charging for new releases.

No one applying for your job? Try elsewhere

2011-01-12T20:45:00.000-01:00

Since getting my macbook I found myself getting a little greedy. I want a big ass Cinema display form Apple. Now I know I can get something similar for less but I do like the look of it.

The thing is I don't want to go into debt for it and it is just over £900. So I got curious and thought I'd check out other jobs because maybe I'll find something more interesting and more importantly something that pays better and makes it easier to just layout the cash for the display.

So for part of November, December and a couple days in January I've been look the Cambridge Network site. They have paid listings you see first and then you can click through and see the free ones. It's not complicated or anything. It's nice and simple and the quality of employers appears to be superior than your average job site.

What I like to do to make my life easier is to do a search on the date and then just jump straight to all the yellow markings in Chrome. If you're going to look every week day then it just makes sense to do it this way.

I then started to notice some companies started doing something annoying. They "bump" up their listings every day to make it appear as if they're new listings but they've been there for months and who knows maybe the whole year if not longer.

The companies doing it are ARM, Cambridge Consultants, PA Consulting group, TTP Group and to a much lesser extent Redgate.

I got a bit obsessive about watching how often they do this and I noticed that every single day including Christmas day their listings were bumped up with the exception of Redgate. Redgate is more realistic, I do believe they're a pretty good company. While I believe I could transfer my Java knowledge to .Net pretty quickly I don't know .Net otherwise I'd probably apply to work there myself.

But I would say to Redgate that I think, for people that don't know the company, I think it shows warning sign when you're listing jobs that start in September 2010 as newly posted jobs on 12.Jan.2011. My first though, if I knew nothing, is there would be something wrong with the company if no one wants it.

Likewise for the other companies I'd say it throws up warning signs to me that there is something wrong with your jobs if they are that hard to fill. Of the companies listed I only of Redgate and Arm. As I said I think Redgate is probably a pretty awesome company. I would assume ARM is pretty cool too with the ability to meet some really cool and smart people. In the case of ARM I believe any of their jobs I'd be interested in are out of my league.

But that's the thing, I'm sure their jobs are awesome as is the case with the others but their ads don't seem to work from what I can see as a viewer of the site. While it may cost nothing and maybe the site allows for this functionality, they've scripted this or someone actually manually "bumps" them up every day but if they're not getting anyone then maybe it's time to start finding other ways to attract employees and quit filling up my daily search with new listings that aren't really new.

Or maybe it's time to consider taking on people who aren't quite ready for those roles or not quite the right fit and train them. Either way it seems like an incredible waste of time and if they need these roles filled then they need to try something else.

There is a good chance they do advertise elsewhere but again as someone who could potentially apply for these jobs I just think it throws up warning signs to question whether they're good jobs or not even if they could be the best jobs in Cambridge.

I'll end this minor rant by say if you do visit the Cambridge Network site and you're capable of filling their roles please do so in hopes they'll disappear from my page search.

jQuery and touch screens

2011-01-09T22:18:00.000-01:00

Today I spent a portion of the day creating a small python app-engine based application for keeping notes. All in all it went well and I enjoyed the task but I ran into a couple problems.

The first was a minor one. I wanted to call it Touch Notes but someone has already beat me to that name.

The second problem I ran into is that jQuery's drag 'n drop functionality doesn't work with touch screens. I probably should have tested this first rather than completing the site, deploy it and then find out via an Android test that it won't work at all.

Now the issue isn't that bad. I'm not advertising the site yet so while I alluded to the fact it's supposed to be touch screen friendly I won't have to worry about hearing about it from others that it's broken.

The way I see it my options are:

1. Make the functionality so it's initiated through a button press and forget trying to be fancy and having draggable objects. This would solve so space issues I've noticed on small screens but it's not the fun option.

2. Use the jQuery mobile framework and hope any draggable functionality carries over to the desktop with a mouse. This is possible. I've seen some touch screen JS code work with mice in my quick research. The problem is with some of the options it doesn't work that nice with a mouse.

3. Detect devices and cross my fingers. I can do this and then decide which functionality to use. It should work just fine but part of me also thinks that I may miss out on something odd or something new. Personally I don't think this is ideal.

So given those options I am leaning towards making the functionality work through a button press and just be happy that the lazy option makes things work fine everywhere. I will try using the jQuery mobile framework and hope I can get the draggable functionality working on everything just with that.

I'm sure jQuery will start putting more focus on touch screens and it should get built into the main set eventually. Personally I'd like to see it happen sooner rather than later. Touch screens won't go away and they're going to be more than something you use on your mobile phone so it should get built into the main jQuery framework.

Until then I will keep trying various options and will report back on what I decide when I'm ready to share the application with others.

Microsoft appears to believe murder is family friendly

2010-12-20T23:47:00.000-01:00

ThriXXX, an Australian games company posted a Youtube video (Note not a link to the original video but a copy) showing off a demo of what appears to be a sex based game using the Kinect. The Los Angeles Times covered this story and has this nice little quote from Microsoft.

Xbox is a family friendly games and entertainment console and does not allow Adults Only (AO) content to be certified for use on its platform, and would not condone this type of game for Kinect.

I find this laughable because Microsoft along with the rest of the gaming industry love to toot their own horn about how gaming is growing up and reach more adult gamers. The Xbox 360 and the Playstation 3 especially have been sold as being the systems for adult gamers.

But as Microsoft has pointed out you won't find any games with the AO rating despite it being a valid rating that is part of the ESRB rating system. As I think we all know adults love sex. The sex industry is absolutely massive and I believe most adults have spent some time looking at porn on the internet.

So if you want to cater to adults then you should have games that feature sex and nudity just as some movies and books do.

But in reality you'll almost never find nudity in games. G4TV has a video showing the "best" nude scenes in games. There is only about 5-6 examples 2 of which are mods and not actually in the game.

I believe the reason for this is because, despite how mature the gaming industry wants us to believe they are, all games are sold under the assumption it will and even should be bought by kids. Parents, at least in the biggest market (North America) are completely find with kids committing mass murder, torture and any sort of cruelty towards your fellow human but the thought of a sex would cause such a huge uproar.

Therefore you can buy games where you can create buckets and buckets of blood but a game where you get to feel up nude women just won't happen.

It is for this reason I'm almost tempted to agree with Roger Ebert that video games are not art. Now my reasons won't necessarily be the same as Ebert's reasons. But I would say they can't be art because they are primarily developed around the idea that teenagers will play them, profit often above all else takes priority over the creator's vision and the experience and even more so now I believe they're meant to be raced through so you can move onto yet another $60 purchase.

Really that is the whole point of achievements. You can't have a giant collection of achievements by playing a handful of high quality games. No, they want you to get obsessed about your achievements and play as many games as possible so you and your friends can circle jerk over how awesome you are.

The game industry doesn't want to target adults only, they don't want to you enjoy a game so much that you may keep playing it and not buy the latest release. I do think games are just becoming pop trash like a lot of music. But at least with music you still get a fair chunk that is still legitimate music. Video games do indeed have indie games but sadly good indie games are rare a lot are just clones of standard gameplay conventions.

Also family friendly is Nintendo's thing like motion controlled games. Ages ago Microsoft attempted to claim the Wii's success do not matter because they're completely different markets. Clearly that's not the case. Actually in fact it just proves they'll say whatever it takes to sell more games. There is no integrity there and how can something really be art if it's just a soulless attempt to increase profits?

As long as games can't happily accept the AO rating, nudity and sex then it will always lag behind every other form of media and it will never gain respect. It's sad and unfortunate that it may well be that way for a very long time.

Zadroga Bill needs to be passed

2010-12-19T12:17:00.001-01:00

The Zadroga Bill is a bill to give 9/11 first responders health care support. It's named after James Zadroga. I'm sure most people know this and about Jon Stewart's campaign for this bill.

What some people may not know, thanks to most media outlets, is that the republicans are the ones holding this bill up. That in itself it bad but they are typically the people that use 9/11 as an excuse to do everything and are some of the first people to tell someone they're unpatriotic for not swallowing their 9/11 BS. In fact they seem more about a mosque than helping the people who put their lives in danger to save people in the twin towers.

John McCain is one of the biggest twats in this embarrassment and apparently won't even talk first responders over this. When asked why he can't talk to them his spokeswoman said:

McCain's spokeswoman, Brooke Buchanan, told the Daily News she remembered the brief interaction differently. She said McCain thanked Gilmartin and that he simply caught the Senator at a bad time. He was extremely busy, she said, and on his way to a hearing on the military's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy.

So yes McCain was far too busy trying to stop gays from being openly gay in the military than to speak to someone who heroically saved many lives. The more and more I hear about McCain the lower my opinion of Arizona goes.

What's more disgusting is they don't want to help these people but they're more than happy to take tax payer money to fund their healthcare along with their spouses and dependants.

If the bill doesn't pass I hope people have the decency enough to vote out every single person that stopped this bill from passing and I wouldn't be upset to John McCain kick the bucket over this either.

If you're American you should take the time to write your senator (especially if it's one of those Republicans holding this up) and tell them how upset you are about this.

Simple python script to scrape reddit pics

2010-12-17T23:51:00.001-01:00

If, like me, you want to save the images from /r/pics then you can grab the tiny python script I made to just that from bitbucket. I created the imagegrab.py script to just that.

As it is you can just place the imagegrab.py and imagegrab.cfg in a folder along a folder called images and logs along side the python file and then just open up your CLI, move to that dir and run python imagegrab.py and it'll grab the images off the front page of /r/pics.

I already have a newer version I'm tinkering with that adds functionality to zip the images, create thumbnails and FTP the images. So I'll try to keep updating the script. But as it stands you can grab the images you want from /r/pics or any other image centric sub-reddit.

To grab images from another sub-reddit edit this line in the imagegrab.cfg:

[sites]
url = http://www.reddit.com/r/pics/

If you opt to set something up to run this script on a set time please keep in mind (as far as I know) reddit pages are cached for 30 minutes and you don't need to be running more frequently than that.

Yahoo is giving out lay-offs for Christmas

2010-12-17T18:06:00.000-01:00

Ages ago there was a site called Yahoo. It was an excellent way to find things. I, like many people, wanted my site listed there. Now, if my sites end up on Yahoo it's pure accident. I'm not really that bothered. That is sort of how I feel about Yahoo as a whole. I'm not even entirely sure why their mail is so popular when it just feels a bit ugly and just is not Gmail. Their problem, in my opinion, is that they went from a sleek clean source of information to an ugly portal.

News has come about that Yahoo has done something to put me off them even more. With Christmas coing around they have decided to lay-off 600 people. There has been a leaked shot from a slideshow where Yahoo shows which services are going to be closed.

The services to be closed are: AltaVista, delicious, MyBlogLog, Yahoo Bookmarks, Yahoo Buzz and Yahoo Picks.

To be fair the only one I'd really care about is delicious but I think their timing is really shit. Sacking 600 people just before Christmas or even just telling them they will be sacked (assuming they get the privilege of working a little longer) is just not cool. Do it in advance of Christmas or after. It's not good to have to tell someone their sacked but to ruin their Christmas on top of it is just mean. I know everything in the real world can't be fluffy bunnies but I don't believe they had to do it this way.

I respect the guy who leaked the info but Yahoo's Blake Irving isn't so happy and has apparently threatened to sack the person who has done it. So perhaps that total will actually be 601.

Some companies like Aprendi Learning, Tucows.com, DirecTV, Combine Couture, OMGPOP.com and Uptake.com and showing support and asking the fired Yahoo employees to come and apply at their companies and Tied House Brewery is offering a free pint to the former Yahoo employees.

While I'm sure the companies are only opening their arms to Yahoo's employees because they will have proven to be competent enough and it's an easy way to find good employees it is still good to see them doing so and hopefully putting these people back into employment straight away.

Yahoo has definitely, in my opinion, just become even more uncool to me than ever before. I'm sure Yahoo wishes it was the mid to late nineties again.

I'm glad tuition fees have been raised

2010-12-14T22:19:00.001-01:00

The tuition fee rise pass through the house of commons earlier this week and today it passed through the house of lords. Now I'm sure some people will think I'm being a jerk for being happy for this but the thing is if university is becoming more expensive then who should be paying?

According to the 2001 census nearly 20% of people have degree or higher education. Now that is nearly 10 year old and that number is almost certainly higher but almost certainly more people won't have a degree.

Is it fair that they pay a larger portion to fund the smaller portion to have a degree especially when not having a degree can mean they're making less money and as more people have degrees those who don't will have that held against them. So they will effectively be funding their demise even more than before.

I also feel that making degrees a common thing is a very bad thing. Sure that sounds unfair but there will always be people who can't get a degree. If most people have one you limit the jobs for those who don't because it will be more common to require a degree.

For those with a degree if, for instance, 80% of people had a degree let's face it your degree is nothing special and you have no edge over other candidates. You'll have to do something else on top of that just to get a job. Making an additional 2 years in education almost mandatory takes 2 more years out of your youth and as those 2 year degrees mean nothing then you'll have to put in 4 years, taking 2 more years out of your youth and making 4 year degrees worth even less.

The UK already has a problem with people increasingly having children too late in life. Keeping people in education longer will not help that.

Housing in the UK is expensive and I know people will say that by adding to people's university debt that will make it harder to save up a deposit. Sure that is true but if you're doing a degree to get a fairly basic job you would actually be better off just going out into the work force and start saving at 18.

I feel both in the UK and US mandatory education standards have been lowered to make it easier for people to score higher and therefore look more attractive to universities. This is completely backwards and helps no one. The standards in mandatory education need to be raised. You should have enough knowledge at the age of 18 to be able to do a fair portion of the jobs. If you can't speak or write proper English (yes I am aware my posts are sometimes cack....I should at least read over them once) by the time you're 18 then there is something wrong with the education system. University shouldn't be a requirement to communicate well.

Finally that gets to my last point, most jobs don't actually require a degree. I see quite a few people who are doing fairly basic jobs and often these people will think their "awesome" business management degree actually isn't so awesome and university was a waste of time.

Why should people be funding people to get degrees that they themselves feel are worthless? It's a waste of tax payer money and people's time.

I'm all for giving certain people free university education. People in the field of science, medicine and maths should get a free education with the stipulation that they need to give back to the UK economy and in other words don't run off to the US after your degree to earn more money.

I think the events that happened in London during the vote show that actually a lot of people don't deserve their degree. If the best you can do fight back is to act like chav scum and resort to violence (or write illiterate twitter / facebook messages) then university probably isn't the place for you and quite frankly I find it unfair that hard working people are expected to fund their degrees.

It also shows they don't pay attention. While the fees are higher you only pay 9% of your salary as soon as you hit £21,00 and if you don't earn enough to pay it off by the age of 30 then you pay nothing more and the debt is wiped. Quite frankly I think that's a good deal because really it means you'll have to be well paid to fully pay back your debt.

If you get a degree you are the one who benefits the most from it. I don't think it's unfair to ask you to pay a bit more towards it. I would still be more than happy to do degree now because currently it will still provide an excellent advantage to me.

Again the only way it wouldn't would be if everyone had a degree or in our current state you do a dumb degree and in that case you have no one to blame but yourself and if you don't really want to do a degree then don't do it. Chances are your career path won't require a degree if your attitude is that you don't really want to do one.

Sure it sounds elitist and unfair but I think it will be even more unfair to effectively require kids to get a degree just to be something. It would more useful to everyone to see that jobs that don't really need a degree don't require you to get one rather than going about it backwards and just handing out more degrees.

John Carmack's not too keen on Android

2010-12-07T21:47:00.000-01:00

Arstechnica recently posted an interview with John Carmack about mobile gaming. The gist of it is that he loves the iPhone / iPad and is hesitant to support Android due to the added complexity due to so much variety in software versions and hardware.

I own an Android phone and I do genuinely love though admittedly not as much because it's stuck at version 1.6 and I refuse to root it because quite frankly I shouldn't have to jump through hoops to stay up to date.

Anyway, I would have to agree with John. One point, as I just mentioned is there isn't any motivation for hardware manufacturers to prove newer versions of the OS and I don't believe the android market is that good at filtering out what you should run. For instance I've recently heard about Angry Birds and searched the market. It shows up. I can't install it and there is nothing to say why I can't. The error message is generic and could be because of persistant network problems that night or because my phone won't cut it.

So why show it to me and especially why not tell me I can't run it? Also being stuck at the older version seems to cause plenty of other problems. Google maps had updated earlier this year and would refuse to run. It in fact crashed upon the phone booting up. Given how long this lasted it went unnoticed for longer than it should have most likely due to it being related to old software. A newer Google maps update fixed it.

An installed app bricked my phone and caused me to have to reinstall the OS. I don't download that many apps. Mainly Google apps connect bot and Pac-man. I would believe it's a symptom of my phone just becoming older and more outdated as time goes on.

So there are going to be people like me and I can understand Carmack doesn't want to worry about these things. A lot of Android phones are pretty basic and as he pointed out he's using over 1 gig of data for Rage. That's just not going to happen on most phones.

The problem is Android is an OS for the masses and hardware manufacturers are free to tweak it as they want. The iPhone on the other hand is powerful and there is much less variation. It's effectively the Ferrari of phones. Because of that it's expensive and one reason I've also passed on it (the lack of a keyboard put me off too but everyone is going that way now).

I'm not entirely convinced an open OS is such a good fit when carriers and hardware companies can still lock you into certain versions and limitations. Apple on the other hand runs a pretty tight ship and only they make iOS phones which is easier on developers and yes it sucks they can appear almost Nazi-like with their app store but sometimes when you see the heap of shit and very similar apps on the Android market then you understand it.

Phones just aren't on the same level of openess as desktop computers so any benefit to the OS being open are pretty much lost.

I hope Google will do something to resolve this. Android is nice and I like the stuff like the scripting engine which allows me to bang out my own code. But, while their phones aren't as expensive, they are still pricey or require being locked into a contract so I don't need the hassle and may give up and go with iPhone 5 / 6 rather than choose another Android phone.

The Android has all the bad benefits of a Windows PC (worries about system requirements and a dumping ground for shit software) without all the benefits of having completely open hardware. It's just no surprise Carmack and Id software wouldn't want to bother.

Sarah Palin does her stupid baby impression yet again

2010-12-01T21:37:00.001-01:00

Sarah Palin isn't exactly known for being bright. There are a ton of excellent idiotic comments from her to pick from but recently she has said that Wikileak's Julian Assange should be hunted down like the Taliban and Al-Qaeda. She's not alone in her stupidity. Republicans Rick Santorum and Peter King have called Julian a terrorist [ sources 1, 2 ].

I'm all for people having their own opinion no matter how stupid it is. What is scary is that these are people within the government or aspiring to be the government (in Palin's case) and they're happy to throw around words like terrorist to silence people.

In my opinion Julian Assange has done a good thing. Wikileaks provides information that I do think should be available when the US has been losing freedom in return for supposed security. To hear that you're government is even looking to get DNA of UN members you have to stop and consider if they're going too far and maybe it's time we start electing people that are useful at things other than empire building and scare-mongering.

How soon until people are labelled terrorists for downloading MP3s because they're "attacking" US businesses?

As if there weren't enough reasons not to vote for Sarah Palin this one should be more than enough for anyone. Quite frankly if the US should consider anyone a terrorist it should be Sarah Palin as her only goal, in my opinion, seems to be to turn the US into a police state religious extremists. You know sort of like her type claim the Taliban are trying to do to their countries.

O'Reilly ebook offer today

2010-11-29T18:40:00.001-01:00

O'Reilly books are offering 60% off of their e-books today. Just head to their store homepage and you'll find the code (DDF2H) to use. O'Reilly are one of the best publishers to buy e-books from in my opinion. You get DRM free e-books and you can go back and download them if necessary and I believe they upgrade you to the latest version.

I took this chance to get Algorithms in a nutshell and Mastering Perl. I'm sure like many e-books I could have found these easily for free on through a quick Google search but I prefer to support companies that look after their customers. They generally have good deals. I think they always have a 3 for 2 deal running or at least I haven't been there and haven't seen one running. I think if more people would support publishers who are generous like O'Reilly we could see more companies giving up on DRM sooner than you may think.

For those that don't know they also let you pick up the ebook version of your print books cheap. In many cases you can get the e-book for $5.00. I took the advantage of this and picked up Intermediate Perl today as well. I do enjoy having the physical books but actually spending what'll effectively be like £2.50 for an ebook I can have on my laptop and have easier access on the train while writing code is well worth that price especially when you can hardly get a decent pint for that price these days.

If you're looking for some books by O'Reilly today is a good day to get them.

Edit: This sale was running too so despite saying "deal of the day" it appears to be running for multiple days.

Minor update on Django awesomeness

2010-11-21T23:02:00.000-01:00

I've spent some time learning the Django framework for python and I've finally got around to building out my site with Django. I've only spent about half a day (including some reddit surfing) and I've built up a site that is more or less done. I could happily deploy what I have and it would be a competent site. From a user's point of view it's not very interactive but I could now easily deploy new content to the site, it has nice clean URLs and I don't feel like I've done that much.

I've been very pleased with Python as a whole but I'm beyond impressed with Django. I've never been totally happy with any one PHP framework. I'll admit I gave up on them quite quickly and just opted to write and re-use my own code. Some of it has to do with my love-hate relationship with PHP. It's fast and easy but it is truly an ugly language in my opinion.

I've just completed a large Java web project at work and in a typical Java was it was just a lot of effort to deploy even the smallest changes and see the results. Worse yet Java Server Faces was involved (and not even JSF 2.0 unfortunately) and quite frankly I think JSF is pretty shit.

Django templates are so much easier to work with than JSF and one thing that seems small but in fact is a huge thing is the fact Django allows me to map URLs with regular expressions where as Java is still pretty half assed with url patterns. It definitely doesn't feel "enterprise".

I'm going to keep adding to my project (and hopefully provide updates along the way) and when it's done and deployed I shall release the code onto bitbucket.

I whole heatedly recommend anyone to learn Python and Django if you're looking into getting into web development or are looking for something better than what you're using now.

Oh by the way, I'm using PyCharm to do my development and yes it's not free, but even for a 1.0 release it's pretty sweet and has definitely helped with my Django development. I believe it's worth the £77 and you can get it for free if you have a serious open sourced project to use it with.

Windows Phone 7 makes SD cards unusable on other phones

2010-11-15T21:09:00.000-01:00

Apparently if you use a standard SD card in a Windows Phone 7 based mobile then the SD card can only be used in that phone.

Microsoft isn't hiding the fact and and even helpfully put a warning on the SD card slot so hopefully you've taken heed of the warning and made the choice you want. Microsoft also has a support article on the subject of Windows Phone 7 and SD cards incase you would like more information about what is happening and why.

I'm glad Microsoft has been, in my opinion, pretty straight forward about this and the end result should be your SD card should only be "ruined" if you choose to go forward with putting the card in. Keeping in mind by doing so you will almost certainly break the card.

With that in mind I think that it's a pretty awful thing to do. The whole point of a removable card is that you should be able to share it amongst devices. Otherwise why use a removable card?

In their support article Microsoft states:

What to Expect if You Modify the SD Card Slot in a Windows Phone 7 Device

You may experience the following issues if you remove or replace the SD card in a Windows Phone 7 device, or if you add an SD card to a Windows Phone 7 device that has an empty SD card slot.

Removing the SD Card: If you remove an SD card that has already been integrated with the phone, the phone displays an error message that tells you to reinsert the SD card. All phone functionality is disabled except for the ability to make emergency calls. The phone will function normally again only if you reinsert the original SD card and then start the phone.

Integrating a Phone with a non–Windows Phone 7 Compliant SD Card: If a non–Windows Phone 7 compliant card is integrated with the phone, you might notice the following performance issues when you use your phone:

Applications might start more slowly or not at all.

Transitions between some application screens might stutter.

Some applications might not respond at times.

I think that is pretty bad. Accepting this sets an awful precedent that it is ok for manufacturers to basically lock you into using their devices by making your cards usable only on their devices. That is reason enough to ignore Windows Phone 7 in my opinion.

And again the whole point of an SD card should be that it is removable. Not that it should effectively kill your phone and why make it work in such a proprietary way that using a standard SD card makes the phone perform worse than without it?

Every other phone manufacturer has managed to use SD card in a standard way that makes them usable in any device rather than locking you into their devices and their phones work perfectly well with any card. I can't think of any possible reason Windows phones should need to change SD cards in anyway.

This reeks of tactics Microsoft has used in the past to lock users into their software. The thing is Windows mobile phones aren't anywhere near popular enough, in my opinion, to be pulling moves like this.

I hope a lot of people are made aware of this and choose to ignore Windows Phone 7 based mobiles for this reason alone. Now if it turns out that if you use a certified card when they're released that they'll work in anything that's fine but the fact that taking a certified card out makes the phone unusable I would suspect that isn't going to be the case.

I believe at this point it also means that not only is Windows Phone 7 lacking basic features like copy & pasting but you'll end up with a phone that lacks the basic functionality of SD card support.

What is Microsoft thinking? I mean do they even want to be the mobile market because they are totally going the wrong way about it if you ask me.

Oracle is starting to put me off Java

2010-11-01T22:11:00.000-01:00

First Oracle had more or less killed Open Solaris and now it appears Open Office is on its way out. Now you can argue that Oracle hasn't out right killed them. They're just doing their best to make them totally unattractive to anyone who would care to develop open source code. I don't think it looks good either that they're losing a lot of big names, like James Gosling and losing 33 developers for Open Office just can't be good.

It would appear the future of Open Office is LibreOffice from the Document Foundation. I've downloaded LibreOffice myself and plan on replacing Open Office with it. It's a shame because, despite the fact LibreOffice is effectively Open Office anyway, it means yet another Sun Microsystems legacy is going away and it would appear all that Oracle is interested in is bland corporate business. I'm sure MySQL will actually continue well under Oracle. It's yet another database for them and fits into their boring little world where they won't try something new or innovative.

I have zero objections to corporations. I'd happily work for one but not one that isn't willing to take a few risks. I get the impression Oracle has zero interest in taking any risks and I guess that's fine too but I don't think a good programming language like Java can flourish when the only people putting any interest into it are "suits" at Oracle.

Not surprisingly really but Apple has decided to deprecate their JVM and are letting it up to Oracle to develop the OS X JVM which they probably won't do because it will be viewed as a waste and unnecessary for their core audience.

In fact I just can't see Oracle doing anything cool with Java. I hope I'm wrong. If I'm not wrong I know I don't want to spend my career as a developer knocking out updates to legacy rubbish and coding soul destroying code for banks. So I think I'm going to get more serious about brushing up on my C/C++ and focus on that along with Python and Perl and I think between those I'll do well until I find a new language that I'm interested in.

Hibernate alternative follow-up

2010-10-24T11:34:00.000-01:00

Awhile ago I gave a tiny example showing how to use connection pooling with apache commons-pool and commons-dbcp. I've decided to tidy up the small project I initially created to test these libraries and added it to bitbucket.

You can find the project at https://bitbucket.org/toadwarrior/moviedatabase/overview and download the zip from there or grab it via hg clone http://bitbucket.org/toadwarrior/moviedatabase.

Apologies, the download will be a bit chunky (zipped version was around 49 megs) because I've included all the libs to ensure there is little hassle.

Once you clone the repo you should have a folder called moviedatabase. The quickest way to get it up and running is to create the mysql database, a tomcat user/role and modify the context.xml and web.xml appropriately and the build and deploy to tomcat. For Netbeans users I've included the project files so you should just have to open it and possibly select your instance of tomcat.

The readme file should provide you with all the info you need for the database, creating a tomcat user/role, etc.

Once it's up and running you should be able to access it via http://localhost:8080/moviedatabase and add and remove movies.

As I've noted in the readme it is very basic (though I am using it for a local database of movies) and there is a lot of things I'd like to do to it (like using jquery data tables like I did here) and I probably will start making these changes and committing them.

I had gone off of Java for a bit which is why this is still horribly basic but at least you can have a working example of a webapp using the apache libs for connection pooling.

Juan Williams fired by NPR

2010-10-23T00:16:00.000-01:00

One of the big stories in the news now is how NPR has fired Juan Williams for expressing his fear about seeing muslims on airplanes on the O'Reilly factor. Fox news naturally has offered Juan a new contract to bring him onto their network.

I do believe Juan was not being racist and he was just expressing how he feels. But that is still part of the problem. Journalists are supposed to be fair and unbiased. They are human and they will have biases but once you start openly expressing how you feel and especially over a hot issue like Muslims and terrorism then I do feel you lose your objectivity and can't be trusted as an unbiased news source.

As much as some Christians seem to hate it, America is a free nation where you are free to practice the religion of your choice. You should be allowed to be a Muslim without people automatically assuming you're a terrorist. More so when pretty much every terrorist attack in the US since 9/11 hasn't involved anyone in the Muslim garb that Juan says that makes him nervous. He is someone who works in the news and should know this. Sure he admitted his fear is irrational but that doesn't mean it should be accepted.

No major news outlet would accept that sort of thinking if it was aimed at Christians, gays or blacks. In fact you'd think Juan, who is black and most likely faced racism once in his life would understand this.

I think the underlying problem is the standards for the news industry in the US have dropped through the floor and in my opinion, this is largely due to Rupert Murdoch and Fox news. His news network with the likes of Bill O'Reilly and Glenn Beck have helped turned the US news industry into an overly opinionated joke. Both Bill and Glenn should be allowed to express their opinions and I definitely defend their right to talk crap. But I don't think Fox News should be called Fox News when it is for the large part opinionated rubbish with little to no news.

I find it ironic that Americans are so fearful of foreigners and them coming in to change their country. The right-wing like to blab on about George Soros for being one of these foreigners that want to ruin their country. Well Rupert Murdoch is a foreigner and, as far as I'm concerned, has greatly ruined the nation's news and helped turn the US into a fearful and hateful nation. When is the US going to kick that foreigner out of the US and send his ass straight back to Australia?

I should note before someone rages on me for being a Soros fan that I don't have an opinion of the guy and have really only ever heard about him from the retarded right when spew hateful things about him. Anything I have read on him suggests to me that he's done awful things and good things and that he's no different to any other rich person in the US. He certainly doesn't seem to be any worse than Rupert Murdoch so why hate George and not Rupert?

It isn't right for any journalist to express that he fears Muslims and then report on them. If we could get people to understand that and realise that the news should be doing one thing and one thing only and reporting the facts as they happen in the most unbiased way possible.

I do think NPR could have handled the situation better but in the end I understand exactly why they did it and what they did was better than just allowing the guy to go on saying such things. The right naturally using this as an excuse to drum up support to kill support for NPR. Attempting to kill NPR isn't something new to the right. They've tried before because they are more fair and balanced. People like Rupert fear NPR because it isn't a commercial entity and doesn't have to pander to the lowest common denominator. I personally feel that NPR isn't perfect but it is a damn sight better than the likes of Fox News and actually resembles a news outlet. It would be a travesty to see it go away.

The Juan Williams incident will likely go away and nothing will really change. It would have been nice to see people come to their senses and push for more objective news but unfortunately the US seems to be going through a period where it's cool to be biased, ignorant and hateful. The fact that anyone could even consider taking Sarah Palin seriously proves this. Maybe the best thing is for Sarah to become president and drive the US into a 3rd world status and then maybe the US will open its eyes.

PC World round-up on Windows Phone 7 reviews

2010-10-22T22:45:00.000-01:00

PC World has given a round-up of some of the initial Windows Phone 7 reviews. The gist of these reviews are that Windows Phone 7 offers too little too late. It's always been my opinion that this would be the case. Especially when it was first announced that it wouldn't allow something as basic as cut & paste. Sure the iPhone had some stupid mistakes, like missing cut & paste functionality, but they were at the beginning of the new smart phone fad. It is slightly more forgivable that they were lacking it then. Microsoft and Windows Phone 7 are late to the game and there is much more competition including the increasingly popular Android based phones so they need to provide something other than the bare minimum. Also we saw how quite rightly people mocked the iPhone for lacking basic functionality so why are they going ahead and making the same mistake?

But even if these features didn't really matter, my biggest problem by far is that the Windows Phone 7 interface tries too hard to try and be cool and just ends up looking dumb and in some instances ruins the usability of it.

For instance, go to the Windows Phone 7 discover page and (as of 23.Oct.2010) in he navigation click "People Hub". You see a screenshot showing how the heading People doesn't fit on the screen. It's a minor quibble but it just looks like it's trying too hard to look cool and quite frankly makes the screen feel too small to me when you and make things not fit onto the screen.

Worse yet, click "Email" in the navigation and you see there are 3 options at the top for all, unread and flagged. But according to the screen-shot flagged appears as flagg because again it goes off the screen and even if you want to say it is a small screen and shouldn't be expected to fit then why does it appear everything else fits on the screen other than these options? Again it just looks dumb and like it is trying too hard.

Then click through the items for Find My Phone & Windows Live, Games Hub, Office Hub, Music + Video Hub and Marketplace Hub and again the same sort of crap. Some of these are worse because you see half words, pictures, etc. I understand it's presumably to let you know something else is off to the right but it looks ugly. Just make it fit the screen or shove stuff off to the side and find a cleaner indicator that there is more information to the side.

Microsoft hasn't really ever been cool. They've just been popular through providing an easy way to do things followed by an abuse of their monopoly. In my opinion anytime they try to cool they end up looking like your old man trying to rap in front of your friends.

I don't think they should go back to the god awful old Windows Mobile interface that looked like they were trying to squeeze Windows 95 onto a mobile phone but they should give up the cool act and just make something easy and functional to use.

It would be my guess that Windows Phone 7 won't be a success. It probably won't be yet another giant failure like the Microsoft Kin but it will by no means be in the same league as Android or the iPhone. Microsoft has always been mediocre and lackluster in the mobile space. Personally I'd rather they give it up and focus on improving Windows for the desktop so it's more secure and doesn't look like a combination of OS X and Fisher Price.

Call of duty edition Jeep Wrangler

2010-10-22T22:17:00.000-01:00

Destructoid posted some info about Jeep's Call of Duty: Black Ops edition Wrangler. I don't think there is anything inherently wrong with this but I find it a bit ironic. Geeks will generally claim they're more intelligent than the average person (I know I do it sometimes) but then some geeks do go ahead and blow large chunks of money on stupid thinks like a black Jeep because it's some sort of limited edition based on their favourite video game.

I think if you're a geek, you have to admit sometimes you buy stupid shit. I do it sometimes and really everyone does it. Different groups just do stupid things for different reasons and this Jeep is stupid, in my opinion.

Flash no longer on OS X by default

2010-10-22T22:09:00.001-01:00

Engadet has posted Apple's response to the lack of Flash, by default, on OS X for the new Macbook Air. Of course some people have commented and complained. I don't know about anyone else but I've had more computers that haven't had Flash by default. On Windows I have had to install it and on Ubuntu it's not there since it is proprietary software. I have to go into the package manager and enable it. It's not hard and I prefer it that way mainly for the reason Apple gave which was:

We're happy to continue to support Flash on the Mac, and the best way for users to always have the most up to date and secure version is to download it directly from Adobe.

That is correct. If the dump flash onto the system, it could be out of date and insecure from day one. You are better to go off to the Flash site and grab Flash yourself. It takes seconds and anyone can do it.

I think far too many people just expect all their software to be on the system by default. In my opinion this leads to people having even fewer chances of getting to know how to use their computer and therefore will probably lead them to not update their system leaving them vulnerable.

Just look at Windows XP. It was around for years and by default came with Internet Explorer 6. IE6 is an awful browser and has lingered around too long. A lot of people like to claim there are tons of businesses that require IE6 for some shoddy application but I believe it also lingered around because there are a ton of people that simply won't update it. Older people have started using computers more and more and will just stick with what works even if it leaves them more open to attack simply because they don't know they are more open to attacks or don't care because they're afraid to change anything. They haven't had to and the computer is still a big scary box to them.

I'm glad Apple is doing this. They're not trying to kill Flash on the Mac. They just want to ensure you have the most up to date version and Adobe's Flash site makes it dead easy to install Flash. There is no reason not to do it this way.

Golden Joystick awards sponsorship

2010-10-14T12:03:00.000-01:00

The Golden Joystick awards are the oldest gaming awards around and they're also known as the People's gaming awards. Gamers do get to vote on their choices for each category and that's fine and all but I still don't like the fact they have sponsorship and especially sponsorship from MSN. You can see the categories here along with their sponsor's in there listing.

The category that MSN is sponsoring is "One to watch" which features titles like Gears of War 3 and Halo Reach which are of course Xbox 360 titles. I find that a bit tasteless and it shows a lack of integrity to me even if it is supposedly consumer's that select the winner.

As much as I like gaming this is one thing I dislike about the industry as a whole. Very few people ever show any sense of integrity. I'd even say some would probably happily sleep with their mothers to gain success for their titles.

I think gaming would be taken more seriously if we would act like gaming in a proper entertainment industry and not just a bunch of 14 year old boys or men who act like 14 year old boys.

Really for an industry that likes to toot its own horn for how successful it is and it has to sort to shilling itself where ever possible including its own award ceremonies.

It is just low class and I wish the industry would realise this.

airline seat overselling sucks

2010-10-11T23:50:00.000-01:00

I'm about to catch a cab to go to Heathrow. I did my 24 hour check-in yesterday and it noted that my flight was over sold. I still checked in and nothing has been said to me. If I get down there after having had to get up at 2.30 in the morning, pay £35 for a cab, pay £45 for a bus only to be turned around I'm not going to be impressed.

I guess if it comes down to it and they try taking my seat away then I'll say this is my last chance to see my grand parents (quite possibly true to be honest) or something likely to guilt trip them or someone else into giving their seat up.

What annoys me is that I waited until the last second and when I bought the ticket there were huge swathes of empty seats and I thought wow I'm going to have a big chunk of seats to choose from if I want to move around and unfortunately either they weren't truthfully advertising how many seats were free or for all of the sudden that flight got popular.

Either way, someone is going to be upset and I think that is really unfair to mess people around like that. If they can't afford to deal with the possibility of a few empty seats then they need to raise prices.

Maybe flying isn't as affordable as it appears to be and maybe some people just need to live with the fact they might have to save a bit longer to get that flight.

I'd much rather pay a £100 more than to book time off pay to get to the airport and told to go home.

Maybe I'm the only one that's like this but I don't believe it's actually cheaper to me to buy a cheap ticket, go through the process of taking the flight and then get turned away.

I'm sure airline companies are greedy, why not have an optional charge to guarantee you get a seat even if they overbook the seats and of course don't over sell the guarantee. I'm sure there is a market for this.

Light pollution ruins the night

2010-10-09T00:24:00.000-01:00

When I was growing up in the states, like when I was 14 and younger, there was one thing I always loved to do and that was to look up into the night sky. That was one of the best things about living in the middle of no-where. You could see literally everything in the sky that your vision would allow you to see.

Then something happened. More people moved into the area. People who felt the need to have the world's brightest lights on their garage or in their back lawn that would light the whole area. These people, I assume, did that so when they sat outside they could do so without being afraid of the dark. Of course these lights where on every night despite the fact these people spent most nights in front of the TV. I'm not sure why you would waste so much of your money paying for that. After all it isn't like they're in a rough neighbourhood with thugs. They were in the middle of no-where Pennsylvania. There simply was no reason to do it other than to show everyone else you have the world's biggest fucking light in the country side.

These people ruined any chance of someone like me to gaze upon the night sky and for nothing. If and when these people actually went outside their eyes would have adjusted to the dark and they could see all that they needed to see, they wouldn't have been surrounded by bugs attracted to lights and more importantly they would have seen how awesome the night sky and all its stars are.

Fast-forward a bit and I'm in England and living in the middle of no-where again. Really, I've moved to the other side of the world and ended up living in an area not that much different from where I lived in the US. I am possibly one of the few people to move to another country and with little to no change.

Anyway, I 'm suffering the same problem here. Despite little no housing around this village, thanks to the street lights and people who feel the need to light up their garden. There are some to show the effects of light pollution on the area. You can see from those PDFs that people like myself who like the dark are losing the battle with light pollution in the UK. The problem is a lot of people are across many countries are losing the battle.

I just don't think people appreciate the sky enough and this is what we get. I think we also lose the ability to sleep as well because of light pollution. When it's night it should be dark. Instead I can walk he dog in the middle of the night on a cloudy day and see across the green fine because it's so bright from the light pollution.

Hopefully having a nice night sky will come back into popularity and we'll see and end to light pollution ruining the view of the sky.

Canonical won't complain to the EU about Microsoft

2010-10-07T21:16:00.000-01:00

PC Pro has reported that Ubuntu maker Canonical won't file a complaint against Microsoft in the EU. I should first say I'm not entirely sure I trust PC Pro. After all they claimed Dell was dropping Ubuntu which isn't the case (even if it's not obvious they sell Ubuntu computers). Now maybe Dell changed their mind after seeing some people's reactions but every article that I ever found quoted PC Pro as the source so I'm not entirely sure it's true. After all Dell Ubuntu machines can be found here.

But assuming this is true I'm not sure how I feel about this. I do still believe Microsoft likely does stand in the way of vendors selling Linux machines even if they're not so obvious about it. So I believe their "enemies" should gang up on them.

Canonical claims they'll win by having a better product and word of mouth. I do believe that actually winning mind share this way will look better for Canonical and make people feel better about them. While I love Ubuntu and consider it a solid alternative I do think there are probably a few more tweaks that need doing to make it ninja-like.

I hope Canonical keeps at it and keep refining their system and I do think it will help the system grow in popularity. As awesome as Windows 7 supposedly is I do think Microsoft hasn't quite recovered from Windows Vista and is still going to struggle to get out from awesome XP's shadow. In my mind they are also hurting themselves by having so many versions of Windows all of which are too costly. Given the economy that's not going to help them. Hopefully Canonical and other Linux vendors will take advantage of this.

Atlassian buys bitbucket

2010-10-02T20:46:00.000-01:00

Atlassian has bought bitbucket and I have to say, so far, I'm pleased. I've been using Jira, from Atlassian for sometime and have always been pleased with it. I'm a fairly new bitbucket user and have found out I no longer have to pay for my account as they've giving the 5 or fewer users accounts unlimited repos for free.

I'm also expecting this shouldn't go bad. Atlassian, imo, has proven to be a pretty decent company and even allow small teams (10 or fewer users) to have Jira for $10 but not only that it goes to charity. Bitbucket have also been pretty helpful towards those who need it and have given some causes a paid account level of features for free.

Of course both companies are out to make money but it does make a difference (to me at least) when companies are willing to give back and help small teams or charities. Of couse it doesn't hurt when Bitbucket's performance has been excellent.

If you're a small team looking for coding hosting (especially Mercurial in particular) then I think you should give bitbucket a try and on the off chance you haven't heard of Jira, it's an awesome bug tracker and you can pick it up for your team for $10 and it's well worth it.

Last Window: The Secret of Cape West

2010-09-29T18:57:00.000-01:00

I've just purchased Last Window: The Secret of Cape West from Game and should get it by the end of the week. I've really been looking forward to this (so it's a bit ironic that I didn't get at launch but I blame my memory for that) as I have really enjoyed Another Code: Two Memories and Hotel Dusk: Room 215.

Both of those games were exceptional stories and I'm sure Last Window will be the same. That's why it was a real shame to hear that Cing filed for bankruptcy back in March. As far as I'm aware they've not gone completely. I hope they can sort themselves out. I was hoping Nintendo would have bought them. I believe their games are some of the best on the Nintendo DS and made the best use of the Nintendo DS' capabilities.

If you want a few good adventure titles for your Nintendo DS then you should pick up these three games. Another Code and Hotel Dusk should be pretty cheap by now.

Hopefully Last Window will be here by Friday and I shall try to make time to comment on it but I'm certain it'll be excellent.

Final day to voice your opinion on software patents

2010-09-27T20:09:00.000-01:00

I wish I had known about this earlier (and yes I know I'm quite late on this) but today is the final day to email the USPTO about software parents. The Free Software Foundation is quite rightly asking everyone to speak out against software patents.

All you need to do (If you're an American) is email Bilski_Guidance@uspto.gov and preferably CC in the FSF with licensing@fsf.org and just take a minute or two to speak out against software patents.

I believe this is a very important thing. There is no need to write an essay just voice your opinion and hopefully we can see a change.

Buy Zen Magnets

2010-09-23T20:06:00.002-01:00

The owner of Zenmagnets.com has been starting a magnet challenge to see if people find his magnets better than buckyballs. The owner of buckyballs, Jake Bronstein, didn't seem to like this and left a douche baggy message on his answering machine. As a response zenmagnets.com made a youtube video which Jake then used a DMCA take-down to censor the video. Quite frankly, in my opinion, that is a totally shit head thing to do. Some has mirrored the video and it can be found here (for now).

Zenmagnets.com turned to reddit and slashdot has been covering this as well (note that Thinkgeek sell buckyballs and is sister company to Slashdot) and you will be able to find updates to the situation on zenmagnet's twitter account.

From what I can tell from the honest plain evidence provided by zenmagnets.com both magnets are more or less the same but zen magnets do seem to be of slightly higher quality. I believe Jake Bronstein knows this and wants to silence the guy from showing off his better magnets.

He is trying to stop free and open competition. That alone, in my opinion, is enough of a reason to boycott the guy. But the fact he is using abusing the DMCA take-down (like many other companies to be fair) is a good reason to hope he takes a big financial hit over this.

I would hope something good will eventually come out of this and maybe the government will see the DMCA is shit. That probably isn't going to happen. So hopefully at the very least Jake will get it up the ass over this.

If you're into playing with magnetic balls (and who isn't?) then check out zenmagnets.com. Of course if you really prefer buckyballs magnets then buy them if that floats your boat but I believe you shouldn't support any company that is would abuse the DMCA process to shut up the competition but it's up to you to decide what you think is right.

My macbook is so awesome

2010-09-21T21:25:00.000-01:00

I've briefly mentioned this before but I feel the need to mention it again. My brand new 13" Macbook Pro is freaking awesome!

I've haven't really used a Mac since an old Mac Classic (the ones everyone turns into a fish tank) and a G4 a few years ago at a previous job for a film editing task so really it was more about using Final Cut Pro than using a Mac.

So I feel this is my first real Mac experience and my first real Mac that I've owned. I did only go for the 13" Macbook Pro mainly because I also opted for an SSD and, while I can afford it, I do think it's hard to buy that first Mac when you're used to paying less but to be honest as it stands now if I want a new Linux laptop or even Windows I think I could only ever buy a Macbook now and chuck the other operating system on it because the hardware is just so nice.

For starters the screen is just so nice, clear and colourful. Apple do have exceptional monitors and laptop screens. I don't think most people can appreciate this without seeing them side-by-side with a standard Windows laptop.

The Macbook is nice an thin and light. Again, until you've lugged around a Windows laptop and then lug around a Macbook, you may not appreciate the difference.

While some of this is probably due to the SSD, despite the fact there isn't really ventilation, my machine doesn't ever seem to get hot. The temperature of the machine feels the same on or off. There is one spot on the bottom (yes, I had to find a warm spot) which gets ever so slightly warmer but it's nothing like my previous Lenovo Thinkpad. By the way I would like to point out my Thinkpad was a truly awesome piece of kit that took a good beating. My only real issue would be the screen isn't as nice as a Macbook Pro, it runs hotter and carrying it around feels like carrying a car battery around.

Cold boots to a useable desktop in literally like 3-5 seconds. It shuts down almost instantly. Ubuntu isn't too bad at this either. I've yet to see anything nearly as awesome from Windows.

For the 13" Macbook Pro Apple claims that it will have 9 to 10 hours battery life. Some people don't believe this and again the SSD probably helps and yes what you do with the machine will make a difference but I've easily managed 8 hours surfing the net, watching youtube videos and some Python development with PyCharm. I don't bother carrying my power cord with me because I know it will definitely last on my commute to and from work as well as some use at work.

There are a lot of little other things like the external battery status indicator, the magnetic power cord connection and even just the fact it's an aluminium case that just makes it feel more quality.

Before purchasing this I did consider trying to get something cheap. I soon found that if you want a dual core processor in a laptop and sensible features you're just not going to save that much by going to Dell for example.

The reason I point out Dell is because Dell is only cheap if you want something that is cheap. What I mean by that is that you don't just get Bluetooth, backlit keyboard, etc. These are considered extras and not necessarily cheap. Why should I have to pay an extra £15/£20 for the new 802.11n or £30 for Bluetooth which should just be standard on a laptop anyway and if I want I can get a Bluetooth adapter for much less if I want to waste a USB port.

But the biggest issue is once you add in an SSD the cost of that cheap Dell can jump up nearly £300 but you'll probably have to buy the SSD separately meaning you're paying for an HD to just take out and replace.

Most windows laptops don't seem to have an SSD option unless you want to buy a high-end laptop that costs as much as a Macbook and that's before you add the SSD and your laptop won't be as thin and light and will just look cheaper.

You just don't save that much if you buy a Windows laptop with like-for-like features and what you do save gets you something that just won't look as nice.

I would definitely say I am converted on Apple hardware. It is simply awesome and if you can afford it then definitely give it a go.

Yet another opinion on hiring programmers

2010-09-21T20:53:00.000-01:00

A lot of people have given their opinion on how you should hire developers / programmers. When I was starting out I wasn't bothered at all about quizzing and testing. After all, it does seem like a good way to prove yourself. But now that I've been doing it awhile I am starting to think that actually (in context of my experience) it is a bit insulting. As if I lied about my past experience or some how managed to hold down a developer role without having any skill.

The reason I say that is because often you're quizzed on basic things. Granted you can say that they're factoring in nervousness and the fact you're not quite yourself when in that situation. But still I don't feel it say much about you and it say nothing about what sort of person you are to work with.

I then thought about it a little longer and even if I were a graduate I'm not sure I'd want to be treated like a child and asked basic questions to see if I'm competent. After all if I was applying for for a carpenter vacancy I wouldn't be asked to nail two bits of wood together. If I were an architect would my potential employer ask me to draw up some plans for a dog house?

If I were just a graduate and I genuinely enjoyed programming then I should have some code to show off. This should be of more use than than telling someone what a red-black tree is. Anyone can cram on algorithm knowledge and spit out answers and if I have nothing to show off other than a degree and the work I was required to do for my degree then that should be a huge warning sign to employers even if I did well because it should be a warning that I'm not that enthusiastic if I don't want to do development in my free time.

I most certainly don't have the answer to everyone's hiring problems but think rather than making people do little trivial tests or quizzes it would probably be better to sit down with some of their code and discuss it. Discuss how it could be changed. It's not that it may need improving but just talking about how it could be done differently. That should give more than enough information as to whether it is their code and if they understand it.

Perhaps it would be useful (if done correctly) would be to just sit down and bash out some code together. I believe that would give you a better insight to what it's like to work with them and, again if done correctly, it shouldn't feel like you're pressuring them to knock out something while you hover over them. Hell, maybe you can do most of the code writing but taking direction from them. Try making it fun and not test-like so they can relax and hopefully you can see what they're really like rather than what they're like when pressured into parroting information about a language.

If they're new to development they don't have to be a genius and I don't think it actually takes that much to see if they have the basics. What will be more important is how they play with others in a team and their attitude. So while some of my suggestions may be a complete fail I think they're at least on the right track unlike treating them like they're testing in school.

I believe something needs to be done to improve interviewing for developers in many companies. It would be nice if companies could find a unbiased way to test various methods to see what works best for their requirements and not taking a half assed approach to interviewing by googling for some "awesome" interview quizzes / tests.

Playing with Django

2010-09-19T09:30:00.000-01:00

I've been playing with Python for awhile but have pretty much ignored web development with it for sometime. That changed when I looked into Google's app engine. I've created an app-engine site a little while ago. It's more or less done (aside from the visual design) but I'm not entirely sure what to do with it.

Google's app-engine allows you to quickly whip up a dynamic site while only really writing the code you want to write and not load of boilerplate code to get things working. It is truly awesome. I think the only reason I haven't went all the way with it is because you only have one option with app-engine and that is Google. I like Google but I would be afraid to built a site for anyone on something with so few choices because Google may decide not to run app-engine any longer and there could be a fair amount of work getting that site moved elsewhere. So I'll probably just use it for personal stuff.

So, with that in mind I decided to look into django. You can use Django with app-engine of course but the key thing for me is that I will be bale to build sites and host them on any server. If I host people's site on my server and they want to move it onto their own hardware there would be little work involved.

I don't have much to say about it at the moment as I am only just starting out but I have to say, like with most anything in the Python world, I am impressed. It's very easy to get started with (my app-engine experience probably helps a tiny bit) and just feels nice and clean.

I hope to post more about Django as I built out my project and for anyone curious, I am using PyCharm for my IDE to build my Django project. PyCharm is a Python IDE (obviously) developed by the IntelliJ guys at JetBrains. The inital beta was pretty good but it just keeps getting better. You should check it out. I've wrote about the small tweak that needs to be made on Linux, I'm not sure if that's been resolved in the latest beta but it's a fairly small issue. Once that's resolved it's all smooth on Linux.

I've also bought a Macbook Pro and installed PyCharm on it and I have to say I believe the performance on a Mac is probably the best of all three operating systems. Then again everything does just seem to run better on my Mac and did I mention it goes from being off to the desktop in like 3 seconds? Most excellent indeed!

Microsoft disallows Privates game

2010-09-18T13:38:00.000-01:00

Edge Online has reported that Channel 4's game Privates won't be coming to the Xbox 360. Zombie Cow Studio's Dan Marshall said:

“They’ve been really supportive and helpful throughout, but ultimately have advised that the game wouldn’t pass the Indie Games peer review process, purely due to its inherently sexual nature… It’s a shame, but it’s something we’d always pretty much assumed would happen.”

This isn't a huge loss. After all the game wasn't awesome but it is a fun way to pass the time and it's a fun way to teach teenagers a bit about their bodies and sexual diseases. More importantly it proves one key thing and that is that the Xbox 360 isn't as much of a adult platform as Microsoft would like people to believe.

The xbox 360 is home to a lot of violent video games. I like violent video games I do believe that there is no issue with mature games being released because yes adults do play games. But for video games to actually be a real form of entertainment, like books, movies and music, they need to cater to everyone and not only target a small group of people who are generally young teenage boys.

What Microsoft is saying is that you can maim, torture and brutally kill innocent civilians even as a modern day terrorist group but don't dare try to anything sexual if even in a light-hearted educational way. Sexuality is ok of course if it means boning a hooker and then beating her to death of course.

Channel 4 is a British company and the British, while not as open as the French, are more open about sex than the Americans so why not just sell the game there? No, Microsoft is forcing the whole world live with what uptight American parents think. In my opinion that is anything but mature or adult.

I think parents should have the choice to pick which games their child plays but I think the fact that companies, like Microsoft, don't allow a full selection of choices they are helping mask what they're actually offering. Parents can be somewhat clueless and still rely on the fact pornography won't be in games. Combine that with the fact you usually won't see the full contents of what is in a game except in areas gamers are going to look. You won't see whore beatings in an advertisement.

All this is doing is putting off many adults from games and holding the gaming industry back. I believe people should stand up to Microsoft and complain when they do something so stupid like stop a company from publishing a game that will help teach sex education just because it mentions words like vagina.

Another fail for America

2010-09-15T21:12:00.000-01:00

Christine O'Donnell has won the Delaware Republican senate primary and has provided more proof of the Republican falling further into the realm of the stupid and irrelevant.

The Tea Party seems hell bent on picking people who are just aren't up to the job. Now I don't believe people have to be career politicians or have some sort of elite education and career. However, I do believe a candidate shouldn't be useless.

According the Christine O'Donnell wiki page: O'Donnell was said to emphasize fiscal integrity in her campaign kickoff stating, "Voting to spend money we don't have has become the appealing option for too many politicians. The men and women of America know this is not sustainable."

This comes from someone who:

The IRS has filed a lien and said that O’Donnell owes $11,000 in back taxes

In 2008, she was unable to pay the mortgage for her Wilmington house and the mortgage company gained a judgment against her for $90,000.

As of 2010, she owes payments to staffers, consultants, and volunteers from the 2008 campaign.

Then, on the subject of her career: She listed herself as self-employed and said she was doing "odd jobs" to make ends meet.

Does this sound like someone who should have any say, no matter how small, over the US budget and finances?

Here is another awesome quote: "I think the fact that I have struggled financially is what makes me so sympathetic," which you can read (along with more information) at knowchristineodonnell.com.

Not only does she appear to be financially useless but she isn't all that keen on freedom. You'd think a tea party member who supposedly cares so much about the constitution would care about freedom and defend it.

She has campaigned against masturbation (here's youtube link of the SALT video) in the past and has been / is ant-pornogrpahy.

In fact everything she appears to believe seems to have nothing to do with the constitution or freedom but instead is some hard-line Christian BS. In fact my opinion that the tea party as a whole doesn't care about the constitution or freedom. They just want to live in some happy-happy Christian circle-jerk fantasy.

There is nothing wrong with women in politics but the Tea Party seems to attract repressed stupid women and are putting forth a lot of Palin-like idiot candidates. These are the sort of women who haven't been touched in years. They unfortunately vote more because quite frankly they don't have anything better to do with their sad little lives.

America was such an awesome place but I think it's going to go through some tough times and will most certainly lose its world power status if people like this start getting voted into power.

If you disagree with the tea party (as you should) then as boring as voting may be get out there and vote and don't let a minority of idiots ruin the country.

Is Arizona that stupid?

2010-09-07T19:05:00.001-01:00

Being in the UK for a good chunk of my life means not keeping up on all aspects of everything happening in America. I have found out recently about Ben Quayle and the fact he's running for congress in Arizona. The fact anyone would even consider this guy seems unbelievable to me. Do these people not remember Dan Quayle?

Granted these are people that keep electing John McCain and are trying to pass one of the dumbest immigration laws. I haven't really read anything that leads me to believe Arizona would be a nice place to live. It's incredibly hot and appears to be filled with idiots.

Ben Quayle has been going around calling Obama the worst president ever while of course forgetting he's carrying the same genes as Dan Quayle who was possibly the worst vice-president ever. He also seems to be forgetting Dubya has completely fucked up the United States.

Don't get me wrong. I did not vote for Obama and I would not vote for Obama. Though if forced to pick between Obama and McCain then yes I would have taken the lesser evil (Obama) rather than risking that mong Palin getting into the presidency through Oldly McOldson dying.

Ben has gone around implying he has children and he's a family man but has been caught out for being deceptive (though he still has pictures of him with kids on his site).

The controversy came a few days after Mr Quayle sent out a campaign picture showing his wife and two young girls with the words: "We are going to raise our family here."

However, he and his wife have no children and the girls were later revealed to be his nieces, leading a campaign rival to accuse him of "renting a family".

It is standard for republican candidates to pretend they're family people but I think the guy is showing his family stupidity by thinking he wouldn't get caught out on that or that people wouldn't find out that he participated on a rubbish site like The Dirty. Where the founder claims:

According to Nik Richie, founder of TheDirty.com, Mr Quayle used the alias "Brock Landers," the name of a character in Boogie Nights, a 1997 film about adult movie stars in California, to make his posts.

They are said to have included lines such as "My moral compass is so broken I can barely find the parking lot."

Mr Quayle was also said to have boasted of his physique, comparing it to one of Michelangelo's works in the Sistine Chapel.

I agree when Ben when he says it's insignificant and while questionable for a family man, holding a get-together in a night club isn't that big of a deal. That is unless of course you're pimping yourself as a moral family man conservative. In that case these very insignificant things show you're talking shit in my opinion.

Let's just hope the guy can spell potato.

Useful tips for intellij/Pycharm performance on Linux

2010-08-30T17:05:00.002-01:00

The latest version of IntelliJ and the PyCharm beta seem to be pretty sluggish under Linux (at least Ubuntu 10.4 for me) and in fact it's almost unusable. I've seem all sorts of standard Java tips like increasing the heap size but that doesn't do much. Guy Wiener though has the answer to fixing IntelliJ on Linux. This will work with PyCharm as well which is the flavour of IntelliJ I am using.

Simply put he states that if you add -Dsun.java2d.pmoffscreen=false to your idea.vmoptions file (or pycharm.vmoptions) file then that will fix it which I can verify it really does! This disabled Java's accelerated rendering which you don't really need for an IDE.

Also if you're using a desktop shortcut to start up IntelliJ / PyCharm then he suggested changing your command to this: /bin/sh -c "export JDK_HOME=/usr/lib/jvm/java-6-sun && /opt/IntelliJIdea8/bin/idea.sh

I didn't need to do it but I did try it. There was no measurable difference but it was fine after using the first option so it doesn't matter.

If you're having issues with IntelliJ 8 or the PyCharm beta then try those out. I think you'll find these changes will make a big difference.

Yet another article on IT age discrimination

2010-08-29T00:06:00.000-01:00

Techcrunch posted an article about Silicon Valley's age discrimination. While I'm not at an age where this should be a concern for me now it is a concern because like everyone else I am getting older.

There are few reasons this should concern everyone. The age discrimination is generally a sign of an employer taking advantage of their employees. Now as a young worker you're probably thinking that you're happy to work for 15 hours a day. But why? It's not healthy and your employer will dispose of you when you get too expensive or too old. So if you want to program for 15 hours a day why not do a reasonable work day for your employer and then spend the rest of that time working on your own project for money to save and invest?

By having your own money making projects you will look more attractive to future employers, you should end up making more money that way and you're in control. It's easier to take a break when you need it for when your social life demands it.

If the older population is growing and they're finding it harder to get employment then there will be larger tax burden on the youth to support these people. If it comes to that, do you really want to be working long hours for an even lower wage just so "gramps" can't get a job?

People are living longer so like myself, when we get older we will be working even longer before retirement. Being washed up in your 50's wasn't as bad if you could retire around 60 to 65. That's already been bumped up to 67 and will likely be bumped up again. If you're 20 maybe you won't be allowed to retire until 70. If you enjoy programming and maybe aren't capable of anything else do you really want to ride out 20 years of unemployment or jobs you hate?

Even if you are young and you're happy being over worked for a low wage if you think it's ok get jobs just based on that then really shouldn't companies just replace the youth with overseas employees who will as long, if not longer, for much much less and by shipping the work overseas they can shop around for countries with favourable employment laws making it even more attractive than hiring some American youth who will want a decent wage to pay off his university debt and who will be less subservient than the foreigner.

The tech industry isn't the first industry to take advantage of its workers (and won't be the last) and the least time this happened we saw unions come in and "fix" things for the employees. Now some industries are plagued with unions causing inefficiency and allowing people to keep jobs when they really shouldn't be. I don't think anyone wants this so it would be better to look out for each other since we'll all be in the same boat.

Now the reason why I think companies much rather pay less and get less experience is because everyone is quite happy to ship broken software and consumers are quite happy to buy broken software. We're at the point where it's expected that the software will be shit and will have to be patched.

So if everyone is happy with poor quality then there is no value in people with more experience and more ability to produce quality and there is a lot of value in hiring people that will work for nothing and know enough to produce something people will accept. Publishers can write up awful EULAs that basically say they're not responsible for anything if they sell you broken software. It is harder than it should be for consumers to return software. They'll just be accused of making a copy and trying to get their money back. It's just easier for consumers to accept crap.

I believe if we had protections in place to ensure a certain level of quality in the software (like we have with other products) then there would be more value in people who may demand a higher wage but will pump out a better product the first time around. Software is generally pretty expensive. Companies shouldn't be allow to ship something that is broken for hundreds dollars/pounds/euros. I think it's time governments start holding tech companies' feet to the fire and make put a much better effort into releasing something quality and get rid of this "ship now, patch later" mentality.

We will all be old eventually so we should aim towards helping each other and produce better software. Now while I stand by all those comments I should point out that I feel some older employees need to keep a few things in mind too.

Just because you're older, have a mortgage and kids doesn't mean you deserve a higher wage. You need to the extra experience and knowledge that is expected from someone your age to warrant that higher wage.

Just because you're older doesn't mean you don't have to travel or work some overtime. No all programming jobs require these things so if you find an employee that requires some late work days or travel then turn down the job if you simply don't want to do either of those things.

As an older employee you should realise you are going to live longer so there shouldn't be as much urgency to have your wage rise as fast with your age. You'll do fine on a lower wage especially if you've been putting money aside which everyone should be doing anyway because quite frankly relying just on social security would be rather silly.

Unless you really want to just be a COBOL programmer, you still need to keep up on new technologies an as an older experienced programmer you should know most of what you need . Learning the syntax of a new language should be trivial so do it and make yourself look more attractive to employers.

The tech sector's age discrimination needs to go away. I can't believe we can sit here and fight for the right of gay people to marry (I do believe very much they deserve the right btw), pointing the finger at rednecks, when we're equally discriminating against a group of people.

Caligula is truly awful

2010-08-26T19:16:00.001-01:00

I've recently purchased the 1979 movie Caligula. I have to admit I bought it purely because of the contraversy that surrounded at the time of its release. I wasn't expecting a great movie. After all this is movie featuring Bob Guccione, of Penthouse fame, as a director so it couldn't be that good. On the other hand it did feature Malcolm McDowell, Helen Mirren and Peter O'Toole so it shouldn't be too bad, right?

To top it off Wikipedia had this on its Caligula wiki page:

The unrated version, available in the US and mainland Europe, running 156 minutes (N.T.S.C.) and 150 minutes (P.A.L.), is the most widely seen cut of the film. It enjoyed a limited, albeit highly profitable, run in the U.S. cinema. This version contained significant sexual and violent content, including orgies, masturbation, fellatio, cunnilingus, anal fisting, homosexuality, transvestism, incest, rape, urination, as well as scenes of decapitation of prisoners by a giant "killing machine," infanticide, implied fratricide, and penile as well as testicular castration.

How could something with all of that be bad?

Well, I've watched it and it has to be the most uneventful, boring set of violence and sex I've ever seen. As a male as well I was naturally not cool with the fact it feels like it shows far too much penis in its collection of nudity.

But everything just felt slow (even by older movie standards), meaningless and lacking of life. I suppose some of this comes form the fact that, as far as I recall, a movie based on Caligula was shot and the Bob Guccione went in afterwards and filmed a load of sex scenes to be edited into the film and the end result is that it does feel that some scenes just don't gel together.

I think that maybe the internet has ruined me for watching things like this and I'm sure in 1979 this was something shocking and new but I felt like I was struggling just to finish it. I don't think I could recommend it to anyone unless you really want to see Malcolm McDowell fist a guy's ass and Helen Miren moisturise her skin with semen (with Malcolm coming over to taste it) because it will satisfy those needs for you. Otherwise just search the internet for any perversion you want to desensitise your mind with and pass on this.

Oracle to sue Google and put people off of Java

2010-08-13T22:00:00.003-01:00

The internet (well amongst certain groups) has been going nuts over the news that Oracle is suing Google over patent and copyright violations. James Gosling and even the .Net tool Miguel de Icaza is giving his opinion.

Some other links on this story:

FOSS Patents
MercuryNew.com
Google's response (Computer World)

So anyway, the gist of this is that Google's Dalvik VM is sort of based on Java. It compiles down to its own code but you write Java. Oracle doesn't like this because it's not a "normal" JVM. It's incompatible and more importantly it probably will kill J2ME but that's no real loss considering J2ME isn't that great.

I do understand that if Google is writing its own incompatible implement ion of Java which it shouldn't really be doing but as someone with an Android phone and having developed with it a bit I can say, to my knowledge, Google hasn't ever tried to pretend their implementation is normal JVM with a view of confusing consumers and killing Java. Where, for instance, Microsoft's JVM was a Java implementation whose purpose, if you ask me, was made incompatible to take control away from Sun and ideally kill Java.

But I do understand Oracle does want to protect its property and if Google did something wrong then fair enough.

My problem with this though is Sun was pushing themselves as being open source friendly and Oracle was promising good things for Java.While I won't ever make my own JVM I'm still now a bit more uncomfortable using Java and have concerns about its future.

I've always really liked Java. But my joy for it wore a bit when realising it's often just a language corporations use to make boring software. Funnily enough Google was the company that made Java feel exciting and keep my interest.

But now it's just a corporate language own by a big unexciting corporation who specialising in making boring corporate software. I just don't see anything about Java at the moment. Python on the other hand is nice and easy, exciting and there is likely less of a risk of being sued by Oracle or have Oracle bin something you need because it was deemed unprofitable.

So I think between this and Oracle killing Open Solaris, I'm just not seeing a reason to use Java any more because it just don't feel safe to me at t he moment.

.Net isn't the solution

Some people are now bigging up .Net and Mono claiming it's more free. I don't believe that's the case. You can't fully implement .Net and I believe the reason Mono without being sued by Microsoft is because it wants to lure developers into their control. Mono isn't incompatible with .Net in such a way to threaten Microsoft.

If Mono, like Dalvik, created a vastly superior implementation and it were killing .Net then you can pretty much guarantee Microsoft would be pissed. The free software foundation also wrote something on .Net and why it isn't as free as you may think.

Everything you find in .Net isn't in the ECMA standard and therefore not covered by Microsoft's community promise and there is no clarity as to what will happen if you implement those and some of these things are found in Mono.

I still believe Java is a better cross platform solution but then again, there are better solutions than Java and .Net.

Monty and MySQL

By the way there may be someone who remembers that I supported the Oracle when it came to MySQL and the EU approval of this merger. The merger of course hasn't turned out too well so far but actually MySQL has faired better than most of their projects and I still stand by opposition to Monty who I feel is someone who didn't really care about MySQL when he sold it but then saw an opportunity to have his cake and eat it too when Oracle came into the picture.

Quite frankly I'd avoid any further database development by him just on the chance this situation will crop up again. I believe PostgreSQL is the best option at the moment and I feel the no-sql movement is looking good too. MongoDB has been pretty fun to play with and neither Mongo or Postgres will be thrown to the wolves for a bit of cash.

Why the hate for net neutrality?

2010-08-13T19:20:00.001-01:00

Lee Sharpe wrote a long blog post making the case against net neutrality and quite frankly I'm surprised someone can effectively champion the revival of networks like AOL.He says that the free market will give consumers the best option. That, I dare say, is impossible.

One only has to look at mobile phones in the US. For instance, Verizon Wireless offers a talk package for $39.99. That is the cheapest package you can get. You get 450 minutes for that. Keep in mind you use minutes when receiving calls in the US. As of today Verizon only offers 5 phones for free if you take on a 2 year contract. These are the sort of phones old people and little children have in the UK because they're so cheap. No one would get these phones on a 2 year contract. So for $40 you don't get much at all.

Now, what did I get for £27.50 ($42.90) per month from T-mobile in the UK? I got 800 minutes which I only use when calling people, unlimited texts, unlimited internet and a Android G1 phone absolutely free on contract for 18 months. I got my phone very shortly after it came out so it's not like I got a G1 this month for that deal.

So to review the free market effectively bends you over by giving as little as possible. You pay for decent phones, you pay to receive calls, you have a longer contract and get less usage per dollar. My guess is the Verizon price includes no tax or additional fees. Where as mine includes all costs including the high 17.5% VAT rate.

Mr. Sharpe thinks this sort of "service" would be good for the internet. He makes comparisons to things like 1st class flights. This leaves out one little detail. If you can't afford a 1st class ticket you can still fly anywhere in the world. Turning the net into cable TV probably won't allow you to go anywhere you want to go because let's face it offering users more speed won't really be too useful to them. It would be nice to say you have a 1 gig per second internet connection but you are still limited by most servers on the other end so you will never download 1 gig per second. Most users expect not to get their full speed because let's face it that rarely happens so the best way to lock people in is with exclusive content.

He also states:

This is not the case with net neutrality because right now internet service providers are voluntarily complying with the standards net neutrality advocates seek to codify.

That's not actually true. They providing net neutrality because if they've been under near constant threat of the government stepping in to make net neutrality law. If they try locking you into some sort of AOL-like cable tv model you will get pissed and support the government's plan to make the net neutral.

He reasons that the New York Times can choose which ads they show rather than it being a case that any advertiser can advertise anything. Well that's not really a good example. The NY Times is a content provider. Ad content has a big impact on what people think of their content.

ISPs are not really content providers. They do not make content that can be damaged by having a pornographic advert beside it.

ISPs would love to control content but all they are really are people who provide "tubes" to connect to people providing content. Take his NY Times example and apply it to phones. Do you think it would be acceptable for Verizon to block porno lines because they don't think it helps their image? Would you want to be able to call certain people on your phone and have to shop around for companies that provide phone calls to the people you call?

You also have to keep in mind the free market never provided the US with a communications network. The only reason everyone has a phone is because of the 1934 Communications act that basically ensured that everyone had a phone because a phone isn't a car or a book. It's a vital piece of hardware that everyone should have.

These companies have also benefited from government law that allows the government to have a right of way onto your land. They didn't have to pay to buy off every property owner where they've laid wire. Is it ok that the teleco benefits from government intervention that takes your land but equal and fair access shouldn't be guaranteed? If we're for free markets then those companies should have to negotiate deals with everyone who owns land if they want to lay wire. The government shouldn't step in according to him.

He ends his blog post with this:

If the government regulates net neutrality, policies for internet access are set by one entity: the FCC. However, if the government stays out, each company will set its own policies. If you don’t like the FCC’s policies, you are stuck with them unless you leave the United States. If you don’t like your internet service provider’s policies, you can simply switch to another one. So which model sounds better to you?

This argument is completely flawed. The government is voted in by the citizens. If you don't like what the government does then you vote for someone else. If Broadband company A offers DSL for $59.99 and Broadband company B offers DSl for $59.99 where is your choice? Where do you go when both company A and B offering nothing of value? You can't vote them out, you won't get everyone else to stop using them. Again look at the US mobile market. It hasn't got better over time as more people and more competition has arisen. This is because companies rather team up and keep prices artificially high rather than properly compete.

A fully free market will never offer the consumer what they want. It won't ever happen and it has never happened. The consumer doesn't determine if the CEO keeps his job. The shareholders do and as long as they're happy that is all that matters. Share holders won't be happy with price slashing and giving more away.

Broadband is perhaps the single most important thing in a person's life since the phone. The internet will eventually replace the phone, the TV, radio, etc. You can almost guarantee the only way you will be able to apply for jobs, contact the government or maybe even learn will be through the internet in the future.

If the government doesn't step in and ensure that everyone has a fair chance to compete on the online world you will end up with pockets of people left behind.

Like-wise a fully government controlled world would equally be awful. There has to always be a mix of government control and free market functionality. People really should be vigilant and constantly evaluate what is happening and tweak the laws as required to ensure the best for everyone.

Back to mobile phones, the reason the UK, despite a higher tax rate and generally a higher price on products full stop has a much better deal on mobile phones is because the government did step in. For instance it said that a user should be able to keep their phone. By doing this companies can't lock you into their service through the hardware. They have to lure you in with better deals. This means giving away texts, internet, the phone.

The UK also has one phone standard. (GSM) so you can be guaranteed your phone will work with any service. This isn't the case in the US. Even if US companies open up their phones you won't necessarily be able to reuse it. That's unfair to the user and causes people to be more likely to throw away a perfectly good phone.

The EU is also stepping in and making it so mobile phone chargers are compatible. You may think that sounds silly by this will greatly improve the environment as your phone charger will not become more useful for long. Really, this is beneficial for companies too as there are no standard parts. That should drive down the cost for those parts and also cause there to be less design in the charger hardware and therefore lower cost (maybe).

This is the best solution. The government has stepped in where it makes sense. Companies are still free to offer you as much or as little service that they want. But because competition really is going to come down to services and costs they offer more for less. They're free to offer whatever hardware they want but you don't have to take it. In fact you can buy your own phone and just buy the service from them so they can properly compete and take customers away from any other phone provider because the network is neutral and any phone will work anywhere.

The US seems plagued by both left-wing nanny state nuts and right-wing free market nuts who believe in their extreme views rather than realising the best solution is in the middle. Extreme views on anything are never good.

If Americans truly want cheap good broadband they will want the government to push for net neutrally and leave companies to compete through offering superior and cheap services. Kill net neutrality and you be left with online "cable television".

Lastly, if the free market is so awesome and would work for the internet then surely it would be the best option for America's road network? Perhaps we should stop dumping government tax money into the roads. The government is evil, bloated and wastes money so privatise all the roads. Surely this would make the roads 10 times better.

Death Rally released for free

2010-08-11T16:41:00.001-01:00

Remedy had Jari Komppa update Death Rally for Windows and it has now been released for free. You can grab it from their website from, naturally, their Death Rally page. It appears this has been released for some time I didn't know this. I believe the reason is because Jari had recently written an interesting article on the process of porting Death Rally to Windows and what he had to go through.

Wikipedia of course has a good page up on what Death Rally was about. I had bought this game when it came out and probably still have the disc somewhere. It was similar to Rock 'n Roll racing in my opinion. Rock 'n Roll racing was better if I must say but Death Rally was definitely worthy of playing.

If you haven't played this fun little racer / shooter yet give it a go.

rsync.net - an awesome backup solution

2010-08-10T20:48:00.000-01:00

I learned about rsync.net sometime ago from one of my Linux magazines (Linux Format I believe) and have been using them for a couple years. The service has been nothing but exceptional. I've never experienced any slow transfers or downtime.

They offer encrypted file systems, FTP, SSH and WebDav, geo redundancy and all sorts as you can see in their FAQ. I felt their support is pretty good too. The turn around on email responses is fast and their site provides some useful HOWTOs. They even offer SVN and Git support and you can read more about this from an oldish blog posting about rsync.net SVN/Git support by John Kozubik.

The support is a big deal. These days you can't even email a company like Play.com which, in my opinion, is pretty shitty. I shouldn't be forced to make a paid call and potentially wait ages to find out why it's been over two months since I've order a DVD and it's still not here. I'll save that rant for another day though.

A lot of people talk about storing things in the cloud these days and I'm sure most services are fine but I've always felt rsync.net wasn't run by some big faceless company, their prices are reasonable and they just seem better for more technical people. You don't have to be a total geek to great use from their solid services but if you happen to want something cooler like a mounted FUSE file system on your machine then you can easily get that.

It's good to support the smaller guys because you generally get better service and I feel that is definitely the case with the most excellent rsync.net service.

Google stops development on wave

2010-08-04T21:18:00.000-01:00

Sadly Google has announced on their blog that they are killing development on Wave. I think this is a real shame because Wave was pretty awesome. It was a it different and I think it received a bad reputation by people who simply didn't understand it and people that had browsers that simply don't run JavaScript well.

I hope wave makes a comeback in the future. It's an awesome team tool and once people can start running JavaScript based web apps on any browser without issues I think we could see Wave or something similar come back.

R.I.P Wave

Rear Window - starring Christopher Reeve

2010-07-28T16:11:00.000-01:00

I've just picked up the 1998 "make for tv" (I think) remake of Rear Window starring Christopher Reeve and Daryl Hannah from Tesco.

I'm a huge fan of the original Rear Window. It was truly awesome where as this, I am sure, will be utter cack.

My guess is Mr. Reeve was hard up to do any work and this role was just a way to give the guy a bit of work. I don't envy him and feel sorry for what happened to him but making this movie probably isn't the answer.

I am going to watch it this weekend. I'm hoping it is awesomely awful. My guess is it will out do Itallian Stallion (Party at Kitty and Stud's) for being the shittiest movie in my collection.

A fun little game to try

2010-07-25T19:38:00.000-01:00

I've stumbled across Beakiez which is a bubble pop game (think Bust-a-move / Puzzle bobble) and having been a fan of Puzzle Bobble and Capcom's Super Puzzle Fighter, I was quite please to find this.

Beakiez has a videos on their site for those not familiar with the genre and a demo. If you like it then you can grab it for $9.95 via PayPal.

The game also comes with a scoreboard and you can see the current top players on their site and it updates itself. Some people may not like that but quite frankly I prefer it. After using Steam, Chrome and Ubuntu I just don't think I could go back to the days of having to hunt down updates for my software. I think it's better when the software takes care of it on its own.

Anyway, I think Beakiez is well worth its price. Check out the videos and the demo and support a small developer.

Trying PyCharm for Python development

2010-07-24T21:06:00.000-01:00

I've always liked JetBrains' IntelliJ IDE but I've always found it hard to justify the price when NetBeans works so well. However when it comes to Python I'm not totally satisfied with NetBeans. It's a minor complaint but it's code completion just doesn't seem that helpful. If you're used to coding Python and you're using core functionality that doesn't matter. But if you're using a new library sometimes I can be much more reliant on code completion.

Another option is PyDev which is an Eclipse / Aptana plugin. This works pretty well but it's in Eclipse. I just don't really like Eclipse. It's not awful or anything but it's not NetBeans or IntelliJ so while PyDev is good I would be happy to find something else. So when I've found out about JetBrains' PyCharm I was definitely interested.

PyCharm is only a pre-release at the moment but at the moment (and to be fair I've only written two small programs with it so far) it feels pretty solid and they're offering a 50% off coupon code so you can pick up a personal licence for £40 when it is available for purchase. I think you'd have to be pretty cheap to not pay that for a decent IDE.

You can check out the PyCharm blog here and the Community forums here. To key points are that it supports Django and Google App-Engine.

Anyway, I can't say much other than repeating what you can find on the links to the PyCharm site at the moment. I am going to continue playing with it and comment on it again.

One thing I will say is that at the moment is that the code completion doesn't seem to work at all with wxPython. You can type import and then press control + space to bring up the menu and see wx in there but if you try wx. or event. and then control space you get nothing. I haven't figured that one out. I've tried reloading everything and it doesn't help. This is on Windows XP with wxPython 2.8 and PyCharm 96-742. If anyone knows what I'm doing wrong please let me know!

I did submit a query for this issue on their forums and should hopefully have an answer soon. I have noticed Jetbrains are pretty good with responding in their forums. All around their products are pretty sweet and worthy of considering if you have the cash. It would be nice to see some sort of perl support in the future making it easier for me to stick to one environment but that's probably asking too much.

Microsoft defending Kinect pricing

2010-07-21T20:24:00.000-01:00

Microsoft has confirmed that Kinect will retail for £129.00 / $149.00 recently and also said it will be bundled with the 4GB console for £249.00 / $299.00. I personally think that's a bit expensive and it would appear I'm not the only one as Microsoft has tried defending the pricing. If you follow the link you'll see how the give a break down in chart form as to the cost for an existing system owner and new owner of all three systems if you're buying into motion control games. Naturally the PS3 comes out the most expensive, followed by the Wii and then the xbox 360.

What Microsoft fails to point out is that they have more than one system so their pricing chart is only partially correct. Secondly, they're making the assumption you want the Wii balance board, and they are also forgetting the cost to play motion games on the xbox 360 is always the same whether you are the only one who will use it or not. Where as with the Wii just the base system will satisfy lone gamers and for the PS3 you only need one controller.

Also if you buy the Wii fit, at least a second controller and the Wii system, you get three games assuming you buy the controller with Wii play which you'd be dumb not to since it costs the same as just a controller. You get only one game with Kinect.

Wedbush Securities analyst Michael Pachter has made a very good point (for once) too. He stated that the Kinect only costs $100 if you buy it with the system where as if you're an existing owner you're paying $150. Either they're taking a big loss on the new system combo or they're milking existing xbox 360 owners. They can clearly sell the unit for $100 so why not sell it for that price to everyone and give it a greater chance of being a success?

The xbox 360 has always been a fairly expensive system. In fact, I'm not sure if it's still the case with the death of the HD-DVD add-on but it was more expensive than the PS3 to get an experience similar to the PS3. By the time you pay for live, buy a wifi adapter (to be this is included in the new system finally) and everything to bring it up to same level as a PS3 it's more expensive than the price they're advertising for the system. You then do not get full internet access like the Wii or PS3, you don't get as many movie options as the PS3 (Blu-ray and DVD), you have to buy expensive proprietary hard drives (to be fair if you need it) and I would personally still feel concerned the hardware isn't as good as it should be even if you don't hear about the RRoD anymore.

Maybe Kinect will do well but I think they've ruined their chances for casual gamers and considering how much xbox 360 fanboys mock the Wii and its games it makes you wonder if they're really going to want to pay so much for a similar experience. One a lot of people feel is more embarrassing since you have to stand up and flail about and it is looking like they're just bring some of the worst aspects of the Wii to the xbox 360.

Linux finally get a native Spotify client

2010-07-20T18:43:00.000-01:00

I've not been paying attention unfortunately so I've only just found out that Spotify has announced the other week that they've released a native Linux client.

It doesn't play local music at the moment and due to issue displaying ads you need a premium account. That's ok, in my opinion, as it is only a preview release and quite frankly the only reason I didn't buy a premium account is because I couldn't have a native Linux client.

Spotify worked good under wine but I don't want wine on my computer (I didn't move to Linux to use Windows software), Spotify was the only reason I had wine and the main reason I didn't buy a premium account was because I felt there could be more issues with the wine version over a native client. I didn't want to pay out for something that may would be more likely to break in my opinion. Don't get me wrong, wine does its job very well but if I've ever had issues with something on Linux it typically involved wine.

Linux music fans should show their support for this awesome program. I believe Spotify is one of the best things to happen to music in a long time. I don't think you'll regret paying £9.99 for easy access to a wealth of music. As an added bonus, with the premium account you can use Spotify on your phone. I think I'll finally fill my SD card on my android phone.

Mark Rein is a jerk

2010-07-18T13:00:00.001-01:00

That's what developer Cliff from Positech games had to say about Mark Rein. The key chunk from the blog post was this:

At this point, there was this derisive snort from this guy in the front row, who said something to the effect of ‘one guy? who cares, that’s a waste of time’. He then started to lecture us on how that’s a silly way to do it. I’m 95% sure that all four of us on the panel thought ‘what the fuck?’ as well as ‘who is this guy’? compounded by Robin asking him if he worked in marketing.

Anyway… it turned out this guy was Mark Rein from Epic, although he seemed to assume everyone within earshot knew exactly who he was, and why he must obviously be right. I got the impression he was there to laugh at the little guys, or to just inform us how we are all wrong. Interestingly, it seemed there was someone from sports interactive (one time indies, as I recall) there, who seemed more on the indie wavelength than Mark. It would have been cool to chat with him.

This isn't really any surprise as I personally feel Mark was never keen on helping out Epic's gaming community Even way back in the Unreal days when we had to beg and write a petition to get the final Unreal patch we had been promised so many times to hopefully fix their broken game for good. They've just never felt like they wanted to do any more than take people's money for their games.

Comparing this to the likes of Id software who has given their fans the source code to some of their games and Valve software who has just provided so much free content to keep people playing. It may seem unwise for Valve to do that because that content does cost money to make. While they may get more more money from me by creating this content, if it keeps me playing then I'm more likely to lure my friends into playing the game as well. Those friends will have to buy the game. So they are making more profit by providing the free content.

I would like to say I still think Tim Sweeney is a pretty awesome guy. From my experience he's been more like the sort of developer Cliff mentions in that he'll reply to fans. He doesn't seem to seek fame like CliffyB or Mark. In fact in some ways it's like he doesn't exist.

Anyway, I'll end this by saying you should check out Gratuitous Space Battles from Positech and support a decent indie developer. If you're into 2D shooters I think you'll definitely enjoy it.

Read a book nigga

2010-07-17T19:06:00.001-01:00

I'm sure many of you have probably heard the "Read a book" song as it's been on the net for some time. What you may not know is this is the work of Bomani Armah.

Read a book is very humorous and fun to listen to while also sending an exceptional message that actually applies to many people and not just the "niggas" it is aimed at. There are any people in the fens of England that it applies to.

Anyway, if you haven't listened to Bomani's other works you're missing out. Please take the time to check out his site. He's doing an awesome thing and asking for a minimum of $5 for some super high quality versions of his albums but you can pay more and I would recommend you pay at least what you would a for a RIAA cd and support a real artist. I would also recommend "The hustle /shake it off" which he doesn't appear to promote on his site but you can find on Amazon. This contains "Read a book" but many other excellent songs.

Many people claim they download music because the money doesn't get to the artist. Here is an artist pumping out some great tunes, he's allowing you (within reason) to pay what you want and more (if not all) money goes to Bomani so be a man and check it out and if you like it pay him some money.

The Expendables - Call To Arms Trailer

2010-07-12T18:23:00.000-01:00

The Expendables will be fucking awesome even if Jason Statham is in it.

Open it in a new window and enjoy it properly. Shame Van Damme isn't going to be in it but he is a true artist and has instead opted to work on Universal Soldier IV.

David Prowse = banned

2010-07-10T15:39:00.000-01:00

Everyone knows that David Prowse was the man in the Darth Vader suit these days. What you may or may not know is that he's commented on his lack of residual payments. George Lucas claims that Return of the Jedi has not made a profit. I suspect that David may have annoyed the wrong people by bringing this up. So now he has been banned from appearing in any Lucas Film related events.

I think a lot of people would agree that once George gets more control over something (like the Star Wars special editions) he ruins them and the worst, in my opinion, was wiping Sebastian Shaw from the end of Return of the Jedi.

It just appears that actually the guy has no talent and has been around the right people at the right time and as a result he has made more money than most people ever will so banning a guy from trying to make some money from his work when he's pointed out that you've screwed him is out of order. Mind you there may be other reasons as to why he was banned. I can't say for certain this is the reason but I would personally put money on it.

It is unfair to just jump on George Lucas for his shady accounting practices. Everyone in Hollywood does it. Hollywood accounting is by far nothing new. Here are a few good links on the subject:

'Millionaire' aftermath: Why do studios keep losing lawsuits?

11 biggest sci-fi blockbusters that still managed to LOSE money

'Hollywood Accounting' Losing In The Courts

I really don't like piracy. I believe there is no reason to pirate software when there are so many open source solutions. Most people's reasoning for pirating music doesn't make any sense and actually harms the musician and yes I still don't think you should pirate movies.

But actually it gets harder for me to justify that. Really, why should someone pay for a movie. After all it shouldn't matter. No movie appears to make money anyway. Why does it matter if the loss is bigger?

The fact of the matter there is no loss. It's a loophole where they pay themselves to make a movie and therefore do not have to pay actors as much as they should because they can offer a percentage of the net profits which of course there will never be any.

Mot every company will have loop holes but Hollywood have more than most. I believe all the loop holes should be closed. A flat tax which corporations (and citizens too actually) would be the best option.

Now the accounting loop hole doesn't stop Hollywood from paying taxes. Someone still receives that money and has to pay tax on it but it screws over a lot of hard working people, like David Prowse. So I would definitely like to see that tackled as well as corporate loopholes. To think some no talent hack like George Lucas is up to his bulbous neck in cash while the people who did the real work didn't receive their fair share is simply no right.

These studios are screwing their employees and their customers. So again, I'm not really seeing how I can justify to someone why they should pay for a movie. In all other instances not paying can have an affect on the "little guy's" income but that isn't the case with movies.

Google Street View apparently collected data from members of congress

2010-07-09T22:28:00.000-01:00

The BBC ran an article stating that Consumer Watchdog is apparently claiming that Google's street view wifi data is now a national security issue and that Google collected data from members of congress. Now I'm not saying what Google did was right but they've been pretty open about it and said it was a mistake. I would tend to believe it was. What annoys me is this particular bit from the article:

It found that Congresswoman Jane Harman, who heads the intelligence sub committee for the House's Homeland Security Committee, has an open home network that could have leaked out vital information that could have been picked up by Street View vehicles.

They bring this up like Google has taken advantage of them where in reality this just shows that someone who heads the intelligence sub committee for the house of representative's Homeland Security Committee is an idiot if you ask me.

Jane Harnman is 65 years old. To be fair she is probably no computer genius so it is no surprise she has an open wifi network. She spent a chunk of her life in an era with no TV and black and white TV. You wouldn't expect her to know about computers...but she should learn before using one to be honest. Apparently Henry Waxman has an open network too. They go on to say:

"Our purpose was to show that members of Congress are targets just as much as every other citizen in the land" said Mr Simpson.

It's as if they're implying that members of Congress are more important and we need to take this seriously now. To me it makes no difference who is doing it. Congressmen, no matter what they would like think, are not special.

But if you think this is more serious because of the data they may or may not be working with the problem isn't with Google. The problem is with the politicians who are potentially handling sensitive data over an open network.

It should never be illegal reading or sending data over an open network. It's open and accessible to anyone and any hardware with wifi capability will in fact seek out these connections and likely connect automatically. That is how they're built and people need to deal with that. When a network is left open it should be assumed anyone will use it. So why is no one questioning the idiotic choice of these politicians if they are indeed using their open connections for work related business?

Google holding small bits of this data on a server somewhere never to be accessed by the public isn't a problem. However there is a fact we have been reminded of once again that spies still exist in the US and they would be more than happy to snoop on congressmen as would a lot other people with evil intentions.

There should be outrage that these politicians are a security risk not Google. It's a another case where the idiotic user is viewed as a victim rather than being the problem. It does not take a genius to realise that no one should be leaving their network open to the world especially if you are handling sensitive data.

Personally I would fire any member of the government that could handle sensitive data and is found with an open wifi network in their home. Instead we'll probably get some grandstanding from the government to make it appear they're looking after us but in reality they'll just be looking for money from Google. Google gives them the money and the issue goes away.

My general view on Google Street View is that it is awesome. I think too many people are being pussies about it. There is nothing on there that you can't see in public. Yes it does allow someone in the UK to see someone's house in the US. But there is not going to be anything in view that would drive the UK person to fly across the world to steal something. If someone steals something from you it will be a local and Google Street View does not make their job any easier. In fact a lot of the burglaries in this area are done by the homeless looking for cash for drugs. They don't use a computer to pick houses. They wake up wanting drugs and just go to the nice looking houses and steal.

But Street View has enabled a lot of people to learn new things and I know I've personally found so many new and interesting things on it. I think the benefit of Street View by far out weighs any possible negatives. I'm more concerned about the government spying on me as there will be no good coming out of that for me.

I think Google Wave is underrated

2010-07-07T20:35:00.000-01:00

I got in on the Google Wave beta in 2009 and enjoyed it from day one. I was able to get a lot of my co-workers using and I think we all find it very useful. Some of them are complete computer mongs and they still got it fairly quick.

However my personal wave account is still very empty. I just can't get my friends to use and I think they're missing out.

Some people seem to think it's rather complicated and I think there are so many ways to communicate that wave sort of gets lost in the mix. I believe Google should try to push it a bit harder.

Google is also pretty big now and a lot of their products give the appearance they're not too big on privacy which I don't believe is the case (at least no worse than any other company) so perhaps there is a bit of backlash over using yet another Google product. But that's the thing. Wave is a protocol and you can run your own server which you can grab from Google code.

Wave is sort of hard to explain (yet another problem) and that's why I've opted not to even try. Here's Google video on it but I think you should just give Wave a try and ideally with a couple friends so you can really take advantage of it.

While you're at it, give Buzz ago. I'm lazy and like the fact it's built into Gmail and Facebook is old now so move on!

Bruce Lee's Game of Death shoes

2010-07-07T17:15:00.004-01:00

I've had a few firsts today. Today I have received the first pair of shoes I have ever ordered online. They are also my first yellow pair of shoes and these are also quite possibly my first bad ass pair of shoes. I've had shoes I've really liked before but these are like the ones worn by Bruce Lee in Game of Death (though minus white laces) and Uma Thurman in Kill Bill (unfortunately no "Fuck U" on the soles though).

I purchased these from Sole Trader. I've not had any problems with their shops and as a very good added bonus I was able to return the shoes, had there been any problems, to the local shop rather than the hassle of posting them off again.

Sole Trader was super fast and yes, I will definitely use them again.

For those that don't know the shoes are Onitsuka Tiger trainers. Technically my version is called Mexico which pre-dates Game of Death. The Tai Chi ones used in Game Of Death can't be bought. So yeah technically they're only like 97.5% the same but they are the closest thing you can buy these days without paying a dumb amount on ebay if you're totally anal about it.

My next step may be to get Woodall's Game of Death nunchaku. They're quality wood nunchaku but not the same ones in the movie. That's ok because the ones in the movie were clearly foam ones so no one would get hurt where as Woodall's are what they probably would have been in real life.

Now I just need to find some things to kick!

Mark Rein wants us to believe Epic cares about PC gamers

2010-07-05T17:17:00.000-01:00

Everyone is reporting that Mark Rein's comments about how it's a myth that they have abandoned the PC.

I personally don't believe for one moment that Epic really care about PC gaming. They've not really done anything in the PC market for what like 5 or more years.

What they have done has been awful. Unreal Tournament 3 felt very much like a console game ported to the PC. The menus were awful and quite rightly people complained about them.

Then there is just the fact it was boring. Epic just seems to make games featuring bald space marines with homosexual tendencies in my opinion and of course there is nothing wrong with being homosexual but perhaps there is more to it.

After all this is coming from a guy who called himself CliffyB and dressed like this like he was in a boy band. It would be my opinion that CliffyB either suffers from short man's syndrome or he's repressing something. That is why he's insisting on being called Cliff Bleszinski and is trying to look all bad ass now. It doesn't really work though when you look like a boy and you as tall as one.

Just enjoy it CliffyB, it will work in your benefit when you're like 50 years old and all your colleagues look like trolls and you still look young. Just don't dress like a queef.

Anyway, that's enough veering off course simply to post a picture of CliffyB in his gay boy suit from ages ago. The point being their games aren't that great. In a way I'm not that surprised. I do think they care more about selling engines and therefore their games need to showcase their technology and unfortunately creativity and imagination get left behind. CliffyB said this about Unreal Tournament 2003 when they were promoting the complete version of Unreal Tournament 2003 known as Unreal Tournament 2004.

I personally think treating your customers like that would give a lot of them (especially teens on limited funds) an excuse to pirate your games and they probably did it often so my guess is Epic decided to run to the consoles for some safety against piracy.

That's cool and if it works for them go for it. Just don't come back and tell the PC guys that you love them when you're working towards releasing Bulletstorm on the Xbox 360 and PC.

So far from what I've seen BulletStorm looks like cack. There is a video with commentary from CliffyB on the site and he points out the rope climbing and how we'll see that often. No shit, I saw it happen almost twice in a row in the video. It just looks like it will they'll drag that and the electric whip thing on too long.

Then a generic fat guy comes along with a minigun where we hear some guy spout some of that awesome "verbage" CliffyB mentions when he says "where'd this giant dick come from?". It's good to see Epic can still afford to hire 13 year old boys to write their dialog.

Factoring all that and the ADD-like constant flashing of various kill types (of which there doesn't seem to be that much variety) it just feels like a game for 13 year old console kiddies styled to look like a cross between a game developed by Id software and Crytek. Sorry but as a PC gamer I expect better.

Epic you can stay on the Xbox 360, your games are pretty boring. I'll stick with Valve and Id on the PC. Id may not release many games on the PC but they don't do that full stop and quite frankly Rage looks awesome and they'll no doubt not only show support for the Windows PCs but Mac and Linux as usual. Gabe Newell and Valve have consistently release more quality PC content than Epic could ever hope to release. They have then brought their games to Mac and may be bringing them to Linux.

These are real PC developers who are supporting PC gaming. Epic is just dumping their crap on the PC to pick up a few sales. I hope PC gamers are wiser now and will avoid any of their PC ports.

BBC calls Facebook users saddos

2010-07-05T16:23:00.000-01:00

The BBC launched their Olympics site just a bit too early and were caught out calling their Facebook fans saddos. Even as a casual Facebook user I would agree...even if that then makes me a casual saddo.

What I like most is that is shows they're creative. I really dislike the whole "Lorem Ipsum" text usage. I never feel it looks right and I think it shows a lack of creativity and personally I think this shows the BBC hired good creative developers.

If you're any reasonable developer you should create your own unique text generator to prove your awesomeness or if you're more of a designer / creative type just write something interesting. Just don't do what every other pretentious designer does.

I also feel taking the time to write something (even if it doesn't make much sense but at least is in English) makes feel more real rather than some sterile computer generated page.

Buck the trend and even be daring and call your clients weiner mouth because quite frankly they probably are one.

One more step away from Windows and fully supporting Linux

2010-07-04T20:58:00.002-01:00

I've just painfully finished copying everything from my laptop which runs Windows XP. I didn't realise how much stuff I had on here that I haven't backed up already. Anyway, this is my only machine that runs Windows. My desktop runs Ubuntu and my netbook runs Xubuntu. My phone is even a flavour of Linux in the form of Android. As my files were backing up I decided to check up on the issue with Ubuntu killing hard-drives.

It does concern me that by the initial search results it doesn't seem that apparent. I can go to the launchpad and see that fixes have been released but then going to this wiki page makes it sound like it's still a manual process that I have to manage. I don't really mind as such but if I'm being completely honest, as knowledgeable as I may believe that I am I do feel uncomfortable when making a cock-up means my hard drive is dead.

So I decided to check my hardrive and Windows tells me I have a Hitachi harddrive numbered Hitachi HTS541010G9SA00 and sure enough that shows up on the list with no work around notes or much information at all really. I don't really want to risk losing my code.

To be fair this isn't strictly Ubuntu's problem. As I understand their philosophy is not to mess with the hardware and leave it up to the hardware manufacturer to do the right thing and Hitachi seemingly has not done the right thing and instead has opted for aggressive power saving features which seems rather stupid. Part of me does think Ubuntu should keep an eye out for dumb settings and over ride them. Because it's not really Ubuntu's problem as such my concern is using any other variant of Linux will have the same problems.

One thing I do know for sure is that I won't ever buy a system with a Hitachi harddrive in it again.

So anyway, I do believe I'll over come this. Once I do I will be reinstalling windows...which may seem odd but my plan is to still leave a Windows partition on this machine (unfortunately) to run Steam and nothing else.

Then the rest of my machine's drive will be taken up by Ubuntu. Sadly gaming on Linux isn't just where it should be imo. It sounds like Steam is coming and I'm sure Valve will port their games but that is a small fraction of my games. I suppose I could give Wine a go for the others but quite frankly I don't like the idea of Wine and I do consider it a bit of a security risk. I want to run Linux not Windows in Linux.

I think I rather just give Windows a partition and run my games there and not worry about Windows viruses as much. In fact I'm not sure I will update my Kaspersky subscription because I don't intend to surf the net on the Windows partition. It would be used strictly for gaming.

I think until I give up PC gaming this is the closest I'll get to giving up Windows. I will keep supporting companies like 2D boy though for porting World of Goo to Linux and hopefully companies will start supporting Windows, Mac and Linux more often and I can get closer to ridding myself of Windows completely.

Your excuses for stealing music are wrong

2010-07-02T23:32:00.002-01:00

You may have seen the following image in your inbox, on reddit or digg and if you're not too bright you're probably thing "OMG, the artist is getting screwed!". Well, the truth is he isn't and this chart is funedmentally flawed.

For starters, I've not ever found a source for the image. My guess is that it was made up by someone wanting to justify their piracy by creating a chart that represents how he thinks things work.

The problem is that even if this was accurate this really only counts for one artist and one deal with one record company. Independent musicians can often get a bigger chunk. The problem of course is that they unknown and his sales will be much lower than say the likes of Kanye West.

The other problem is what does record company represent? My assumption is that it covers everything that isn't in the other slices. People view the record company chunk as a bunch of guys in suits sitting around in a 50th floor office snorting coke off whore's asses. I'm sure in some cases that may happen but what about all the stuff the artist relies on to get known and sell his music.

The artist does indeed sing the song but who wrote the song? Often there is a song writer who needs to get paid...is that covered by "record company" or did the guy forget that when making up the chart? Then there is marketing and promotion. Those posters, record spots and TV advertisements don't come for free. The actual distribution of the music requires a producer and studio (as covered in this chart to be fair) to do a hell of a lot more than people think. Those private jets and limos that haul the artist around also need to be paid for.

The distribution of the music requires someone to actually make the CDs. There will be some designers who will create the cover art. They need to be paid, their hardware needs to be purchased and benefits, like insurance for that employee need funding.

Once the songs are mixed and tweaked and someone makes the cover art we're still not done yet. That music needs to then go to a factory where it will be produced. Those employees need to be paid and again they may have benefits like dental cart or health insurance and those need to be paid for as well. The cost of the insurance for the factory or any other record company building will need to be paid too. Someone then needs to hold that stock in a warehouse, then send it off to the shops. The record company may have to pay for premium shelf space that draws attention to the new album.

Speaking of the store shelf, the retailer selling you the disc needs to pay for their real estate, their employees and their benefits. Yes, believe it or not, even low paid shop floor monkeys may receive health / dental insurance and all of that has to come out of the price you pay at the cash register. The pie chart does not appear to cover this at all.

So in fact the artist actually has to do very little. If it's a pop star they probably don't even write their own songs and to top it off they probably can't sing as we've seen when people, like Kanye (sorry for picking on Kanye if you're a fan) when he had that equipment malfunction on SNL ages ago. Despite actually doing very little in the grand scheme of thins Kanye is worth at least $30 million and if you look at some of the crap other artists buy you can see that little slice pays very well. Really now, if Lil' Wayne can buy diamond teeth then there is a pretty good chance he's not struggling and thanks to the marketing and distribution power of the record label he really only has to sing the song and then he's able to sell his music all over the world.

To be honest, I'd be more than happy with that little slice if that is the sort of life an artist can lead to....not that I want diamond teeth mind you.

This sort of thing happens in any business. Farmers get a tiny chunk of money for ever food item you buy. You may not think that is fair but the farmer, on his own, couldn't possibly sell his goods around the world on his own. The Farmer, like the musician, could do it themselves but there is little chance they could given it would be expensive to cover the whole process to get the CD on the shelf.

Both the artist and farmer can do business locally quite easily. If they're happy with that then they'll do it and get all the profit but it won't be in the millions.

This is how the real world works and it works well. Maybe artists should get more but their pay should be relative to the risk. At the moment if their next album fails they may get dropped by their label but that would be better than having to pay out for manufacturing and delivery and end up flat broke.

If you still think that some how the artist still deserves 50% (or more) then shouldn't they have 50+% of the risk? Also if that slice is too tiny are you not making it worse by stealing the music? You can't say these guys are getting screwed and just getting by and then claiming giving them even less money will some how make their lives better.

Saying you don't believe in their business model and therefore can't support it is just a cheap excuse to justify your copyright infringement and is no smarter than the old idea that if you only download a rom and only have it for 24 hours then it is ok.

If you don't like DRM and that is your reason for not buying music that is fine, I hate it too but I buy my music from Amazon.com and get to enjoy their cheap DRM MP3s. You're showing your dislike for DRM and that you will actually buy legal music if it has no DRM. That DRM isn't free and in fact the cost of that will likely fall under that "record company" chunk. Do you think the record company wants to pay out for DRM which eats into their profits? No, they would probably be very happy to sell plain old MP3s which make their lives easier but not if you're just going to share it with all your friends. So please don't steal and support awesome digital music shops like Amazon.

The options are there but those who don't take them and opt for pirating are clearly just tight asses or kids with a huge sense of entitlement. They're making it worse for artists and if you keep pirating then both the companies and governments are going to make the internet a worse place and nobody wins. Some of that profit is going towards lobbying for ACTA so again by being a thief you're causing the artist to get even less money.

It has also been debunked that people pirate to "help" the little guy. It's not true, people still download more pop rubbish rather than actually using the option to discover new unknown artists. So once again the little guy is not being helped.

The problems is that this is not helping no one. It hurts the artist and everyone that uses the internet. Just admit what you're doing is wrong, be a man, and buy legal DRM free digital music. Support super awesome services like Spotify and you will see a change. All record companies care about are profits and having to pay for DRM, lawyers, lobbying, etc cuts into their profits. I'm sure the lawyers enjoy it but everyone else would much rather you just do the right thing.

Tattoos and why I won't get one

2010-06-26T15:35:00.000-01:00

I like the idea of tattoos. They seem like a good way to express yourself but I don't think I'll ever do it. I think I would suffer from the same problem most other people suffer from and that is that I just couldn't pick something that I would have to potentially live with the rest of my life. I just can't think of something that I will like long enough to warrant a tattoo. A painting is different because if I, for instance, bought a black velvet Mr.T painting and next year I realise it's actually pretty embarrassing then I can put it in the attic or chuck it in the bin. Again, with a tattoo, that's not really the case.

With something so permanent I would also feel I should pick something very unique and inventive. I just don't think I have it in me to pick something like that.

That is where I think most tattoos fail. The amount of girls / women that I have seen with exceptionally boring and uncool tribal tattoos on their back (ie tramp stamp, slag tag) is far too high. For starters they aren't native American Indians. These tattoos are neither unique, cool or anti-establishment (after all there is a Gameboy Advance with tribal designs and even a tacky Barbie doll with Ken's name above her ass) so I'm not sure why someone would want to do that. I don't think that I'm just acting like some backwards elderly person. After all, I would appreciate a very unique tattoo of a naked Jesus spin-kicking the heads off of children in a school yard. It'd take huge balls to do something like that and that is both cool and respectable.

I think what tattoos come down to for most people despite them professing to want to show their creativity and individuality (both of which is rarely the case) is that they want to belong to a group and what better way to do that than to tag yourself and maybe that is my problem, there is no one group I want to associate enough with to tag myself. I do consider myself an individual and while it may seem to some that I am boring and being a sheep by following social norms, I see it as I'm being myself and not advertising it to the world. If I strike a moment of genius and come up with something truly awesome then maybe I'll get a tattoo but then again it could be copied and then I'm just another person tagged with yet another boring tattoo.

To be fair to the tattoo people, tattoos aren't as bad as piercings. The piercings themselves aren't bad but most people just shouldn't do it. For every 1 person that can pull off that look there are about 10,000 that can not. Facial piercings rarely work and make most people look uglier and there is something about tongue piercings that attract fat girls. I'm not sure what it is but a bit of metal in your mouth isn't going to make you pretty and you may just get bits of your burger stuck in and around the piercing. That is definitely not sexy, fatty.

Both are the complete opposite of creativity and individuality. If those are your reasons for doing them, you probably should reconsider. If those aren't your motives then go ahead and have fun!

It must suck to be a celebrity and look at yourself

2010-06-20T00:28:00.000-01:00

I was watching Zombieland yet again (a truly awesome movie) and once finishing it and putting the movie back in its case I decided to be a nosey bugger and look up some of the actors/actresses on Google. I'm not sure why but it was probably boredom (it is 2 in the morning after all and I'm installing NetBeans on my laptop...very sad I know.

Anyway, naturally, I've singled out Emma Stone because, let's face it, she's the only one worth sporting a wood (well maybe except Bill Murray O_o) and I noticed something that I and I'm sure others have noticed and that is that her image on the DVD cover is only a reasonable facsimile of her. It's close but not the same. You could argue that she is actually uglier in real life. I personally don't think so but in the DVD cover they've basically Photoshopped out anything that could be considered by someone as being ugly (i.e. freckles, lines, etc) and I would think, if I were Emma Stone, I probably would feel a bit shit knowing most people only see the Photoshopped me or the heavily make-up covered me and there are, sadly, more than a few people that would find the real her less attractive.

I'm sure Woody Harrelson, Jesse Eisnberg and, unfortunately, even Abigail Breslin go through the same thing. In fact this possibly comes up for every celebrity. Sadly Abigail has gotten into the business very early and has the highest chance of being a Dana Plato and kicking the bucket early. That is a truly awful thing to say. I can admit that but child stars don't exactly have a good track record.

I think being a movie star could be really sweet but I definitely would be bummed out by knowing every public image of me is fake. Not so much because I'd think I am uglier in reality but just because it's not me and in a way I'm not famous but the made-up me is the one that is famous.

The knock-on effect of course is a lot of people (mainly women) have issues over their looks because they seem to not quite grasp that celebs don't actually look the way they do in most of their photos. Adobe, amongst others, profit from this but I do believe they should be a push towards more realistic photographs of famous people. I think a lot of people, including the celebrity in the photo will end up feeling better about themselves.

Project Natal becomes Kinect

2010-06-14T16:30:00.000-01:00

Over lunch I went to edge-online and found out that Microsoft has changed Natal's name to Kinect. The name, in my opinion is horrible. I can only assume it's their way of tying it to their awful phones, the Kin. But it gets worse, there is apparently an Italian advert going around showing off a redesigned xbox 360. It looks like some sort of cross between a cheap DVD player and an Alienware abortion.

But if that wasn't enough for you, Microsoft has done their best to wow you. From the company that insisted on having two versions of their console (regular and handicapped) and 6 versions of Windows 7 and 6 versions of Windows Vista, they are apparently giving people two versions of Kinect.

It's already an apparently going to be an overpriced add-on late into the life of the 360 and aimed at a arguably risky market for Microsoft and what do they do? Make it worse. Really, what are the differences? if one just comes with games then fair enough. However if there are any features differences that is just freaking stupid and begging for failure.

Last but not least there is a video of some Star Wars game going around. Some gifs have cropped up showing how awesome Natal / Kinect's accuracy is. Click to enlarge and sorry to anyone on dial-up for the big ass files.

This isn't really any surprise. Microsoft has got caught out doctoring images before and let's face it, they rarely release any images of their top game, Halo, from an actual gameplay point of view. Mainly because it will look as god-awful boring as it actually is.

I think the only real mystery left with Natal / Kinect is whether it will be a big ass failure or only a minor failure. Either way though I am sure it will be a failure.