Dirty Coding Tricks

People, you really should read this:

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/4111/dirty_coding_tricks.php

Batman Arkham Asylum

Number one son bought a copy of Batman, Arkham Asylum yesterday, and spent the evening playing it while I watched. Very, very good. Batman has managed to recapture the joker after a suspiciously easy chase and accompanies him to the asylum to make sure the joker is properly re-habilitated. And of course it all goes wrong.

The action seems quite linear, in that you have to work your way through a series of challenges to unravel what has happened and rescue everyone, but the thing I really like is the whole setup. The artwork and sound have been beautifully realised to create a very impressive environment in which batman has to make every move really count. I especially like the “detective view” which seems to work just like those “X-Ray” specs you saw advertised on comic books claimed to. Batman himself is nicely gritty and ironic, and very mortal, for all his gadgets.

Great fun, and another example of just how close to film realistic video games are getting.

Windows 7 Media Centre

We put Windows 7 on the Media PC today. I got hold of a 1 Terabyte hard disk, slapped it in a spare drive bay and left the machine to get on with it while we went out shopping. When we got back the system was pretty much sorted and except for some kerfuffle with the (now very old) TV tuner cards that needed some blast from the past drivers the install went very smoothly.

It works a treat. I was looking forward to some tweaks to the Media Centre and I wasn’t disappointed. It now supports digital Teletext, which is great, and it also has some really neat user interface touches. My favourite is that when you move through a recorded programme you get a little thumbnail of the image at that point in the show.

Windows 7 provides the speedup that I was expecting (which is nice) and the whole thing has given my two and a half year old media PC a new lease of life. I’m actually bringing machines out of retirement so that I can put Windows 7 on them and make them useful again. My old Toshiba Tablet loves Windows 7 and I’ve persuaded the boss to buy me a new battery for it so I can take it on the road again.

There was a tradition that new versions of Windows drove hardware sales, as people upgraded their machines to cope with the demands of the new operating system. Whilst it is always nice to have a new machine (I love shiny boxes) I think this time you won’t have to. In fact the upgrade will feel like a real upgrade (which I guess is how it is supposed to be).

The good news for students is that the Microsoft Academic Alliance version of Windows 7 being given away free is the Professional edition, which includes the Media Centre component.  Previously students were given the Business edition of Vista, which didn’t have media centre support. If you are lucky enough to go to an institution which, like the University of Hull, has joined the alliance then you will be able to get your own free copy of this rather nice operating system.

Project Runway Rocks

While I was spending my summer mostly writing, number one daughter and me had a little lunchtime diversion called Project Runway. It is a reality TV show for aspiring dress designers. Each week the contestants are given a stupidly short time to make some kind of clothing and then, after a fashion show, the weakest one is kicked out. A bit like “The Apprentice” but with sewing machines. Just the kind of thing I’d expect to hate.

I love it. I like the way that the people taking part really can do stuff. They can draw a design, make the pattern, cut out some cloth and then sew it together, and at the end they have something that looks like what they wanted.  Part (all right, most) of the appeal of “The Apprentice” is discovering just what kind of people have crawled out of the woodwork and been allowed by the producers to take part, and then watching them fail at whatever footling task they have been given.

But the appeal of Project Runway for me is that the people taking part are there because they really want to get into fashion, not just appear on the telly. The big prize is a chance to run their own fashion show and by the end of it you can really see where each of the designers is coming from. Good stuff.

Day Trip

Went out for the day today. Any idea where?

.. we had good weather though..

Nice place