My Life

NaNoWriMo

2011-10-31T14:56:00.000Z

I'm thinking of writing a novel in November.

Yup. Just like that.

The creator of this almost venerable endeavour has written a book called "No Plot? No Problem!" and guess what? That's exactly the situation I'm in at the moment.

So I shouldn't worry and just start writing.

Ok, so the chances that I will write the next Great Expectations or War and Peace might be slim, but I do really feel like doing something else. And 1,700 words per day, that should be possible, no?

I've even got the title of the book: "The Penguin and the Frog"... Or was it "The Frog and the Penguin"?...

Obviously I'll have to seriously consider this and make sure the name is correctly reflected in the actual content of the book.

Anyway, you can see what I'm up to here and see how many words I've deigned worthy to put onto digital paper.

This is either going to be fun or a complete disaster.

Steve Jobs

2011-10-07T10:34:00.000+01:00

Yesterday, I read the news that Steve Jobs had passed away. I can only remember one other non-family person's death that had a simlar effect on me: Jim Henson.

Both of these creative luminaries died well before their time. Both spawned companies that are now at the top of their respective branches and are recognised by name immediately.

Both inspired me as a child and continue to do so today.

Watching Sesame Street is one of the earliest memories I have as a child. The Muppet Show followed not too long after and I still consider The Dark Crystal one of the best fantasy movies ever made. Jim Henson's name was synonymous to entertainment, fantastic effects and engaging stories for me.

Steve Jobs' name had a similar effect. To me, Apple was a massive part of my life during the 80's and early 90's. Most of my social life consisted of going to Apple meetings or meeting up with friends to swap or play games on the Apple ][+, //e or //gs we had at home. It was also the platform I first programmed on. Both of these facts now dominate my life as a programmer in the computer games industry.

I am understandably sad at the passing of Steve, but I am also hopeful that Jobs will have something else in common with Henson: Henson's legacy still lives on today and still inspires people. His legacy is immesurable in the movie industry. Let's see what Jobs' legacy will be.

Branching off

2011-06-14T13:39:00.000+01:00

Well that went well, didn't it?

I know, I know. It was one of those hare-brained plans that seem to be brilliant at the time but then turn out 'slightly' different than intended. And to be fair, it was only slightly in this case. Yes, I did do the writing course and yes, I did enjoy it for the most part. But at the end of the day it involved two resources which were becoming scarcer as the course progressed: the old twosome of Time and Money.

So, That sadly didn't result in the major writing career I'd hoped it would. Nah, only kidding. I was hoping it would re-kindle the passion I had for writing many years ago but except for one fleeting moment of glory (they actually really liked one of my short stories!), it didn't give me the 'rush' I'd hoped for.

So, with two more pressing parts of my life taking precedence - trying to get our house ready to be sold and work ramping up considerably too - it's time to see if this blog can be used for other ends.

I actually quit the writing course just before Christmas, but with the two aforementioned time-consuming parts taking more than their fair share, I've only really had any inspiration and inclination to write something recently.

And something else happened as well: my work focus has changed significantly. And it's changed in such a way that it might just be interesting enough to do a bit more than just fire off the occasional post on Twitter or Facebook. It might be worth... Blogging about!

It's not a revolutionary change, but one that is quite near and dear to my heart: I've become a lot more embroiled with one of the core aspects of software development in general: Source/Asset Control and Build Management.

Like any software developer, I've had my fair share of run-ins with systems like CVS, SVN, Git, Mercurial, but when you're talking about not just source control but also gigabytes upon gigabytes of assets and on top of that trying to keep several tens of thousands of lines of code running, a more directed approach seems to be in order.

There's not much I can write at the moment that would make any sense: I'm looking at many different systems and methods to see what's out there that looks useful to what we need to do. I'm also starting from First Principles for myself to see if what we're currently doing is possibly due some refinements. And like so many 'core' things in this industry, there are as many opinions about that as there are developers (and some producers might have something to say on this as well. And artists...)

But, I'm pretty sure this is one subject I can write about at length once I get really going. So maybe it's time to rename or re-start this blog in some way. Or maybe start a new one? Who knows. Stay tuned and maybe I'll write another post in less than 9 months...

Creative Writing

2010-09-01T12:16:00.003+01:00

Thinking about it, this post is going to be slightly ironical. I've not written to this blog for the best part of 9 months, and the topic of this post is about writing. Funny, no?

Anyway, I've decided to re-kindle an old passion of mine: writing. I used to write quite a bit in my teens and later. I wrote for the school newspaper, the student periodical of my student union and even had one of my cyberpunk stories published in a fairly respectable disc magazine (ST-News). Most notoriously though, I wrote long streams of nonsense (some might call that 'stream-of-conciousness') for so-called 'scrolltexts', used in demos on the Atari ST.

But after that, it seemed that my muse must have flown off with some other needy teenager, as my writing all but dried up. I still read voraciously, but in recent years that too has dwindled, to the point that I probably have more than 10 books on the go at any given point but don't seem to finish any of them.

Having said that, I do still find an outlet of my creative urges in infrequent play-by-post roleplaying games I play. Some of them allow me the freedom to write scenes where my protagonist is involved, but having some freedom to use the other characters as well. The game I played in most recently (and again, this is a while back) - based on the 'Amber' novels by Roger Zelazny - was a very enjoyable romp through all kinds of fantasy tropes, where my character ended up romantically involved with a werewolf-princess.

So after I got confronted with one of my earliest writings recently, something inside me clicked. 'I used to write!' it seemed to shout. 'I want to do that again!'

And why not?

In true web 2.0 style I went off to find the best online writing courses, but they all seemed... well, too impersonal. Luckily the UK has a great tradition of adult-learning these days, so after some help from my colleagues, I found that the local adult learning centre does a 10-week creative writing course!

It starts in 2 weeks' time and will hopefully re-kindle the flame I once had for writing. But I did ask myself, what do I actually want to get out of this? What is it that I think I need to learn to write, and what end results do I think I can reasonably achieve after doing this course?

What I'd like to learn is:

Plot creation
Dialogue construction
Finding inspiration

And what about practical applications?

Coming up with plots for role-playing campaigns
Writing better quality play-by-post entries
Possibly writing whole role-playing modules
And of course writing a (sci-fi/fantasy) novel at some point

I know that some of those goals are of the 'lofty' persuasion, but I do seem to remember that when I was in 'the zone' for writing, I had a similar ecstatic feeling to what I feel when I'm in a programming 'zone'.

I fully intend to keep a running journal on this blog of what the lessons were like and what kind of writing results come out of this, so stay tuned! There might be some good stuff!

Can't get Tomcat 6 to work on Debian 'Squeeze' (testing)?

2010-01-19T17:41:00.005Z

Neither could I. I thought I was going mad. I'm not the world's cleverest sys-admin, but installing packages under Debian - and especially Java related ones - shouldn't be hard.

But nothing worked. The strange thing is that it seemed that the connection was refused. The logs of Tomcat didn't show any activity, neither did any of the system logs. I struggled to understand this and even resorted to trying a different JDK (Sun's own) on another VM, but that attempt failed even sooner with (what I now understand is the same bug) being unable to open a IPv4 socket.

The reason is that in the upstream package(s) for (I think) the JDKs - both OpenJava and Sun's own - the flag for opening only IPv6 sockets has been set to true! No wonder that my 'measly' attempts at connecting using the exotic and obsolete IPv4 failed (pah!)

Here's the bug (which I should have looked at first, I know) that took me half a day to find:

http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=563699

And here's a workaround to disable this behaviour system-wide (it basically disallows 'only' opening IPv6 sockets, as far as I can see):

http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=560056

Once I did that (and re-started Tomcat) it all worked. Phew.

Hopefully people with the same problem will find this and be saved as well. (Drop a comment if you do. I like to know if I helped a suffering soul)

'Dikke Tom Soep'

2009-05-15T22:34:00.002+01:00

Roughly translated: "Thick 'Tom' Soup" - 'Tom' here isn't a person or a cat, it's short for Tomatoes (what else?)

My mom used to (and still does!) make this soup when it was cold or when people needed cheering up or just for no reason at all except that it tasted VERY GOOD!!

Today I suddenly felt a craving for that soup. The weather had taken a turn for the colder regions of the thermometer and I didn't relish driving back through the rain. So I did what every self-respecting Web-Jockey would do and googled for a similar recipe.

No luck. Lots of soups thickened by adding bread (ciabatta) or cream, but I knew this one got its thickness from potatoes. So I did the next best thing and SMSed my mum to ask if she could send me the recipe. God bless her, because within 10 minutes a mail arrived with the needed ingredients.

And as any good cook knows: you don't need any precise measurements. It leaves room for creativity and experimentation. So without further roundabouts, I'll reproduce the recipe here, slightly altered and with some annotations from moi.

Thick 'Tom' Soup.

Ingredients:

Celery
Celeriac
Leeks
Carrots
Onion
Potatoes
(vegetable) Stock cube(s)
Tomato puree
Beef mince
Breadcrumbs
Egg(s)
Salt
Pepper
Nutmeg

First, dice the onion small. For a big pot of soup use one big onion. For a small one, half of that onion or a small one. Then, dice as much of the celery, leeks and carrots as you want for the portions you want. My mum said about 200g in total for each person which will give you a nice generous portion (or two smaller ones) - I made about equal measures of each, with a little less leek as my darlin wife doesn't like that too much. Also chop up an amount of celeriac. Make this less than the other vegs, as it has a very powerful taste and can overpower it.

After that, peel and dice about two big potatoes per person or portion. Again, do this to taste, but it is the binding agent, so don't skimp on it. In the end, I had two bolws with about an equal volume of the veg mix in one (minus the onion) and potatoes in the other. This seemed to work well, so I guess that's a nice measure.

In the stockpot you're using, heat some oil and fry the onion until transparent but not brown, and then add the vegetables and heat them until they've wilted a bit (especially the leeks) - Don't worry about how long, just get them nicely heated through and on their way to becoming soft. We're going to boil the heck out of them soon anyway.

After you're OK the veg is nice and hot, add the potatoes and add warm water until the contents of the pan are juuuust covered. Actually a little less. Too much water isn't good, you can add more later if needed. also add one or two stock cubes to taste. You will need some seasoning, and vegetable stock cubes worked nicely for me.

Get this to the boil and let it simmer until everything is good an tender. I think it took me about 15 minutes of simmering, but depending on the size of your chunks, that might be more or less. Also: the carrots were still a bit 'al dente', but not overly so.

Whilst the soup is simmering, mix some beef mince with breadcrumbs, egg, nutmeg, pepper and salt and give it a good kneading/squeezing with your hand(s) to make it become a squelchy pasty mix. You want to really get rid of the chunky texture that the mince has when you get it from the supermarket and mix it with the rest. (As a guideline: for 500g of beef mince, use 1 egg and a handfull of breadcrumbs. That should bind it nicely). Once mixed, roll walnut-sized balls from the mixture.

By now, the veg in the soup should be nice and tender. The celeriac and the carrot are the sturdiest, so try some pieces of them to see how well you're doing.

Once you're satisfied they're done, add a good dollop of tomato puree (you know, the very concentrated stuff from a tin or a tube) - I added 3 good tablespoons full for a big pan - and use a handblender or any other kind of blender to blend the soup and tomato mix to a smooth paste.

I used a hand-blender which is handy as you don't need to make too much mess (unless you take the blender out of the pan whilst it's still blending) but using a milkshake mixer or a kitchen machine is OK as well. Just blend small portions at a time and put the blended mix in another pan or bowl for the time being. (My mother used to do this with a hand-powered tool that squeezed the soup through a kind of sieve using a handle. Thank god for electric machines I say...)

Season to taste (don't burn yourself on the soup as it keeps its temperature VERY well) and then put back on a very low heat and dump in all the meatballs. They need about 10 minutes to cook through, depending on size.

Then, serve in large bowls with crusty bread and maybe some parsley on top.

And as with almost all soups: it tastes even better the next day if you heat it up!

Bonne Appetit!

DOUBLEDUMP 2.0

2009-01-23T13:29:00.003Z

I would like to - belatedly - announce the release of my first shareware project: DOUBLEDUMP 2.0.

Well, make that very belatedly. It's actually almost 20 years late. And that's also why it's all in caps. DD2 (as I'll call it now) was my first ever 'published' program for the Apple //gs. It was used to visually compare 2 regions of memory.

What uses could that have you ask? Well, one of th eless nefarious ones was to find out how to create cheat-patches for games that involved 'lives' or other things stored in memory. The Apple's memory at that point wasn't very large (it came in 'banks' of 64k) so it wasn't too hard a task.

No, I don't expect you all to rush out and download the program, because, to be honest, the Apple //gs is a bit of a dead platform. Not many people (excluding my dad) will have one of them in the basement. In all fairness, the only reason I'm posting about this now is the fact that I only discovered that there was a copy of my program available on the internet. You have to understand that - although I gave an e-mail address in the 'about' section of the program - the Internet was not available to us mere mortals those days. One of the reasons I give for the shareware fee is "to enable me to send YOU (the ones who don't have regular access to a BBS or PD-library) my latest programs." (from the read-me file I wrote).

Yes, PD-libraries and BBSes. The glorious days of the modem. I don't know if you can imagine the sheer glee I felt on discovering this gem here. Here was something I had even forgotten the name of, let alone know of its existence on the internet. (It was only that I remembered the fact that I did make it and the pure luck of finding it by googling my name and 'shareware' that made me aware it was still alive).

I've got some images of the program working. I used the emulator KEGS32 and had to dig deep to remember the ways the Apple and ProDOS worked. But after not too much time it was back in all its glory:

The Intro screen

In action

Help!

The Plea

So there you have it. My teeth well broken on this first chunk, I went on to publish... nothing else sadly. So far this is the only self-published application of me on the Internet. Oh, I've helped create several internal or not-so-widely-spread application later on, but nothing on the scale of this little app. Yes, it's small, but it meant a lot to me.

Weighing in at...

2009-01-20T12:35:00.004Z

Yup, I'm trying to lose weight. I don't think I've actually tried to slim before. It's always been under the guise of 'fitness' or just running or something like that. But this time it's really all about the weight.

I was going to do it in grandiose, web-enabled, iPhone motivated style, and parts of that I'm still going to do - I'm twittering my food and exercise on SnakeNuts_weigh* and I'm still working on that Facebook app. But I was also going to 'reward' myself with an iPhone at the end of an arbitrary 20-week period. But... no... let's not.

I'm getting more and more convinced that what I really need is a good old change of habits. Eat less, be more aware of what you eat, move a bit more and do it with such a conviction that after a while it becomes second nature. Granted, I'm still a foodie, so I'll probably want to make the odd grand feast, but if my mind then juxtaposes a bit more exercise to balance that, that would be ideal.

So, without too much fanfare and pomp, here's my announcement:

I'm trying to lose 40lbs, 3 stone or 18 kgs (choose which you prefer) in the next 20 weeks. Let's see how far I get shall we?

Oh, one problem though: both our weighing-tools (the Wii-fit and the scales) are buried in some boxes somewhere. I'll have to 'fly blind' for a while.

---

* Don't feel in in ANY way that you have to follow this twit by the way. It's probably the most boring one out there. Don't say I haven't warned you if you do.

Notebooks

2009-01-11T20:43:00.003Z

I seem to have less original ideas these days, but when I do have them, I want to save them and put them somewhere where I can easily access them again.
Ideally, I'd like to have an on-line storage of those ideas, but since I'm not always on-line (yes, I do live outside the 'net sometimes!) and sometimes I'd like to add a small sketch or something similar, I do tend to use old-fashioned pen-and-paper when I can.
Of course, loose pieces of paper or random notebooks get lost in the piles that surround my desk most of the time, so I decided to have something 'special'.
What I needed was a notebook that I could have with me most of the time but also with some quality and 'gravitas'. And to round it off, a good, sturdy pen.
It seems logical, but when I tried to get this kind of thing sorted previously, I invariably ended up with something the was either too large, too garish or somehow entirely unusable or unused. I needed something luxurious.
My final decision resulted in a large Moleskine plain notebook. No lines or grid to limit me, stylish exterior and expensive enough to satisfy my sense of propriety.
The pen of choice was one that I have used since secondary school. Parker pens used to be the ultimate in pens if you couldn't afford a Mont-Blanc pen (and who does?). I chose the brushed steel look for its excellent 'gripability' and the 'Jotter' style because it is the original Parker pen.

So, my medium has been chosen. Now all I have to do is lie back and wait for the muse to whisper in my ear...

OId Theme

2009-01-11T20:41:00.001Z

I didn't get many comments on my new theme, but on second (and third, fourth and fifth) viewing, it just didn't work. I'll be looking for something else later. In the meantime, here's the old theme back.

New post at 9!

New Theme

2008-12-16T23:34:00.001Z

Bored with the old theme. Trying out new one. Let me know what you think.

(Not my own creation. I'm not that good at CSS & HTML... yet.)

Kriegspiel

2008-09-12T12:59:00.002+01:00

A colleague made me aware of the existence of a neat little game called 'Kriegspiel'. It is a 2d/3d war game simulation based on a board game created in 1977.

The style is actually quite nice: It's meant to look like paper cut-outs on an ink-pen hand drawn map. (One of the promotional items you can download from the front page are actual paper cut-outs to cut out and glue together)

It also has two play modes: a top-down 2d view and a quasi-3d view (which uses the cut-out graphics). It doesn't however have a single-player mode, so I haven't really played it yet.

The rules look good though: there are only a handful of units and they have really simple rules. There are also rules about lines of communication, radiating from arsenals and relays. Any unit not in contact with a line of communication has to be in contact with a unit that is, otherwise it's disabled. Combat seems straightforward too, but I haven't really read up on that yet.

However, these details aren't actually the niftiest feature of the game. The fact that it is based on a board game designed by a French poet/filmmaker and revolutionary is. The guy in person is Guy Debord (no pun intended) and if you want to know more about him, read his Wikipedia Page. He sounds like a proper old-school revolutionary though.

He got fascinated by the art of war by reading Carl von Clausewitz and about the European campaigns of Napoleon. The game has therefore a distinct Napoleonic feel about it. It also reminds me a lot (stylewise) of the old Risk and Stratego games.

It's written in Java and has versions on the site for Windows and Mac OS. (No idea if a Linux version is forthcoming)

Chrome

2008-09-03T13:14:00.002+01:00

Well, I'm guessing not everybody will have heard of Google's Chrome yet, but I don't think it will be too long before this new entry in the Browser-war game will at least have been tried by the better part of the Internet community.

It's a logical step for Google: Any software producer will want to maximize the user-experience of their product. As Google, you control the code on your side of the connection - and you can't really control anything from that point onwards - but what about the end-point of the connection? Maximize the performance on that side as well and you've got a winner.

And that's what they've done: Chrome is nothing if not fast! On the code side they've added a very speedy Javascript implementation which some people say is almost 70x the speed of IE's engine. They've also streamlined the actual UI to the bare minimum, so there's no fuss around your workspace.

And that's the crux: Two of the tabs I have open all the time are Gmail and Google Reader. And they now fly. It's easy to see the added value for Google to have people use Chrome with their web-applications. Add the quality you can almost guarantee from Google - haven't most of their other products been slick too? - and it's a no-brainer.

I've not run in to many sites that don't work. By using WebKit - a well-established browser rendering engine used in things like Apple's Safari - they've insured that 99% of the sites out there will work. Sites using flash or variations thereof have worked fine for me up till now and even in-line PDF-reading seems OK (Firefox still has problems with that sometimes).

Of course I'm a self-professed Google fanboi, so it should not be a surprise that I give it the benefit of the doubt, but I'm suggesting that people give it at least a try. Download the installer and have it import the bookmarks of your favourite browser and give your sites a whirl. I'm certain you'll be impressed.

(And if you want to learn about the hows and whys of Chrome, why not read the excellent comic they made as a promotion?)

Geoffrey Perkins killed in road accident

2008-08-30T00:32:00.002+01:00

This blog seems to have a nasty tendency to report on Sci-Fi and Fanatsy writing greats passing away. Sadly, this time it might not be a household name that has left this life, but Geoffrey Perkins is nonetheless a mighty name and it is a great unjustice that an accident has taken him away from us.

For starters he produced The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. That alone places him firmly at the top of the firmament, just slightly below Douglas Adams himself. I've read some articles about the creation of the series and Geoffrey's name features often in those.

But from his obituary I saw that he has had a hand in many more of the great British comedies of the last few decades. Father Ted, Spitting Image, The Fast Show and The Catherine Tate show to name but a few.

I'll let his IMDB page and his obituary speak for himself. I wish less people that have brought me joy pass away anytime soon. I hate seeing funny people die. I know that is a selfish thought, so I will also say that of course my thoughts go out to his family and friends who have suffered a great loss today.

It's Firefox 3 download day!!

2008-06-17T09:35:00.002+01:00

It's download day, it's download day, it's d-d-d-d-download day!

(Edit: Apparently not until 18:00 GMT though...)

"This I believe"

2008-06-01T15:33:00.003+01:00

As so often these days, I was 'stumbling' along the Internet highway and a small gem fell into my lap.

Robert A. Heinlein wrote what I can only see as his 'creed' in 1952. He apparently delivered it at a radio interview the same year.

In 1988 his wife, Virginia Heinlein, delivered the speech again at when she accepted the NASA Distinguished Public Service Medal posthumously on his behalf.

You can read it here.

I agree. This I believe as well.

Nice to work in I guess...

2008-05-19T22:39:00.001+01:00

I mean, it looks a bit too over the top.

But still...

Well, look for yourself.

R.I.P. Gary Gygax, Shaper of lives

2008-03-04T20:36:00.002Z

Call it synchronicity, but I spent the whole day listening to Podcasts from Wizards of the Coast on Dungeons & Dragons. Tonight, I browse to the WotC site and there I am confronted with a grey page telling me of the man's demise. Or should I say The Man.

For me, his creation of D&D has shaped my life. I would not know many of the people I know today if it weren't for this hobby. I've been toying with getting more serious in it but I think I will double my efforts in that in respect to Mr. Gygax.

Rest in peace Gary. I hope you will encounter only Angels where you go. Demons and Devils better stay away.

2007 - 2008

2008-01-09T10:39:00.000Z

Well, we're well on our way in the 2nd week in the new year and I feel the urge for a retrospective/prospective.

What did 2007 do for me? It saw me through my first full year in the games industry for one. If nothing else, 2007 will stand testament to the fact that dreams can come true.

Sadly it also showed me the other side of that medal: The financial sacrifice I had to make for this opportunity didn't go unnoticed. So 2007 has also been a low point in my financial management.

Some more high-points:

- I started driving lessons. (I seem to still like it after 30 lessons, so that's good)
- Our bedroom was (finally) plastered. It's a lot nicer now than our old bedroom.
- Lots of nice games (Guitar Hero II, Asassin's Creed, Mass Effect, Pokemon Diamond, Zelda Phantom Hourglass, Super Mario Galaxy... I could go on)

And to contrast:

- Amanda lost a couple of family members.
- Didn't see my family enough.
- A few niggling health problems.

So what will 2008 bring us then?

Looking in to the future is like... well, looking in to the future I guess. We're going to Sweden for the first time ever this year to see a good friend get married and hopefully workwise we'll have a couple of projects start and finish.

But beyond that it's all up in the air. Amanda got a promotion just at the end of 2007 which should bring in a bit more money and possibly a bit less stress. If all goes right we should also be able to get going on the room that was our bedroom and turn it into a hobby room.

Maybe I'll even pass my driving exam and I can get some real practice on increasing my 'action-distance'.

But what will 2008 really bring us?

I haven't got the foggiest.

Have a good 2008!

Alex.

New balls please!

2007-10-26T15:08:00.000+01:00

Having been subjected to a couple of well-aimed kicks to the groin in my life (one of which was self-inflicted - ask me if you want more details), this collection of the same found in comic-book panels left me laughing with glee and wincing in pain in equal measures.

I like the name too: Nad Shot. Says it all, doesn't it?

(Link)

Life, don't talk to me about life...

2007-10-03T20:02:00.000+01:00

This about sums it up for me.

Sony Bravia Ads - Bunnies!!!!

2007-09-28T15:52:00.000+01:00

You must have seen them. You know, the millions of rubber bouncy balls cascading down the San Franciscan streets. Or the flats exploding with paint.

I'm too skint to buy any of their products right now, but I really adore their ads. And there's going to be a new one. It's set in New York and features coloured play-doh bunnies. That's all I know.

There's a teaser up for it on their site.

I can see this is going to be a fun one.

DO WANT!!!

2007-09-19T12:24:00.000+01:00

This must be the ultimate in geekish A/V fanboyism. Two certified Star Wars geeks have built a home theatre which... well, superlatives won't do it justice. What can I say: It's designed by Doug Chiang himself (lead designer on Ep. I and Ep. II) and the list of equipment is staggering.

Go and look. Read the article and watch the slideshow. And then spend your month's wages on lottery tickets. God knows I want to.

Runescape Ruffians

2007-09-17T13:05:00.000+01:00

(Disclaimer: I don't play Runescape. The only reason I post this is because the Runescape developers are located in Cambridge - which is where I work as well - and because the story is set in The Netherlands - which is where I was born.)

Apparently, two younglings were arrested in Leeuwarden in The Netherlands because they kicked and beat up a 13-year old boy who refused to hand over in-game credits for the game RuneScape the two other boys - aged 14 and 15 - claimed they deserved. They took him to one of their homes and beat him until he relented.

The local police arrested the two and they both confessed to the heinous deed.

I don't really know what to think of this. On the one hand it's sad that it has come to the stage that virtual property is considered worthy enough to beat someone up for. On the other had I think that arresting them and (possibly) causing them to have a criminal record is a bit strong for this. Especially at their age.

Here's the original article by the way. It's in Dutch, so don't say I didn't warn you.

R.I.P. Robert Jordan

2007-09-17T12:56:00.000+01:00

Another great writer passes away...

He was ill for some time, but he kept his spirits up and said he'd write on for another 30 years, beating his 4-year life expectancy.

Sadly it was not to be. My thoughts go out to his family and friends of course, but somewhere in my mind a selfish thought sprouts: "Did he leave enough notes for someone to finish the Wheel of Time?"

All we can say is that the Wheel definitely keeps on turning.

Charley

2007-09-05T23:01:00.001+01:00

I like cats. I used to have one. He was really ill just before he had to be put down... I miss him sometimes.

This is Charley. Charley is ill too. But in difference to Muppet, Charley can live happily with his illness, although some people would say otherwise.

Enjoy Charley's antics. Smile. Have a nice day.

(Oh, and this is where I found him, just in case you want to see him in his full glory.)

Let the voting begin

2007-07-18T17:17:00.001+01:00

Fantasy Maps

Vote:
1
2
3
4
5

The Sting

2007-07-10T11:09:00.000+01:00

I love The Sting. It was on again yesterday evening. Pure enjoyment.

Cars

2007-07-10T08:31:00.000+01:00

I'm a total newb when it comes to cars. I haven't got a driver's license (although that's to change in a few months) and besides having a basic knowledge of engineering and physics, I know nothing about the actual machines.

My wife had a nice little runabout before we got married and we still use it to careen up and down the A14 every day. It's a little Nissan Micra and it's called 'Scoot'. But sadly Scoot is getting a bit long in the tooth. It's done its job with admirable grace and performance (only breaking down twice as long as we've had it) but the money we need to spend on it to keep it in shape is getting a bit much. But then again, it's almost 15 years old...

But now we're getting in the game of buying a new (used) car. And my god, what a minefield it is. I'm not even talking about the dodgy dealers, the wrecks sold as new or the stolen cars out there. No, it starts with the sheer number of brands, makes and types out there.

Brands I still get. Most of them I know if only by name, but when you drive (or more accurately: get driven) up and down a very busy patch of road every day, you get to know brand badges quite well.

Makes. Still not too bad. They don't tend to change that often. People like that they can go into a dealership and know that a Golf is a nippy little car and a V40 is an estate. Fair enough. You do get into problems if you want to make any sense of them though. Numbers, names, codes... as the great Eddy Izzard said: 'It makes no sense.'

But then. The sheer variety in types, versions, badges, luxury types, special editions, sport versions.... It is enough to drive you wild.

And we're d(r)iving straight in to it....

Spam!

2007-07-04T08:48:00.000+01:00

Today I got my first comment spam. Not nice. For a second I thought "Hey! I'm popular!!!" - But no. Just Spam.

So I've had to enable the word verification feature of Blogger. I was hoping to keep this off for as long as I could, but it's necessary now.

I hope this doesn't deter the people that actually want to comment too much. Please continue commenting. I do like the odd reaction now and then :)

And now back to our (ir)regular programming...

Potters and Trees

2007-07-02T17:01:00.000+01:00

Hello all! Sorry I haven't been updating my blog very much recently (sorry Suus!), but nothing really noteworthy happened. Life plodded along all on its own and didn't need a blog to worry about.

However, two nice thing happened to me recently: I won a prize and I discovered a nice Web 2.0 application.

The prize I won is very exciting indeed: Amanda and I are going to the official launch of the new Harry Potter book (Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows). I entered a prize draw and we won two tickets to the event and one signed copy of the book each, which will be signed on the night itself! We might even be in the first 500 (The ticket no. is very low) and if that's the case we will be listening to J.K. Rowling herself reading a bit from the book.

Yes, both Amanda and I are fairly big Potter fans. Not fanatical, but we did take some time off to be able to finish the book after we get it. (Okay, we're also painting a room, but that's beside the point)

I never win anything, so this is a nice surprise. The only downside is that we will have to be in London at the National History Museum at 1am on Saturday morning. It's going to be a long night...

The second thing I talked about above is the website http://www.geni.com which is an online family tree application. Some members of my family have been busy doing this for a while now, but I never really got into it. However, Geni adds a Web 2.0/social aspect to it. It feels almost myspace/facebook in its approach and it is really easy to fill in stuff about people you know from your family. But then you can enter their email address and invite them to join in too! The entry you created for them becomes the starting point for their own account and off they go!

It's a breeze to add other people, view the tree, list birthdays and anniversaries, upload photos and note who's in them etc. etc. It really feels like a very slick and well thought-out bit of code. I've got my wife, her mom and my mom working at the tree, and we've got more than 200 people already in the tree between us. We've even got the family genealogist of my mom's family willing to merge his tree with ours as soon as genie figures out how to do it.

Give it a whirl. I'm sure you'll waste a lot of hours adding your direct family and finding out who knows a lot more about it than you do.

International Towel Day

2007-05-25T08:10:00.000+01:00

Yes, today is International Towel Day. Most of you who read this Blog will know what this is all about, but for the people who might not have the faintest clue what I'm talking about let me explain (and link):

International Towel Day celebrates the life and work, and commemorates the death of Douglas Nathaniel Adams, creator of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. This radio play/series of books/TV series/Text Adventure/Website/Movie is recognised as one of the greatest works of English Sci-Fi Humour (or even just Humour alone) ever created.

Sadly Douglas Adams died much too early in 2001 and when it came to find a fitting way to remember him, some fans came up with the concept of this International Towel Day. The funny thing is that he didn't actually die on 25th of May, but it was deemed that a fortnight after his death was a respectful enough gap to make this day a celebration rather than a mourning, but also not too long after so it would be disconnected.

Personally I have always admired the man and the works. It is - together with Monty Python - the main reason I got in to English as a language and a way of life. I have read/seen/heard/played all forms of DA's books and can quote large passages verbatim (or near enough) from memory.

I have one lasting memory of the (tall) man himself: Before I moved to the UK I ran in to him (almost literally) when he walked out of the food department of Harrods in London with a precious Harrods-branded plastic bag firmly but defiantly clasped in one hand. It looked no more or less like having any other supermarket bag he was holding, and I'm fairly sure it would have contained no more than a pack of Tetly tea and some biscuits which he needed for his latest bath or deadline-avoidance.

So join me in celebrating his works, life and legacy by looking at the links above and remembering what he did for us. And for you who have not had the pleasure of perusing his works yet (where have you been?), find the radio play, it's the start of it all.

Douglas Nathaniel Adams (1952-2001)

(And for those of you who are wondering: Yes, I've got a towel with me today.)

128-bit numbers

2007-05-08T08:55:00.000+01:00

I had a long(ish) post about the AACS and their attempts to copyright a 128-bit number here, but this Haiku ((c) 2007 by Edward W. Felten) says it best:

We own integers,
Says AACS LA.
You can own one too.

That last bit actually relates to this page (where I got the haiku from too). I think it's an absolute load of bunkum that someone can claim the copyright to a number.

Let's say I claim the copyright to, say, 66 8E 4A A1 CE 9D B2 18 93 21 7C 70 36 06 D6 68. Does that mean that I also own 66 8E 4A A1 CE 9D B2 18 93 21 7C 70 36 06 D6 67 + 1? Or maybe 66 8E 4A A1 CE 9D B2 18 93 21 7C 70 36 06 D6 69 - 1?

It reminds me a bit of the trouble with the number 'eight' wizards have in the Discworld novels by Terry Pratchett. They can't say it for fear of invoking powerful magic, so they say 'seven plus one' or 'sixty-four divided by nine minus one'...

The AACS are planning on suing everybody who has their precious number on their webpage. I say do your worst. They will single-handedly be responsible for taking down the largest chunk of the internet. Oh, and AACS: Look at my previous post please. I've got it up as well. Yoohoo!!

Bah. Humbug.

"The Sea of Memes"

2007-05-02T13:32:00.000+01:00

The Internet is a wonderful place. It makes it possible of all kinds of grassroots movements to take hold and make an impression on a wide audience.

This week for example Amanda and I discovered the Lolcat meme. The first time we saw the collected works of the Internet at large we almost peed our pants laughing.

And there's been so much more: All your base, Leeeroy and now '09 f9 11 02 9d 74 e3 5b d8 41 56 c5 63 56 88 c0' (look here and here for more information) which almost brought Digg.com down with it.

I love the diversity of the Internet. But it can be a murky place to navigate. So I tried to find a map
and lo and behold: here it is. Just be careful when you sail on The Wet Sea of the internet. As it warns on the map: "Here be Anthropomorphic Dragons!!"

Goin' Google

2007-04-30T09:47:00.000+01:00

From previous posts you might remember my 'fanboi' status with regards to Google. I think the web-applications they make represent the cream of the crop with regard to both front-end functionality (Ajax, Web 2.0) and backend support (2GB+ for every gmail account isn't something to sneeze at)

So when I learned about Google Apps a while back I took notice but then decided it wasn't for me. You see, I had my own nifty Linux server that did everything for me: Mail, Web, etc. I like Linux, it makes me feel empowered.

However, there comes a point in one's life where one must admit defeat and recoup their losses. Linux has been good to me, but I haven't got the time and drive to maintain my own mailserver with any degree of proficiency right now. It takes a bit more than I can spend time on right now: making sure security is tight, keeping up with spam filtering trends, etc.

But most of all, I have a 'user' that uses the mailserver too: my lovely wife isn't a technophobe by any measure (she set up the PC when we moved it downstairs again), but when the mailserver (and the associated webmail apps) keep breaking down (partly due to my own incompetence), some frustration will show.

And to be honest I got fed up too: I've tried to find a good webmail package out there (Squirrelmail and Roundcube for example), but nothing really competes with the big boys out there: Google, Yahoo, AOL...

A small light started to shine at that point: what about Google Apps? Google Apps allows you to hijack some of the major functions your domain might need and host them on Google servers: Mail, Calendar, Contacts, Webpages, Chat and collaborative Word- and Spreadsheet documents. That's a lot!

The only prerequisite is that you have full control over your domain's DNS records. At a minimum, you need to be able to point your domain's MX records to google's servers. You also need to either be able to assign an CNAME record or upload an HTML file to show you have some control over the domain.

From there on in it's a breeze! You create users, each of which gets the familiar 2GB mail storage (that doesn't 'grow' like the normal gmail space does though) and any user can then use all of the functions you enable for your domain. The interfaces to these are all the ones you're used to if you've used any of those products individually before.

And it does take a lot of worry from your mind: Google has a reputation to uphold where stability is concerned, so I'm fairly confident my mail is safe. The spamfilter is one of the best I've seen around, so that is taken care of as well.

But most importantly the wife now has a stable platform for all her mails again. Long live Google and their apps!

Goals! Goals! Goals! Goals! Goals!

2007-04-19T13:18:00.000+01:00

There. Five Goals.

Oh, that wasn't what Riddley Walker meant me to do? Ah, I see. It's another Internet Meme. Well, I'm up for it.

I'm going to dispense with the already commonplace goals of 'Get rid of Loans' and 'Get Fit', because - be honest - we all want that. I don't notice anyone sitting in a corner ripping up money or stuffing their faces with a very determined look on their faces. And if they do, they regret it immediately afterwards.

Here are 5 things I really, really would like to achieve and think are possibly in my league somewhere in the future.

1) Write a game

This is still my #1 goal, even though I'm almost 50% there. I've penetrated the games industry and have been working in it for a year (exactly today!) now. But there's more: Somewhere in the future I'd like to start my own development studio and write at least one published game with me at the helm of it. I need a lot more development experience and probably more experience in mainstream programming languages, but I'm making headway.

2) Write a book

What do I know about writing? Nada. Well, I'm fairly proficient at the language I'd like to do it in, but do I have any ideas or inspiration? Nope. Not yet. But the written medium has fascinated me for a long time, and possible ties in with the #1 goal above. My game would probably be epic and lyrical in nature. So until the muse comes to me, I'll keep buying 'How to write a book' books and read internet sites.

3) Act

I've done a (very little) bit of acting in my past. Veeeery amateur theatre and one filmed role (I don't think it's ever seen the light of day), but you know what? I enjoyed every single second of it. Even the rehearsals - where I'm crap at remembering my lines - when I saw everything coming together. So I'd like to do it again. England is the country of Amateur Dramatic Societies, so maybe when I'm old and gray...

4) Excel

I just want to be good at something. It's my #2 insecurity (#1 is forthcoming) and probably an ever-growing inferiority complex. But I think it would be nice to be recognised as an expert in something. Something I can write about. Something I can publish about. But what? Beats me.

5) Learn to live

I'm scared to death of Death. Yes, the Captial 'D'. At best I'm an agnost who's convinced there's absolutely nothing at the other end of the tunnel. At my worst I clamp up and don't want to move for fear of dying. I don't fly, I am fearful in cars if they go too fast (ditto for trains and buses) and have severe hypochondriac tendencies. Why can't I just let go and do stuff I might enjoy? I'd love to, and so would Amanda. We could fly to our holiday and I'd drive along the small roads on the mountains.

But I don't.

There. My 5 main goals. I'd tag people, but my collection of blog-friends is only growing very slowly. I'll do it later. Maybe I need to make that a goal as well... Hmmmm...

Tagged...

2007-03-13T08:42:00.000Z

The incorrigible Ridley has tagged me with the big Tag-O-Tron challenge: Reveal 5 things about yourself nobody (or not many people) know about you, and then tag other Bloggers to continue the chain.

Excellent! I've come down from my earlier low of the week and now find myself in higher spirits, so I should be able to come up with some morsels for the plebs to enjoy:

1) I spent 2 days and 1 night in a police/jail cell.
Actually, there are a couple of people out there who know this (including my parents) since this wasn't really my fault. The managers of the store I worked at thought it was a good idea to accuse every employee of theft so they could get rid of us and hire new staff. I hope other HR departments don't get the same idea.

2) I got beaten up in a cinema, but I threw the first 'punch'.
I do sometimes have flashes of uncontrollable, damaging anger. In one of those fits (and they do last only one millionth of a picosecond) I threw my cup of coke onto someone who was making rude comments about me and my friends in a cinema before the movie started (it was Monster's Inc. if I remember well). Needless to say, he got angry and started pummelling me. He turned out to be an ex-marine from the US, but so high on either adrenaline or coke, that he started calling the Police officers who were called to the scene 'Nazis'. Final Ironic twist: He got taken away in handcuffs and I got 5 free tickets for the next showing for me and my friends.

3) I got hit upon by a gay colleague.
I worked for what is now T-Mobile in The Netherlands. At an office party one of my (not direct) colleagues told me he thought I was cute and wondered if the feeling was mutual. I blushed and said that even though I was flattered, I sadly didn't think it was, and that I was also quite straight. He smiled, gave me a quick peck on the lips and said he thought it was a shame. Normalcy was restored and to this day working at that company was still one of the best working experiences I have had in my professional life.

4) I'm crap at games.
Even though I'm a games freak (and now a games professional as well), I've only ever completed a handful of games... The ones I can remember are Roadwar 2000, which I finished quite by accident actually (it was way too short), Wizardry IV and the magnificent The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Infocom. And that's it. It might not be world-shocking news to you guys, but it's something I feel distinctly ashamed of.

5) I haven't been creative since I wrote 'Brainwalk' in the late 80's.
And I mean nothing original has come from my hands since then. I used to be on a roll, writing short stories left and right, with most of them in use for the Atari ST demo scene. But Something happened (getting lazy is the largest culprit I think) and it all faded away. Sure, I've done expressive stuff since then (played in amateur theatre productions, ran D&D games, etc.), but nothing that had the creative rush that completing a short story gave me.

Hmmm... Maybe a bit too much of a lament than a confessional, but in all honesty, I don't really have that many skeletons in my closet.

Anyway, now to find some hapless victims to continue the Tag... (note: put on hold until I can think of more than 1 person I know who Blogs besides Ridley...)

What I've not got...

2007-03-08T17:29:00.000Z

Passion. Anger. Drive.

I don't even have the drive to write more about it. Might have something to do with the flu I'm having.

DST Confusion

2007-03-06T14:03:00.000Z

DST, or Daylight Savings Time, has always confused me. I never know instinctively which way the clock goes and if I get to sleep longer or shorter and if I now get more or less daylight. The only thing I do know is that once in a blue moon the DST change in the latter half of the year happens on my birthday and I get to have a birthday of 25 hours. Neat!

This year however there is even more confusion in DST-land. The US Federal government has decreed that the US DST is to be a different date than anybody else! God know why they did this (must be some kind of petrol-saving scheme or something like that) but it confused the hell of out me.

First of all I wondered if all my machines were going to be OK. I've got PCs at work and at home, and of course all kinds of devices with clocks that may or may not adjust themselves. The Sky+ box or one is notorious for losing the plot when DST happens.

I also have a Linux machine offsite where my mail and webpages get served-up. Would that machine be ok too?

Through Slashdot I found a nice article on Linux-Watch which explained how to go about checking if your machine was OK and how to fix it if not...

But wait a minute: my machines are all located in the UK? A nagging suspicion was building at the back of my brain (or was that the flu?). Would the lapdog government of the UK take on the change the US did slavishly or...

Timeanddate.com to the rescue: this page actually lists the dates and times locations around the world do their DST changes.

And yes. The UK luckily keeps its DST transitions to March and October. My 25-hour birthday marathons are saved. Not to mention my computers and sanity.

Blog Software

2007-02-27T12:06:00.000Z

I'm going to change this Blog.

Oh, I like Blogger, it's fine for the kind of blog this is: mundane, non-eventful, low-traffic. But it lacks... control.

One thing I like is full control over the software I run. That's why I gravitate to Open Source software so much. I would run Linux exclusively if I didn't have to use Windows for my work. (Yeah, to play games on :) )

But now I've got a Linux server to my disposal again, my itch to have a fully-controllable blog is there again.

I've tried Wordpress in the past and will definitely be trialling that one. But I'm looking around to see if there's anything else on the market.

The downside is that I will probably not be able to transfer all the posts and comments of this blog to the new blog (Oh, I'll be trying, but I haven't got high hopes), so don't be too surprised if there is a clean blog one of these days...

But I'll let you know if that happens.

EULA

2007-02-26T17:23:00.000Z

Do you actually read those 'End User License Agreements' that are splashed in front of your eyes when you install or run a new computer program? Or do you read the sticker you tear when buying a new software package? There are even some supermarkets in the US where when you sign the credit card slip, you agree to 'have seen user agreement #12345' or some such crap.

On my long hunt through cyberspace for trivial stuff, I've run into this site which offers a solution. At least for when you buy something or mail a representative of a company telling you that 'when you read this email...' yadda yadda...

How futile is this? I have no idea. But at least it makes me feel a little warmer inside (and allows me to post another blog entry)

Dark Portal Monkeys R.I.P.

2007-02-23T13:39:00.000Z

I'd like to write a short eulogy on my now defunct World of Warcraft guild, The Dark Portal Monkeys.

The DPM were a good bunch. We always had fun and weird chat sessions. The kind of person in the guild was the kind of person I would like to meet in person.

Sadly, due to lack of time, capacity and fun, the DPM are no more.

Flowers can be sent to the fund for WoW Widows.

Game Theory

2007-02-22T09:00:00.000Z

It's been almost a year now since I joined the games industry, and to say that my viewpoint on games has changed is an understatement.

More and more I read blogs or articles I would otherwise not have read about developing games, publishing games and the actual process of designing games which shed a lot of light on things I didn't know anything about before. And of course I hear and see things at work. Those are the 'real' eye-openers.

Things like the interaction between publishers and developers, or as I like to call it 'The Money and the Beast'. We're 'The Beast': Wild, untamed, full of energy and ideas and ready to burst out onto the world. But for that to happen you need money, and money is scarce. So it all boils down to the fact that The Money pulls the strings and as a developer you have to dance to their tune.

Nothing new really. I could have realised that sitting at home playing games. The quality of some of them really indicates that no 'real' thought has gone into the development and only into the money.

But luckily there are more constructive things out there: Raph Koster's website is one of those. His latest post, the one about Buying your way to the Top, Again, is one of those that opens up your eyes to things you took for granted but actually are different to what you thought they meant. I'm not talking about the way people actually buy advantages in games, but for me the article showed me more that what we think is 'the game' of a game we play mostly is just the top layer of a more complex (or simpler, to be difficult) game.

It's more about rewards than anything else. Or at least on MMOs it is. How do we get rewarded? Do we get personal rewards and feel good, or do we want 'respect' or 'bragging rights'?

There's more in games than we think. Read the article and you'll know what I'm talking about.

Shutdown Day

2007-02-21T23:35:00.000Z

Can you do one day without your computer? Can you do it on March 24th this year? I think I can, so I said 'I Can' on the Shutdown Day website.

It may be nothing more than another shout ou for attention, but I do think It's an interesting idea. It's a bit like lent or a new-year's eve resolution. And the funny thing is that yesterday I had a good rant to Amanda about how futile I thought things like lent and resolutions were. Go figure.

Anyway. Sign up, even if you can't leave your PC off for one day. Put a post-it on your monitor or something like that. You may even want to leave a shout out on Frappr to show where you're at and if you can or not. See if you can find me :)

I'll not post on the day itself, but I'll let you know on the day after if I made it.

Books

2007-02-19T10:07:00.000Z

Here are some musings on books I recently read. (Oh, and if you click on any of the links and buy the item, I get some cash from Amazon. Thought you'd like to know.)

Malice Box by Martin Langfield.

This is a slightly Da Vinci code-esque romp through New York. The protagonist, a British journalist in the US, has to find his way through the Big Apple whilst being chased by all kinds of ne'er-do-wells who are out to kill him. His quest is to find the keys to stop a weapon of mass destruction going off and killing millions.

The story is a bit more involved than the quick blurb I wrote above seems to indicate. The journey made is both physical and spiritual and selves in to all kinds of spiritual myths and paths to enlightenment. I started out really fascinated by the story, as a large part of the flashbacks are set in Cambridge and use familiar landmarks. But, as with so many books, the ending just lacks... something. Having said that, it is still a good read and both the content and style gripped me so much I did have a hard time putting it down.

My Judgement: 7/10 (Slightly Flawed)

The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters by G. W. Dahlquist

First off, I have to confess I haven't finished this book yet. However, some details about the book are intriguing enough to write something about it now.

I read first about this book a while back when someone mentioned somewhere that there was going to be a steampunk book which was going to be published in the old serial style: Every week the publisher was going to send out a small booklet to the subscribers which would be another chapter of the whole story.

I signed up to this and sure enough, in the 10 weeks before christmas a padded envelope with a book came through our door. Each book had a slightly darker shade of blue so that the 10 booklets standing next to each other form a gradient of blue. They also complete a shape of a mask across their spines. On the back of each book is an announcement of the next chapter and a short description of the author's incredible life. It's all done in a faux-Victorian style which gives the booklets a very authentic look.

I've read the first 3 chapters now and those introduce the 3 main protagonists: a lady who was until recently engaged to a highly-placed ministry employee, an assassin who - due to his clothing and scarred eyes - goes by the name of Cardinal Chang, and a doctor in the employ of a Prussian prince who's gone missing.

These 3 come together through their adventures and seem to have stumbled on a conspiracy to do with something called 'the process' which leaves scars around the eyes of the targets and affects them in different ways.

I'm completely enthralled by both the style, story and presentation of this book. The only reason I haven't plowed through it yet is the lack of time. Sadly the 10-booklet version was a limited edition, but the book as a whole is now available.

My Judgement: 9/10 (Recommended!)

I've also started reading Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-free Productivity by David Allen. This is a book about increasing your productivity with a method which apparently is 'geek-friendly'. It has been recommended on a number of blogs I read frequently so I want to find out what all the fuss is about. More about this book later.

Tronji

2007-02-15T16:33:00.000Z

I don't think I can say much more about this right now, but the project I'm working on has just been announced with a press release. Hot stuff! Now at least all of you know what I'm doing when I'm not writing blog entries.

Hot Fuzz!

2007-02-06T09:44:00.000Z

We went to see a premiere/preview of the new Simon Pegg/Edgar Wright/Nick Frost vehicle called 'Hot Fuzz'. For those of you who loved/hated Shaun of the Dead, you'll love/hate this one as well. (I fall in the former category)

I won't reveal any spoilers here, but rest assured the movie contains lots of good action, great humour and best of all, believable characters. That's one of the main things I like about this move. So many movies rely on exaggerated characters who are so stupid or blinkered or otherwise one-dimensional that they fade into the background compared to the story. But in this one they are just believable.

And the cast is stellar as well. No Oscar-nominations here (except maybe the editing), but when you've got Jim Broadbent, Timothy Dalton and Bill Bailey on the same screen, well... Do I need to add more? (And yes, again, big fan of the old Troll here :) )

Anyways, I haven't got anything more to say about this other than: go watch it.

Oh, and beware church spires. They can hurt. Lots.

(Re)location

2007-01-29T10:48:00.000Z

Just a short and potentially useless one: I've added a shortcut to this blog through my own domain. http://blog.crouzen.com/ will get you here with a slightly nicer URL in your address bar :)

Dice

2007-01-19T12:57:00.000Z

I love dice. I used to collect dice, and I still have a 'healthy' collection of them for, er, daily use.

So I was pleasantly surprised to learn that one of the biggest dice manufacturers in the UK is almost in my back yard! Dice & Games Ltd. is located in Sudbury, which is no more than 20 minutes by car from where I live. I think I'm going to try to get a factory tour.

Sadly, they only sell to trade, so if any of you are ever tempted to buy me a new set of dice for a festive occasion, try eM-4 Miniatures. Their site leaves a lot to be desired in style, but the content is all you'll ever need in your dice-addiction.

Oh, and one of the sets I haven't got yet is the 14-carat Gold set they have at a measly <cough> £74 </cough>.

RAW RIP

2007-01-12T11:32:00.000Z

One of my original heroes (whom I have neglected far too long now, I must ashamedly admit) has passed away yesterday.

Robert Anton Wilson (RAW) co-wrote a book that gave me what I think is the closest I've ever come to a drug-induced state. The Illumnatus Trilogy does that to you. Whether it was the chaotic swapping of point-of-view (sometimes mid-sentence) or the content itself (conspiracy theories intertwined with history and politics) I don't know, but after reading through the book in almost one sitting, I was left with a severe buzz.

He was very ill the last years of his life, and almost died in squalor because he didn't have enough money to even pay the rent. But an unprecedented internet collection raised enough for him to live out his remaining days in comfort and peace.

So Hail Eris, Hail Discordia! May you rest in peace wherever you are now Robert.

iPhone

2007-01-10T12:50:00.000Z

And so it begins...

(Hey, didn't I use that quote to start my Blog? I probably did. But then it's my favourite B5 quote evar, so I'm happy.)

Apple is taking over the world. Or should I say 'Apple Inc.', which is now their official name. (They dropped the 'Computers' from their name.

They dropped the bombshell that everybody hoped they would, but nobody thought they really would. But then they did: Apple is releasing the iPhone. Commence drooling, pining, cursing at the hight price and then just settle down on wanting one. I will. It's going to be released in Europe late this year, so I'm sticking with my Motorola V3 on Orange for this year. I can wait, I can wait...

It really looks so slick and yummy. I'm turning into a complete Apple fanboi again. I'm thinking of letting my PC go and plumping for a nice mid-range Mac, which can now dual-boot OS X and Windows. The only thing I need to know is how good the 3D performance is, so I can play all my 3d-accelerated games on it too. Because let's face it: that's all I use the PC for right now. It's due to the fact that the Mac Mini I have isn't that fast that I use the PC for email as well.

So I'm sorry Amanda. But I'm going Mac All Out when I get the chance.

2007 in retrospect

2007-01-02T22:23:00.000Z

No, that's not a typo. Well, actually it was, but it made for a more interesting title than '2006 in retrospect'. Looking back on the previous year is so... last year.

OK, so I'm really tempted to make this a 'what if...' kind of post, or one that will predict what 2007 will hold in store for me. But that would be pretentious. And I'm not pretentious... At all...

So what will I make this post about? I can't just say "Ooh! cool typo! Hear me roar..." and then leave it at that. Well, I can, but I won't. And I will try not to use too many triple-ellipsis either. That can be my first good intention for this 2007.

Numerology? 2007 is 27 with two zeros in between. 27 has always been my first lucky number, so it should hold some significance for me. I'll be 37 this year, 10 years on top of 27. The nice one I came up with for 2006 was that at 36 I would be 18x2, so maybe I got to vote twice. (Living in a different country than your nationality does that to you.)

Deep soul searching. Am I happy? Am I doing the right things? Am I still scared of death?* Seems a bit pointless if you ask those questions without actually knowing what to do with the answers, doesn't it?

I think the best thing I can say about 2006 was that it was a year in which I 'Scratched the surface'. I like that expression, I think it sums up nicely what I did the last 12 months. It all felt like a new beginning, allowing me to start experiencing new things. What it didn't tell me though was whether they were all good or if there is something beneath that surface. That will take more scratching.

Or Digging! Maybe that's what It takes to make the retrospect of 2007 more interesting: I need to dig instead of scratch! Dig a hole in the garden of life, hit the pinata of success with a chainsaw instead of a wooden stick.

I like those analogies. I'll use them again. And yes, this is a cliche as well, but it has to be said: The hitting and digging isn't the hardest part, it's finding the spade and the chainsaw to do it with that will take the most effort.

Have a good 2007. Try to look back on it with enjoyment.

*) I think so (x2) and yes.

Another month (or two), another blog post.

2006-10-02T14:31:00.000+01:00

(Heh, reminds me of a scrolltext I once wrote or co-wrote...)

And it's been a busy couple of months. We've been working hard to get to a level where we could start demoing our games to the bigwigs of game publishers and I guess we're there, because my bosses are out at the GDC and meeting all kinds of big guys.

What can I tell you? Well, we've been working hard on two distinct games, both using the same engine as a base, but both wildly differing in concept and execution. The one I'm not working on is a carmageddon-style car-driving game (you can't call it racing, as there is no racing 'goal' as such).

My project is an FPS. Its theme is best summed up as James Bond meets Austin Powers meets Get Smart meets Inspector Gadget meets... you get the idea. I've been the main Agent Engineer on this project.

Above both teams are two producers who oversee the projects, and supporting (and driving) us are a number of engine programmers who program the engine we Agent Engineers use to make the games.

That's how we work in a nutshell. It's been a roller-coaster of a ride, and has made the previous 5-6 months zip by.

It's also been a period of high ups, and low downs. When things go well you feel on top of the world, because this is it! This is what you've always wanted to do! And you're doing it! Magnificent! But the lows are sometimes really desperate, and for the same reasons: This is what you've always wanted to do. There is no 'something else' which you can use to say 'Oh, if this doesn't work I'll do something else.'

Looking back at the last few months I can say with my head up high that I've done my best. I might not have made as neat and polished a product as the other project, but hey: I've done this from zero to what we've got now without the benefit of experience in either the engine, the programming language we use and actual game programming as such.

And I'm damned proud!

Fantasy Author David Gemmell dies at 57

2006-07-28T16:21:00.000+01:00

I loved his books. Dang. No new ones.

read more | digg story

Some slight alterations

2006-07-17T14:04:00.000+01:00

They were due.

The 'Blog of the Week' stuff didn't work that well, did it? Nah, didn't think so. So I removed it.

In its place however is now a sidebar with the articles I mark as 'interesting' in my daily RSS-feed roundup. I use Google Reader to peruse the multitude of feeds that I deem worthy of my time. If it's something I think I should look at later or shouldn't forget, I mark it with a star (how primary-school!)

I read my RSS feeds way more often than I think about updating my blog, so that should give you a nice quick hint at what I'm looking at at any given point in time.

If you're in the land of RSS yourself as well, you can also view this list through your own reader, by subscribing to this feed. (or you prefer, you can view it in Google Reader itself with this link)

Well, that's it for now. Fingers crossed for the Discovery!

The Cambrian Period

2006-07-12T13:45:00.000+01:00

Apparently the Cambrian period is the period in or after which a lot of human development happened. In analogy, a Canadian startup called Cambrian House has started a new kind of outsourcing practice called 'Crowdsourcing'

The idea behind it is this: they invite everyone (the crowd) to send in ideas. They then let the community (the crowd again) select which they think is are the best ideas and start development on them. But they also ask the community (guess what: the crowd!) to participate in the development as well with programming and asset creation.

All in all a nifty idea. Read the site for more info.

And whilst you're on the site; vote for my 4 ideas: StoryLine, GSX, AutoBlog and The Online Larder. Who knows, they might become reality in the future.

Attention to detail

2006-07-10T13:16:00.000+01:00

I couldn't help but be amazed at the amount of detail in this wikipedia article about Brain May's guitar. I'm obviously not a music expert nor a great lover of music per se, but I must tip my hat to the person who either dug this up, interviewed May, and, indeed wants to know all the details about what kind of veneer, lacquer, etc. is used in the making of such an instrument.

I wouldn't mind if the whole internet was made up of only articles of this kind of detail.

The 50 Worst Video Game Names Of All Time

2006-06-23T11:09:00.000+01:00

The 50 Worst Video Game Names Of All Time: "Some of these game titles are unbelievably bad. People made these games?"
------
Just found this through digg... All I can say is...<snigger>

Updates? Wee don't need no steenkeeng updates...

2006-06-06T11:47:00.000+01:00

But I can't let almost a whole month go by without posting anything to the Blog, can I?

So what's new? Not much, as you might have guessed from the recent quietude. Life goes on and mundane things happen, but nothing spectacular happens, or at least, nothing I can talk about.

Yes, stuff is happening at work, and it's exciting as well, but the process of making thing happen and then wait until they actually do happen is, well, sometimes painstakingly drawn out.

We've got 2 big things going on, and at least 2 more I know about which have been kicked off. On the 'Time Of Defiance' front (the game that we're doing an update for) I can say that we're close to release. I've been working on some nifty particle-effects that not only liven, but also speed up the client a lot.

Google has been pumping out news like no-one. It's a quiet week without any news from my favourite Internet Giant. They released Notes a few weeks ago, with a nifty plug-in for firefox, and they just opened the sneak-preview for Spreadsheet. No guesses for what those modules do.

At the house we're tackling the garden. It's a nice thing to do when the weather is nice (which it is right now) and it can be quite cheap if the only thing you're doing is removing plants and topsoil.

Amanda's starting her new job soon (hi honey!!!) so that's going well soon too...

And that's about it... No news is good news some people say. Well, I don't know. You choose.

Neato...

2006-05-07T00:42:00.000+01:00

Just read this...

Perplexcity

2006-05-06T21:04:00.000+01:00

Let me tell you about a game...

(Yes, I'm probably going to use that phrase a lot from now, but bear with me)

Perplexcity is what is called an 'Alternative Reality' game. They're often used as marketing tools for other things, like the 'I love Bees' game to herald the arrival of Halo 2, and there are more examples.

Only rarely does one of these games come out as a game on its own. And even then it seems they need some other 'gizmo' to get in money to keep the game going. The Stone for one needed you to buy a pendant to get access to the game (later, when the original people behind the game left, it became a free game)

Perplexcity also has a 'gizmo' as such. But this gizmo is tied in with the game a bit better: you can buy colelctor cards with riddles on them. Solve the riddle (and scratch off the silver paste from the card) and enter the solution on their website and earn points.

But that's only the 'gizmo'. I really should start at the beginning:

Perplexcity is a city in a different dimension. However, communication is possible between our worlds and it seems Earth is a bit of a popular place for the Perplexians.

But a tragedy has happened: A very valuable artefact from Preplexcity has been stolen and somehow transported to our planet. This artefact is very valuable. So valuable in fact, that a reward of £100.000 ($200.000) has been offered for whomever finds the cube.

So it's a treasure hunt. Yeah, if you look at it like that. But it's a treasure hunt using all the latest internet features available (forums, blogs, SMS, etc). And it's fun. I solved enough puzzles to earn me about 1000 points, which in turn earned me my first 'leitmark' - a small red badge I can wear to show other geeks playing the game I'm 'in' it as well)

I'll let you explore the sites for yourself a bit for now. I might post more soon though. I'm going to explore the whole thing myself thoroughly soon to see how far I can get into the story.

It's been a while...

2006-04-30T15:13:00.000+01:00

...but it was worth it.

In one word, it's been 'brilliant'. I've waited so long to get into the games industry, and had more than one near miss. But this time it's for real.

I'm working on an existing game right now: 'Time of Defiance'. It's a MMO strategy game - like a large game of risk, but a lot more complicated.

Sadly I can't tell you much more about what I'm going to do from now, because it's all still being decided and hush-hush. But even if only a couple of the plans we have go through, it will be an exciting time!

E3 is coming up and we're showing ToD at least. But there might be more...

Oooh!! Aaah!!

2006-04-10T14:19:00.000+01:00

To keep with the celebratory theme for today: take a look at these beautiful screensavers. They're really something. www.reallyslick.com (really slick indeed)

Happy Birthday!!!

2006-04-10T13:47:00.000+01:00

All together: "Happy birthday to youuu, happy birthday tooo youuuuuu, happy biiiirthdaaayyy dear Amanda, happy birthday toooooo....yooooouuuuu!!!"

Hurrah! It's my little Amanda's birthday! Her first since we got married, so I
wrote on the card 'From your hubbie...' - That felt strange. Good but strange. :)

Ah well, nothing but nice things today about my precious. Fillet of beef, Potatoes Gratin, blanched sugar snaps, mini corns and carrots and a red wine sauce tonight... Probably followed by Pizza if it turns out to be too little... Home made pizza of course.

Drop her a line to say 'gratz!'. And if you don't know her e-mail, drop me a line.

Happy birthday honey!! XXX

Woops!

2006-04-04T11:19:00.000+01:00

Oh dear. I forgot to post a blog of the week last week. Tell you what, I''l make it up with my Blog of the week this week: you'll get two. I haven't decided which ones to do yet, but I'll put them up somewhere at the end of the week.

Sorry guys. My bad.

3 days to go...

2006-04-03T12:27:00.000+01:00

...in my previous life.

Here's the lowdown: I've got 3 days to go (including today) in my current job, followed by 12 days of pure, unadulterated lazyness. After that, I will start what I hope is the next phase of my professional life.

Until now I have worked as a programmer for what I consider 'normal' businesses. You know, the ones that push pieces of paper around for the sake of pushing pieces of paper around. Some were less involved with themselves, some more so. But all of them had one thing in common: There was nobody to appreciate what I did.

Oh, sure, my boss, or my manager or the anonymous masses clicking on that one link I did on that one page on that website. It's difficult to put in words, because one can make the argument that there were people directly helped or in some way did appreciate what I did. Yes. Possibly.

Now just humor me and do this little mental image exercise with me: Think of the word 'Office' and close your eyes and make a mental image of that word. Anything that comes up when you say that word to yourself. There is no wrong answer (god I hate that phrase).

Got that? Now keep your eyes closed... err... how are you reading this? Nevermind. I'll assume you're psychic or something like that... Keep your eyes closed and move the image you have to one side. Now take the word 'Game' and do the same. Let your mind's eye go wild.

See that image? Compare it to the 'Office' one. Yeah, that's what I got as well. Now can you blame me for wanting to work in the games industry?

I'm going to work for a company called Nicetech in Cambridge. Once I start there I probably have to sign all kinds of non-disclosures, but I don't know that much anyway. There's some stuff up on the site, so what I know is that I'm (hopefully) gonna work on a sci-fi MMORPG.

I also know I'm going to use an internal and propriotary language to write code. That's all I know. Oh, they have a kettle and make proper tea. Not like the muck that comes out of the machines here. Bleurgh.

3 more days of hot chocolate. I'll miss that.

Writing

2006-03-30T00:30:00.000+01:00

It's strange the realisations you can have whilst being bored at work. It's my last few days at this job and I'm slowly getting to the point that I don't really care anymore if what I need to do happens or not. It's not that critical so I procrastinate and (surprise) write stuff for the blog.

Suddenly two insights flash through my brain: one that I read somewhere a while back and one that just popped into my head - and both have to do with writing or, to be more precise, the difficulty of said activity.

The first one is actually a very deep and profound insight someone put at the bottom of a story I read a few weeks ago. It was something like "Writing is putting your fantasies on paper. However the process of writing destroys those fantasies. In your mind they're fantastic, glorious and magnificent, but as soon as you put them on paper they lose their power."

This is very true - for the writer! I've started many stories which were these great ideas I had in my head, only to think to myself once I started writing 'this is lame, it will never work'. But when you actually let someone read it they seem to be very positive.

It does make a kind of sense. You have this 'perfect' image in your head of whatever you want to portray in your story. A great warrior in shining armor or a magnificent spaceship shooting through hyperspace. But when you start writing stuff down it invariably starts 'lacking'. You feel as if whatever you put on paper is woefully inadequate to represent that brilliant idea you had. 'It will never work'.

I'm now even more in awe of all these magnificent writers I read. They must be masters at putting aside that 'it will never work' feeling and writing down those fantastic pieces of prose.

The other insight I had has much to do with the previous note. It came to me as I was thinking about why I was writing this blog. Sure, I'm trying to keep in touch with my friends by lifting a piece of the curtain and letting them have a peek inside, but again, this seemed so 'boring' to me. Why would anyone actually read that stuff? I don't do anything exciting.

But then it struck me: I live this life. It's boring to me because I am the person in the blog posts. It's nothing special to me. But when I read other people's blogs, I am inexoriably fascinated with descriptions of even the most mundane events in someone's life. Maybe that's the power of the personal blog: they voyeur in all of us...

Or maybe I'm just a crap writer.

Tired

2006-03-29T11:57:00.000+01:00

How does tiredness work? How do you get over it? Sleep? I once slept for almost 12 hours and woke up more tired than when I went to bed!

As you might be able to tell I'm tired right now. Yes, it was a short night and I had to get up early to go to work, but I was fairly awake in the morning and then when I got to work... BAM! Tired.

Ok, I'll stop ranting about tiredness. That's what tiredness does to you, you see.

Maybe I'll have something more intersting to say later today.

Or maybe I'll just sleep...

Oblivion/RF Online - First impressions

2006-03-26T23:51:00.000+01:00

Last friday I 'splurged' and bought myself 2 new games: Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, and Rising Force (RF) Online. The former I bought because I have a great love of Role Playing Games, and the latter because my new job will be programming for a Sci-Fi MMORPG, which RF Online is as well. So pleasure and work combined :)

First a short background on both games.

Oblivion is the 4th installment of the Elder Scrolls series by Bethesda Softworks. The only other game I really played in that series was the previous one, Morrowind. Bethesda pride themselves on what is called 'Open Ended' roleplaying games. This means that there is a main story arc, but there is so much to do outside that that you can extend the gameplay experience almost indefinitely. Combined with the fact that Bethesda have published the construction set that they made the game with themselves, endless reams of mods and whole conversions are expected as well.

RF online conversely is a Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Game, or MMORPG. RF Online is an already existing game which has been out in Korea for a while now. Codemasters have worked with CCR Inc. and brought the game to europe and the US. They have had to not only translate everything to English, but there is also the fact that Korean players have widely different styles of play compared to us. One of the things they have changed for example is lowering the 'grinding' (repetitive killing) for the lower levels.

Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion

I've played this game for almost 4-5 hours now and there is one thing I can definitely say about it: It is gorgeous. They have updated and tweaked the graphics engine to almost lifelike graphical quality. I've not got the graphical capabilities to see all the effects and shadings, but even on a lower resolution and some effects switched off, it still looks amazing.

The second thing that strikes me is the quality of the voice acting. Granted, the fact that Patrick Stewart is the first voice you hear of the game is quite a pleasant surprise, but the rest of it sounds good too. I haven't spoken to many NPCs yet, but when they do speak, they do have a good voice for them.

The game itself. Here my first bit of criticism comes in. It feels a bit like plodding through mud. This might very well have to do with the slowness of my machine playing this game, but it's also the talking to the NPCs through lists of subjects. Sometimes you just can't be bothered to plow through all the possibilities, and just want to get on with it. Again, this is very personal, but something that I have to get through to enjoy the game fully.

Combat and magic is extremely easy. Just select the weapon you want and hack. Select the spell you want and cast. Character creation happens through the first chapter, in which you escape from prison and the answers you give to the NPCs determine your birthsign and class amongst others.

I know there is a lot more to discover and skills to learn, but I'm trying to just follow the story arc for now. But for a first impression, it's a very good game.

RF Online

Ah, yes. That game. Well, I'm sorry to say that I have actually almost completely given up on the game. Apparently the transition from Korea didn't work for me. I can't get into the story (if there is any) or get any depth of where I'm going. There is no coherence between quests, and much too much complexity is dumped on you from the get go.

That, together with one very big glaring error in the tutorial gives me almost no impetus to carry on. Granted, I've been spoiled by World of Warcraft, which has a very smooth transition into the game, and just feels like it is one big eternal story, but there are other MMORPGs which do do it right (like Guildwars, which I'm revisiting now as well).

Ok, It's not completely fair I guess. For a fair review I should play through the whole game. I gather that the game changes dramatically after level 30, but it apparently it then becomes completely PvP, which isn't what I like either. So personally, I don't think this game will take off.

I've got 28 more days of RF online left before I need to start playing, so I might give it another go, but I'm not hopeful for any change in my feelings towards the game.

So it's back to Oblivion for me. Or to bed. Whichever comes first.

Blog of the week: 'Make: Blog'

2006-03-23T11:40:00.000Z

Last year, Tim O'Reilly (amongst others) launched a new quarterly magazine called 'Make:'. It grew out of the growing trend of people making stuff themselves. And not just any stuff. It takes in things like the obvious (Robots) to the rediculous (using 'curiously strong magnets' to make a railgun.)

I like the magazine. I've got them all up till now and my fingers itch every time something almost feasable is shown in it. I haven't blown the house up (yet!) but I'm sure I will try one of the projects somewhere in the future.

The website for the magazine is pretty amazing, but the most astounding part is actually the blog. It has posts on the most diverse home-made projects around the world. And almost all of them have instructions how to do it yourself!

I'd like to use that blog to start a feature I just came up with: Blog of the Week. Once a week I will post about a blog that I particularly like. I'll tell you a bit about it but most importantly, I'll give you a link to it so you can enjoy it yourself.

I've got enough blogs to last me a fair few months. But maybe I when I run out I might want some new ideas. So if you have a blog that you think I should highlight as a blog of the week, let me know and I'll put it in here... if I like it of course.

Cold

2006-03-22T09:37:00.000Z

Bleurgh...

I've godda tebbible cold tobay... Lemsib is a bery goob invendion..
(Ib ben verbouden!!)

Cricket anyone?

2006-03-22T09:01:00.000Z

"This morning (or afternoon if you're in India) England equalised the test series against India by winning the last game by 212 runs. The score was 100 all out."

If you had given me this sentence 2 years ago I would have gone "What the h*** are you talking about?"

It is of course the startling game of Cricket. And I mean startling here in every sense of the word:

Startling because the rules are sometimes so incomprehenisble, they seem to be made up on the spot.

Startling because just when it seems the game is incredibly docile and boring, the fans suddenly turn out to be near-hooligans and flood the pitch regularly.

Startling because although the sport is very professional and athletic, they still stop the game for 'tea' and 'lunch'.

But most of all startling because the game is so darn enjoyable! I heard the live commentary of the end of the game I mentioned above, and I was holding my breath! And when England won 'The Ashes' back a few months ago, I was elated and found myself actually switching on the TV to watch the match!

The winners of that Ashes game got a heroes welcome in London after they won the series. Open-top bus, ticker tape parade, meetings with the Queen, the whole shebang.

Maybe the most startling thing about cricket is the sheer Englishness of it - and the way I like it...

The game's afoot!

2006-03-21T12:38:00.000Z

Let me ask you a question: did you notice the subtitle of this here blog? 'The (not so secret) Life of a games geek.' (I'll leave the 'nice guy' bit of of this for now)

So now I hear you clamor 'Games? What is this about games?' Pray, patience. I doth have only two hands and nary time enough to come up with faux olde-English, let alone write about games.

But, granted, I do play some games. Or more than some other could say. Yet I'm a discerning game-player. I don't just rush out and play all the new games that come out - the game has to have something... you know, that 'je ne sais quoi'.

For me it's mostly Role Playing games. I'm not too good at action games, so I avoid them mostly. However a few good FPSs have enticed me to play them in the past. Right now however I don't have that many games I keep myself busy with. The main contender at this point in time is the infamous 'World of Warcraft'.

World of Warcraft, or WoW for short, is for me the best exponent of Multiplayer Role Playing games available right now. It's hard to describe what it has that other games don't, but I have tried a lot of them to see if they might have something, and found most of them lacking. So I play WoW almost daily right now. I guess you can call it 'the main game'.

However on friday another game will be released that might steal some time away from WoW to grab my attention: The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion is being launched for both the PC and the XBox 360. I have played previous installments of the series, but Oblivion promises to be graphically a step above the rest. And that's one thing that WoW sometimes lacks: beautiful graphics.

Oblivion is a single-player game though, so it won't replace WoW. I am looking forward to what Oblivion has to offer and if it will grab me as WoW has.

Our House...

2006-03-21T10:46:00.000Z

...in the middle of our road.

A lot of people have asked about updates about the new house (New being a bit of a relative term here: we've already lived there for 7 months now) . I do have a slideshow of pictures as it looked when we moved in which you can find here*, but no new pictures yet. However, these are the things we have done and are working on right now:

Amanda's Dad has re-wired the whole house. The wiring was almost pre-war in its' quality, so it had to be done. This was a gruelling job, but done most excellently.
We've almost re-painted the bathroom. We thought this was going to be a simple job. Just take off the ugly (yellow!) wallpaper and paint the resulting wall. WRONG! It took us the better part of 2 weeks to get the stuff off the walls and then the quality of the walls underneath. Sheesh! Next time: tiles!
There have also been a few non-visible additions to the house which the mortgage needed: A firewall has been put in the loft (no, not the network type, but one that actually stops fire going from one house to the other). Some of the timber supports have had a timber treatment, and the loft has been insulated.

There you go. Now you know everything about the house. What are we working on right now? Finishing off the bathroom, and Amanda is making a cabinet for the new fusebox. We'll keep you posted.

Google Pages

2006-03-21T09:23:00.000Z

Another day, another new Google tool. This time it's Google Pages. It was announced a while back, but today I got my login. So instead of telling you about it here, I'll let the first page I created with it do the talking:

http://alex.crouzen.googlepages.com/home

V for Vendetta - M for Mediocre

2006-03-20T14:11:00.000Z

(Or should that be 'M for Moore'?)

We went to see 'V for Vendetta' on saturday. After being hyped for almost two years, the movie turned out to be... Well, I liked it, but I also read about the original comic book's author's dislike for the movie. (He was so mad about the result that he had his name stripped from the credits and refused any money the movie will make.)

To be honest I didn't mind the possible changes at first. I hadn't read the comics and only knew about a few snippets that had changed. But in the meantime I have managed to get a copy of the comic and I now understand why he was so vitriolic about the changes: they basically changed the whole mesasge Alan Moore tried to get across.

I might have used 'O for Okay' in the title of this post. Some of the acting was very good. One of my favourite actors (Stephen Fry) actually played a very good part in it, and Stephen Rea as the main police commisioner Finch was convincing in his portrayal as well. And since it has been on most of the trailers, I can also say without spoiling anything that the explosion of the Houses of Parliament is one hell of a special effect.

But the rest of the acting is a bit lackluster. Hugo Weaving is good in his physical portrayal as V, but his voice is strangely detached. Is was probably dubbed after the facts, but it's still a bit jarring. Natalie Portman doesn't really work as Evey. Especially now I've read the comic, it's very obvious she's too nice for the role. Shomehow she worked as a 'brat'-type character in Leon (a great movie if you ask me), but here... no.

But... I have seen much worse movies and I was entertained. I think that makes the movie a success anyway, doesn't it?

Dutch Posts

2006-03-20T14:02:00.000Z

THIS IS A PUBLIC WARNING FOR ALL NON DUTCH-SPEAKING READERS!

This Blog may contain Dutch-language posts. If you have a delicate disposition, don't read these without supervision. They may cause deafness if ingested orally. Dizzyness has been reported as well.

You have been warned. We switch back to our regular programme now.

Google Fanboi

2006-03-16T12:35:00.000Z

Ok, I admit. I'm a Google Fanboi. Anything Google does is OK in my books. Just look at what they did recently:

They bought @Last, the owners of SketchUp, which when I tried it was undoubtedly one of the most intuitive 3D-modelling packages I ever used.
They released Google Desktop. Okay, they released that a while back, but I installed it yesterday after not having seen it for ages. It rocks!
They made what I think is the coolest Ajax app ever made: Google Maps. And it's useful too!

I could go on, but suffice to say that I think Google is on the right path to taking over the world. And I don't mind wearing something with Blue and Red and Yellow and Green letters on it. (Actually, I already do sometimes...)

Raison d'etre

2006-03-16T11:22:00.000Z

(translation from French: 'Reason for existing')

I feel obliged to explain in this first post why I am starting this blog. I've tried to start several blogs unsuccesfully before, but they all dealt (or were supposed to deal) with specific issues or topics. But I'm no journalist and have no time at all to gather information about those things.

That leaves me with the only topic I can write about reliably: My Life.

But there were a few more sparks that gave me the incentive to start.

The first (or should I say last, since it is the most recent one) is the death of a friend. He was about the same age as I am, and without any prior warning he had a heart failure and died. For his funeral (which I couldn't attend) some other friends suggested we collect our memories of him and put them in a small booklet which we are going to give to his family. A nice thought, but it did show me that my memory isn't endless. I really had to struggle to remember some of the details about things we did together. So reason one is primarily to keep a diary and/or record of what is actually happening in my life for myself.

Secondly I have a lot of friends that I don't talk to often enough. I moved from my home country (The Netherlands) to the UK about 3 years ago and some of my pals have (rightfully) complained that I don't stay in touch enough. And they're right. I'm a crap communicator. I don't think 'Oh, let's call ...., I haven't spoken to him/her in a long time.' - it's just not in my nature. I do like to write though. So that gives me reason 2: Keep my friends informed about what is happening to me.

Finally, I'm going through some exciting changes in my life at the moment. I've already mentioned the move to the UK, but there is more: I got married, I bought a house, I'm starting my dream job in a couple of weeks and who knows what else is on the horizon. And there you have reason 3: keep track of all the exciting stuff happening to me.

There is much more I'd like to do with a blog; Track news about computergames, Apple Mac OSX, etc, but that will be a low priority. I think this blog will be more of a diary for now.

A diary about My Life.