Tekken me back to my youth..

Well, not really “Tekken me back to my youth”, as that was long gone when I got my PSX (Playstation 1) and took part in my first “King of Iron Fist Tournament”. But it was a great game. And now I can play it on my PS Vita. Which is really growing on me. I’ve actually finished Uncharted and now I’ve discovered that a lot of PSX back catalogue is available for tiny prices. I used to love Tekken 1. I liked it so much that I actually got the game music off the game disk (in those days you could do that) and and I still have it lying around on the phone. I did the same for Ridge Racer and also Destruction Derby. In fact with these games you could even swap out the disk during gameplay and have different music accompanying your driving/fighting/crashing action.

If you fancy some nostalgic fun for not very many pennies, you can also get these games, along with the first Tomb Raider from the Playstation Store. And next week we get the Vita version of Little Big Planet, which I’m just about to pre-order.

Visual Studio Express 2012 for Windows Desktop

The new Visual Studio 2012 Express is very nice to use. I’m even liking the funky dark colour scheme. But the fact that all you can create with it are Metro apps is a bit of a bind. However, Microsoft have now released Visual Studio Express 2012 for Windows Desktop. It lets you use the fancy new version of Visual Studio 2012, complete with SHOUTY MENU BAR, to create desktop applications in C#, C++ and Visual Basic.

Incidentally, if you want to put the menu bars back to how they used to be, Deborah will tell you how. She writes a really good Visual Studio blog with some very useful tips on the program.

Tempting Fate

Last night at my talk I mentioned viruses and nasty programs. I mentioned that I used the Windows Defender part of Microsoft Security Essentials. I also said that I hardly ever get problems with this kind of thing as the only programs I install come from boring places and I don’t go to strange web sites and click “OK”.

Of course, this morning Windows Defender popped up an alert. I’d been searching for some drivers for my Canon printer yesterday and inadvertently visited one of these nasty “driver archive” sites who try to sell you drivers that you can get for free from the manufacturer. And they had given me a little present, as you see above. Good news is that it was a doddle to remove. I left the machine doing a full scan when I went off to a meeting and all is well.

Rob at Cottingham WI

Just spent a very nice evening talking to the folks at Cottingham Women’s Institute about computers. Thanks for inviting me ladies.

Windows Dev Center Open for Business

I’ve just registered as a Windows 8 “Metro Style” developer. It went very smoothly, most of the stuff carried over from my Microsoft account. For the princely sum of 32 pounds a year I now have the ability to publish Windows 8 applications to the world. I wonder if the world is ready for a “Metro Style” Cheese Lander?

You can sign up here.