Stray Dog Strut

Home Truths

2009-07-24T20:27:00.006+01:00

I've been considering putting my recent thoughts down in words for a while now so here goes. It's not going to be pleasant.

I finished the second year of my Computer Games Design degree over a month ago now and I feel like i've run out of steam. I feel burnt out already and I haven't even gone professional yet. If I'm brutally honest with myself, I think my passion for games has waned in the last six months or so. Don't misunderstand: I really love games and there's a part of me that knows I always will. I also still enjoy games design and at this very moment i'm mulling over some projects i'm quite excited about. At the same time, I don't seem to have the same enthusiasm i've had in the past. I still want to make games, but I don't feel as if I *need* to make games, if you get me?

I don't know. I know I can be quite pessimistic about things at times so maybe the way i'm feeling is just that. On the other hand, I have the feeling that if i'd done a course like this maybe seven years ago after my first time at uni, i'd still have the enthusiasm for it. At the moment, I feel drained and dare I say a bit bitter when I think about the coming year. I don't feel that the course has really helped me advance as much as I wanted it to, and the course itself hasn't really tied together the games design and story development areas as much as i'd hoped. That's my experience anyway.

The only thing i'm kinda looking forward to next year is my dissertation project and even that is pushing me in another direction. I'm going to be looking at accessibility in games, particularly the use of visual signifiers as representations of sound in games for hearing impaired players. But if i'm honest, i'm finding that my interest in accessibility is overtaking my interest in games. In some ways i'm finding the games aspect of the course restrictive. At a time when I want to focus on things like my writing, i'm finding myself pushed into only a few limited choices in the third year.

Probably what's holding me back is my own way of thinking i'm not good enough. I mean realistically, i'm not at the moment, but every so often there's a part of me that insists i'll never be good enough. Then again, there's a part of me that feels like I don't want to go pro. There are days when I feel that i'm not the right person for the professional games industry. I seem to have this unfounded image of "The Industry" in my head that's been changing over time into something elitist and macho and I don't have any interest in that. It's a ridiculous impression, I know, but I find myself looking at some of the latest titles with apathy these days.

I'm also very aware that I need to return to full-time employment if Falling and I are ever going to save the deposit on a flat, and amongst my many interests, I find captioning surfacing as a realistic route to go down.

I think no matter what I end up doing i'll be involved in software creation in some respect (games/applications) as I enjoy solving programming problems and I still get a kick out of simply making stuff move on screen, a thrill that's stayed with me since my first outings with the BASIC programming language as a child. However, it seems more realistic to me now to finally settle on a 'real' career and continue my projects as a hobby.

I bid you a warm and fuzzy welcome to the world of my crazy mind.

Make a difference in 3 clicks...

2009-06-25T21:38:00.005+01:00

Yourlocalcinema.com has been shortlisted for a National Lottery Award. For those who haven't paid this site a visit before, they provide listings of the latest subtitled and audio described cinema showings around the UK, as well as subtitled trailers, and several links to articles concerning accessible cinema (Their Site Map is a good place to start to get your bearings).

Voting for them in this contest is a great opportunity to highlight the interest in accessible cinema and encourage more investment in this area. You can vote by going to the National Lottery page here, clicking on the Best Arts Project category and then on YourLocalCinema.com where you can read a bit more about what they do and cast your vote. A direct link to YourLocalCinema.com's entry on the shortlist is here.

Voting closes at midday on the 10th July 2009.

While you're at it, I highly recommend you subscribe to Yourlocalcinema.com's email updates, even if you don't require subtitles or audio description, since turning up to these showings will help cinemas realise how much of a demand there is for this service.

Please do take a moment out of your day to have a look around.

Safari 4: First Impressions

2009-06-10T19:37:00.024+01:00

Safari 4 is finally out of Beta so I thought I'd take it for a spin (I never did convince myself to try the Beta and fiddle with webkit frameworks to keep Safari 3 at the same time..). A fresh install of Safari 4 on Tiger looks like this:

First look, seems they've ditched the tabs-on-top idea (woo!) although I wouldn't be surprised if there's a hidden enable option in there (apparently there was the option to switch them off in the beta). Gone is the old metal look in favour of the grey plastic style found in iTunes and other Apple apps (Although I believe Safari 3 was like this under Leopard already??). Despite the modern stylings, I have to say though that the interface now seems quite dull (not that it had much colour before mind). I personally don't like that the close button on tabs only appears when you mouse near, and even that's in grey:

Some other changes as far as I can tell, but first a screenie of Safari 3 on Tiger that I managed to dig up:

Firstly, in Safari 4 the reload button takes the place of the snapback button (not shown in the above screenie) which was at the right end of the address field:

I didn't really use snapback, but I did use the reload button which was on the left, Now it seems the only option is to use the one here since it's not in the customise toolbar sets (of course ⌘R does the same thing). Another small gripe, the add bookmark button seems to have shimmied over to right beside the address field. As far as I can remember, the original was a separate button and I may have swapped it round with the Home button, whereas it's part of the address bar in Safari 4 and a bit too close for my liking.

Safari 3 had a blue loading bar that appeared behind the text in the address bar, in Safari 4 this has also slid to the right and has become a darker blue. Also, while loading there is the option to click the stop icon, doing away with the need for a separate Stop button altogether.

One final thing before you become truly bored with Safari 4's interface (it's not really THAT different), when the Safari window is in the background, the title bar becomes pale and the window controls lose their colour (in other apps, only the buttons change colour). A minor change but good visual feedback.

On to actually using Safari 4 then. On the surface it really doesn't behave much differently from Safari 3 tbh, which is both a good thing and little bit disappointing (I like being surprised). Apple boasts 150 features on their site (not 150 *new* features mind) so i'll leave it to you to go a Googling. One of the most talked about though was the introduction of Top Sites and so this was my first stop.

Top sites, as the name implies, keeps a record of your most frequently visited websites and displays them to you as a nice curved wall of previews. You can enter Edit mode and 'pin' the ones you want to keep, drag them around, or remove the ones you don't want. A nice touch is the little star icon on sites that have changed so you know which ones to visit. You can have 24, 12, or 6 previews on display and you can also drag links into the window to add them. (Note the sites below are just examples)

It had me enraptured for the first five minutes anyway (It brought back memories of CubicEye - completely different mind! - anyone used that?), then I realised something. Top Sites, while oh so pleasing on the eyes, isn't anymore useful than what we had before. For starters, if I pin the sites I use the most (Blogs, news sites etc) i'd effectively just be pinning the links that are already in my bookmarks bar. Okay so I get to see them all on one page, but it's still a click away (The little icon of squares opens Top Sites) which is no more than clicking a drop down of links. Also, while Top Sites does show if a page has been updated, most of the updates i'm interested in are returned by RSS feeds which is already comfortably handled by the bookmarks bar and other RSS readers. I probably will use Top Sites, if only for the visual gloss, and possibly there's a way to set Top Sites as the home page, but in the long run that might grate. In any case, it's a nice optional extra.

Another cool feature is the introduction of Coverflow in the history and bookmarks browsers. If you've ever used iTunes, you know what Coverflow is. If not, it's basically a scrollable library of previews that you can flip through to find what you want. In the case of iTunes that's songs and albums, for Safari it's websites. It's really nice and I can see being able to browse your entire history this way being immensely efficient:

I've noticed one small issue though: If you have your bookmarks set up with folders as I have, these won't display as it only shows websites. This is more of a personal problem mind, since I have so many folders within folders (hence the previous post) and I've never made use of Collections (Should I?). So I think a reorganisation of my bookmarks is inevitable before I can use Coverflow fully.

Another welcome addition is the Developer tools (I honestly can't say what Safari 3 had since I used Firefox for all my testing) and, while the Safari 4 Developer tools don't at first glance appear to have the ability to make changes like you can in Firebug (or at least not as easily, there's something called the Snippet Editor but I haven't tried it yet), there are nice touches like the Resources section in the Web Inspector which shows you the download time and size of a sites files. These are definitely options I need to explore in more detail so I defer to the conclusions of the real web developers out there.

Rather than a comprehensive review, since I'm sure there are plenty out there, this has just been my initial reactions to Safari 4. Overall i'm happy with the new version: it's not so different as to turn me away, but it has enough sparkle to keep me playing with it. Together with Firefox, Safari on the Mac is still my browser of choice (Everything i've heard about Safari 3 on Windows has me in no hurry to try it - Firefox all the way - but maybe Safari 4 will be better?).

I've got a few more posts in the pipline: another movie review (maybe), some games reviews, as well as some projects i'm just getting started with (hopefully), so feel free to wait with baited breath;-) Oh, in other news, i've accepted an offer from my dad to go home to Scotland to work for the summer. I'll still be online, but things might be a bit quiet in the coming week.

Cheers.

Ideas anyone??

2009-05-24T18:55:00.008+01:00

Just a quick one today. How do y'all manage your bookmarks?

I'm slowly suffocating under the weight of all the bookmarks I have in Safari - I actually have no idea how many there are - and then there's all the ones from Firefox too *shudders* I've spent most of the morning trying to clear them all out and better organise my hierarchy, but since I like to categorise stuff I have folder within folder within folder...you get the picture.

Oh I went all modern and signed up to Delicious awhile ago now of course, but it's not yet part of my bookmarking strategy. In fact, it's filling up with bookmarks too so I desperately need to sync it with my desktop browsers. I've been taking Cocoalicious for a spin (a desktop client that lets you manage your Delicious bookmarks). It's all right but the lack of any help had me scratching my head as to how you delete bookmarks - until I discovered you press backspace instead of delete, geez! It's a bit simple though and doesn't seem to do much else but hey it's free. I know there's other apps/plugins out there (Safarilicious etc) but until I get my bookmarks organised, there's no point sticking them on Delicious.

I'm not all together convinced Delicious is for me anyway, I can't really seem to get away from folders in favour of tags (it's weird seeing stuff coming up under multiple tags in Cocoalicious). Still, maybe when I finally get through this lot i'll give it a shot. A nice little tut I found just now suggests using symbols in the bookmarks bar. I've already replaced "Apple" with the Apple symbol as seen below, now I just need to get a bit more creative with the rest to squeeze more in..

Rambo's Movie Rundown (Issue 2)

2009-04-10T13:41:00.004+01:00

Watchmen is this issue's subject although I wouldn't really call this a review. This is a difficult one to write and I expect you can find more in-depth coverage elsewhere, however here are some thoughts if you're interested.

First off, it's important to establish that I knew nothing of the Watchmen series prior to seeing this film. The history of The Comedian, Rorschach et al means nothing to me, so what follows is based solely on my experience with the film. I won't really go into detail on the plot either - it's a bit fuzzy in my head anyway to be honest - since I feel other reviewer's could do it more justice.

Suffice to say the film is, at least initially, explored from the point of view of Rorschach and his journal entries. Following the death of The Comedian, Rorschach tries to uncover the 'mask killer' who he thinks is out to get him and his fellow Watchmen. The film takes place in an alternate 1980s with the US and Russia on the brink of nuclear war. The Watchmen, a group of masked vigilantes, have been retired. It seems they've fallen out of favour with America despite their popularity in the past, and the country has become one of criminality and vice. All but one of the Watchmen - Dr Manhattan - don't have superpowers. As the original Nite Owl explains to Dan (Nite Owl II), the Watchmen were started by frustrated cops deciding to wear masks like the criminals they put away.

Watchmen is a dark, at times gruesome film. That wasn't unexpected. Having seen Sin City, I expected a similar dark and gritty graphic novel to movie adaptation. Watchmen, however, makes Sin City look like Toy Story. Unlike the superheroes of Marvel and DC, which only dabble with controversial themes, the Watchmen are not the usual knights in shining armour kind of superheroes. They're all shades of very dark grey in between. Some of them, like The Comedian and Rorschach, are psychotic, while others are megalomaniacs. While it was refreshing to see superheroes who weren't really superheroes, I felt the film overemphasised their flawed natures, to the extent that it was difficult to identify with any of them.

This was particularly evident with The Comedian, the embodiment of vice in the film. [SPOILER] I felt the scene where he tries to rape the original Silk Spectre was in bad taste. While i've come across rape scenes before, Watchmen's delivery almost glorified it with the camera angles, particular of Silk Spectre's body. While the rape didn't take place (although it could be argued the attempt itself was a form of mental rape), and it reinforced The Comedian's sexist nature, I felt it was overplayed, fetishing the whole thing.

Dan, aka Nite Owl II, drives the narrative with Rorschach and, despite being among the cleanest of the group, he was a bit wishy-washy for me and never seemed to take action. Of course, I think the intention was probably to juxtapose those two characters and it worked, but it made a film that left me feeling pretty frustrated. Rorschach, despite being the character I most identified with, was difficult to stomach. [SPOILER] I liked that he exuded confidence and the glimpse of his back story really helped, but his demise knocked the wind out of me.

That was the hardest part of this film to swallow. At times it seemed to glorify war, while at others it seemed to be anti-war. The latter half of the film saw the main characters desperate to prevent nuclear meltdown, with the frustration of having a character, Dr Manhattan, who could prevent it on a whim, doing nothing. [SPOILER] To witness his return from apathy to concern, only to have him side with the idea that peace at all costs is worth it - ie, the murder of millions to save billions - was intensely frustrating.

Needless to say, I'm still feeling the after affects of a film that paints such a dark picture of the human condition. The film suggests it's a parody (I fail to see the humor), but it's a depressingly possible future for us. It seems every other day that some country or another is shaking a stick at everyone else and I suspect it's only a matter of time before someone decides to throw it.

Reasons to be homesick...

2009-04-07T19:46:00.004+01:00

If dedication to purpose can be quantified, surely the lack of posts since the 2nd of March is an indication of my commitment. Oh hell, that's crap, i've just been overwhelmed with coursework, mostly through my own lack of time management! Still, the first lot is done now, and all in time (just). I'm pretty happy with the virtual environment written work I did - a historical adventure set in ancient Japan - but like all things that run up to the last hour, there's probably more I could have put in. I'm very pleased with our group project, we put a lot of good work in I thought. Now we just have to follow up our promises and make it;-)

Re the post title: I'm not really homesick but the coursework had to take priority this weekend so I cancelled the trip to Scotland=( However, I promised Habboi i'd post about this so, first on my list of reasons to miss home is...

Oor Wullie and The Broons

When I was just a wee lad, I grew up on our nation's favourite comics, Oor Wullie and the Broons. They're published in annuals, but I think they can also be found in the newspapers sometimes. I also read The Beano and The Dandy (By the same publishing company as Oor Wullie and The Broons, but also issued in England I believe).

Oor Wullie follows the adventures of 'William', a cheeky young boy who gets into all sorts of trouble through various schemes. He has trademark spiky hair, wears black dungarees and usually ends each strip sitting on his bucket and, in the strips I read, with his pet mouse Jeemy. We had one or two of the annuals at home and I still read them when I find them. It's probably easier for you to wiki them, but seeing Habboi trying to make sense of the language last week was hilarious.

The Broons are just as good. It follows a Scottish family (The 'Browns' in English) and features such memorable characters as the bairn and grandpaw Broon. You can wiki it here but I suggest you try to get your hands on the annuals=)

I have to admit, even though I understand the language in them both fine, I don't regard myself as being able to speak Scots. My dialect is so watered down it's pretty much English. I remember seeing a programme on TV about Oor Wullie - it might have been the "Happy Birthday Oor Wullie" that Wikipedia mentions - and when I heard the voiceovers, I found the pronunciation of some of the words didn't match what was in my head. For example "crivvens!" (an exclamation of surprise) was pronounced "creevans" whereas I always thought it was how it's written.

It's hard to know really, nobody teaches Scots, lol, so unless you live around it, I can see how English completely takes over. Wikipedia sums it up nicely. Quite disheartening too is the quote from the Scottish Education Department in the 1840s: "..it is not the language of 'educated' people anywhere, and could not be described as a suitable medium of education or culture." I have to admit, with shame, that when I go home and I (sometimes) hear people talking Scots, it can be quite jarring and I do form the impression that it's somehow lower than English.

Then there's also Scottish Gaelic of course, which is a language in its own right. I don't speak it, except to know that 'Alba' is Gaelic for Scotland, and I have the vague understanding that it's spoken in some communities in the north of Scotland, but it's dying out, much to my regret. I would like to somehow preserve both Gaelic and Scots if I could.

Huh, well thinking about all that's kinda put me in a sour mood, so I'll end quickly with my second reason to be homesick: Scotch pies=) You normally can't get them in England, since every bakery i've tried has given me pork pies, christmas mince pies, or blank looks. They're replacement down here is probably sausage rolls, although you get those back home too, but I actually found one in the supermarket today!! (Yes, I was probably the ONLY ONE in the supermarket who was that excited about them). It was unusually expensive for a scotch pie, but there was only one and I had to have it. It even came with cooking instructions (eh?) but I'd scoffed it before I got home. It was delicious. Seriously people, you don't know what you're missing.

In case anyone thinks i'm going to die of food poisoning in the next few hours (I'm pretty sure it was cooked), I should clarfiy what Scotch pies are. It's basically minced mutton in pastry. You can eat them cold or hot. When they're hot it's best to get a fresh one as you can drink the hot grease that runs out of the pie, mmm!lol I actually found a recipe. I'll have to try making them soon=)

Since my pie didn't survive the trip home, here is a random picture of a Scotch pie:

Well, that's your lot, lesson for today: read comics and eat pies;-)

Opening multiple tabbed homepages in Safari

2009-03-02T01:38:00.007Z

Since my last post grumbling about Twine, i've been trying out some other social bookmarking/social interests tools. More on that later, but it got me to thinking about opening a few different tabs when Safari starts up.

At the moment my homepage is faithful old Google, and I have a suite of regular links in the Bookmarks Bar above. Still, I thought it might be nice if I had other tabs open with some of the sites I want to quickly glance at. Strangely, I discovered Safari (3.2) doesn't do this out of the box (other browsers let you just type more web addresses separated by semi-colons), so I started reading around for some fix.

Macosxhints has a post on using Applescript to open multiple pages as the homepage but I didn't really want to go down that route (and in any case, i'm not sure where you put the Applescript?).

The first thing that came to my mind was using Automator. For those not in the know, Automator is an app preinstalled with Mac OS X that let's you script little actions in a really nice drag and drop way. Basically scripting for the masses=) I currently have a couple of workflows to back up my local emails and run an iTunes alarm clock.

Well the existing Safari action Display Webpages only opens webpages in seperate browser windows, so that was less than ideal. However, by installing the Display Webpages as Tabs action for Automator by Eric Blair, and using it in place of Display Webpages, you can create a workflow that opens multiple pages in tabs. For it to work, you have to enable Tabbed browsing in Safari, and set links from applications to "open in a new tab in the current window."

All well and good, and to be honest that might be a workable solution for you if you drag the app into your Finder startup items so that it runs when you turn on your Mac, or if you manually start the app yourself. However, I went a little further.

Since I saved the Automator action as an app, I simply dragged it to my Applications folder (You don't have to, but it makes sense) and using the simple method of changing icons in Mac OS X, I copied the Safari one and pasted it over my new app (which I called "safariload" to remind me). I then dragged the app to the Dock to create a shortcut to it, and removed the original Safari link from the Dock (It's still in your Applications folder, don't worry!).

Simply clicking on the new app icon in the Dock - which looks just like the old Safari icon - causes the Automator functions to be executed, opening a safari window with multiple tabs. It works but with two minor issues: The the new Safari window isn't in focus when it loads and, since the app launches Safari and you have a shortcut pinned to your Dock, you have two Safari icons while Safari is open.

Still, it's another method I thought i'd throw out there. Don't know if it's original.

Big ball of Twine

2009-03-01T02:03:00.006Z

"Semantic"
- Relating to meaning in language or logic

One of the new(ish) buzzwords around town seems to be the 'semantic web' or web 3.0 as some are calling it. I'll be honest and say I'm only ankle deep in the whole thing, but as far as I'm aware, the idea is for a web with meaning attached to the data. So, rather than search engines simply returning the results of keywords, those words will have meaning and relationships. Using metadata, sites and software will know the relationships between names and words, and manipulate the content in a useful way.

That's the theory anyway. One of the services aiming to deliver a semantic web is Twine by Radar Networks. I read an article about Twine on Think Artificial a few weeks ago and tonight I thought I'd take it for a spin. Twine describes itself as a "social interests tool" rather than a social networking tool. It's a way to keep up to date with your interests, rather than your friends (although it has some social networking capabilities too apparently). Twine allows you to gather all the data from your travels around the web (bookmarks, images, videos etc) in one place and filter them semantically. It's early days so some teething issues are to be expected, but overall I have to say my initial impression of Twine is less than favourable.

I've never really gone in for bookmarking services like Deli.cio.us or social networking services like Facebook, so I don't really know what I was expecting. But since my bookmarks are in need of a good spring clean, the allure of a system that learns your tastes and allows meaningful searching of data was too much to resist.

In practice I found the interface and it's manipulation very basic and clunky. You create twines on topics that interest you and Twine constantly returns the latest submissions to that area of interest. Twine seemed to do that okay, but I was disappointed to find I couldn't customise the twines homepage much (I was looking for an iGoogle like drag and drop functionality) so having multiple twines seems like it would be a bit cumbersome. Also, adding items to Twine could have been more intuitive. Sure, if you find a website you like you can just click the Add to Twine bookmark that they give you and a dialog pops up, allowing you to name the bookmark etc. The problem was, I accidentally added the item to My Items and an existing twine on a completely unrelated subject (some sharing option that it wouldn't let me deselect). Since it seems you can't remove items from twines you don't manage, I couldn't see a way to correct my mistake.

Another source of confusion was the functionality for importing your bookmarks. While I knew that sorting out my bookmarks in Twine would still mean going back to my old bookmarks folder and manually having a clear out, I thought that Twine would be a good way of filtering them easily to begin with. In practice though the tagging filters were next to useless: simply filtering my bookmarks into two categories - "bookmarks" and "videos" - and coming up with nonsensical related tags. I suspect this is because, as some reviewers have said, Twine relies on properly structured webpages to allow it to extract the metadata, and unfortunately the web is a scrap heap of poorly made webpages, so I can't blame Twine completely there. However, even with my bookmarks in Twine, I didn't seem to have basic options like batch commands (multiple item delete etc) or alphabetical sorting, and the lack of effective filters made clicking through individual bookmarks a chore. In the end I gave up.

That said, partly because I can't figure out a way to quit Twine, but also because I should give it the benefit of the doubt, I'm going to persevere a little longer. I still like the idea of semantic tagging of items and a more intelligent web, I just haven't found it so helpful in practice. I have a suspicion that Twine may not be for me after all, but I'd be interested to hear other people's thoughts on Twine or similar services. In my case, I'm basically looking for a way to keep up with my interests with an rss-like delivery. Other features like recommendations and social networking would be a bonus. Twine promises to deliver much of this but so far, it seems, not very intuitively.

Toys in the Attic

2009-02-24T18:43:00.010Z

Something a bit light-hearted today. After a conversation with Habboi today about anime and his recommendation, Death Note (which I found interesting, if a little odd!), i'm spurred on to write up an anime list. Well, hey, us humans love lists don't we?

The intention is to include something like this in the new site with more detailed synopses, but for now, here is a simple list of all the anime I've seen (and I can't name one I didn't enjoy!). Fallingstar and I have most of these in our collection - the ones we don't are marked in red - so to any of my uni friends out there, feel free to ask if you want to borrow something=)

T.V. Series

Cowboy Bebop (on long term loan, heh)
Cowboy Bebop: The Movie
Hellsing
Neon Genesis Evangelion
Ninja Scroll

Outlaw Star
Samurai Champloo

Feature Films

- Studio Ghibli FIlms

Grave of the Fireflies
Howl's Moving Castle
Kiki's Delivery Service
Laputa: Castle in the Sky
Lupin III: The Castle of Cagliostro
My Neighbour Totoro
Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind
Pom Poko
Porco Rosso
Princess Mononoke
Spirited Away
The Cat Returns
Whisper of the Heart

- Other Feature Films

Akira
Ghost in the Shell
Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence
Ghost in the Shell Stand Alone Complex: Solid State Society
Metropolis
Sky Blue
Wonderful Days (Korean version of Sky Blue with English subtitles)

- Short Films

Voices of a Distant Star
Blood: The Last Vampire

Where's the door handle?

2009-02-22T12:05:00.009Z

That i'm quietly tinkering with my *new* WordPress version of this blog won't exactly be news to many of you. I've mentioned it enough times in passing that you'd be forgiven for becoming very fed up with me. Development, once again, continues, but I thought I would post today about a couple of development issues i've had to consider in the last week.

The first, images. Designing websites with an awareness for degradation - especially when it comes to navigation - is old news really, and has crossed my path more than once in the last few years. Still, it's surprising, given the wealth of posts on accessibility, that many blogs are just saturated with images. Personally, I dislike clutter anyway, so in my blog redesign I'm aiming for a minimalist look. Substance over style.

That said, there's nothing wrong with spicing up webpages with some cool imagery, but we all need to be aware of the consequences. Now I'm no expert when it comes to accessibility - in fact I confess that i've read more about accessibility online in the last few months than I ever have before - but it should be obvious by now that we all have to be responsible designers.

So images then. As a test, I urge you to visit your favourite blogs, dare I say even your own, with images turned off in your browser. Aside from the, most likely, now bland-looking page you are presented with, you should be aware of a couple of things. Can you still see your sidebar navigation? What about your header title? If you've used images for any of your navigation, you should now see what i'm getting at. Thankfully, many 'featured' WordPress themes stick with lists for the navigation (which should still be visible, even if it doesn't look pretty without background images), but still there are more custom themes that don't and suffer for it. Incidentally, if you try it here, you'll discover that my header image disappears ~~and there's no header text~~(**header text seems to show in FF but not in Safari - yet more accessibility considerations!). Yes, my bad, but I have the distinct impression that most Blogger themes haven't a hope of validating - there are 213 errors in this theme alone!

The above test has hopefully shown you the problem of relying on images, both aesthetically for the look of your site, but especially from an accessibility viewpoint when it comes to navigation. Now you may expect that many users would view your webpage with images on anyway, but there is another concern here: Many visually impaired users use screen readers to access webpages. So what happens when the screenreader encounters images? Well, hopefully you've provided 'alternative text' for the image using the alt attribute of the img tag. If not, the screenreader may skip the graphic entirely or read the filename of the image.

Now consider all the images that may be used in a blog for example. It might not be so bad for images in posts since chances are you've named them appropriately. But what about all the miscellaneous images, the ones that control the look of the blog itself or those in the navigation? Again, the header image may be appropriately titled, but in many blogs a repeatable image is used to create the background of the page. In this blog alone there is outerwrap.gif and innerwrap.gif, what are those? (In this case, "outerwrap" is the dark gradient on either side of the blog, while "innerwrap" is the diagonal lines in the sidebar) Again, even if these were all named sensibly, there is still the chance that any of these images could be overlooked by a screenreader, which may or may not be desirable, depending on the image's purpose. That's why it's important to use alternative text for images - either with an appropriate name if you want the screenreader to announce it, or with an alt attribute of "null" so that it will be skipped. I won't force the issue since i'm retreading old ground, but WebAIM has a very useful article on screen readers and alternative text here, covering many of these points in more detail.

For these reasons, I hope you can see that it's important to be aware of how your blog degrades across multiple environments. I've briefly mentioned images, but what if you've extensively used Javascript and the user has it turned off? By all means, lets design beautiful webpages, but I think it's helpful to start from the ground up, using images only to embellish an already accessible and clearly laid out web page. That's my intention in the future anyway.

Secondly, I want to mention something I hadn't previously considered: bullet points. As I said, many blogs use lists for navigation, which is accessible simply because it's text. However, aesthetically, it's desirable to layout hierarchal lists with bullet points to clearly distinguish between parent and child items. What happens, then, when a screen reader encounters these bullet points? Standards Schmandards has a very helpful article on accessible title separators (you know, the symbols commonly found between the blog title and subtitle) that also applies to bullet styles in lists. The article stresses the importance of using a symbol that is concise and fit for purpose. So if it's to be used as a separator, pick a symbol that sounds like it's meant to be a seperator. Similar suggestions have been made in the article's comments on the best symbol to use for list subitems. Many blogs use the raquo symbol » which the screenreader translates as "right double angle bracket", so it's easy to see how this could be confusing for visually impaired users.

Anyway, hopefully this little mention will prompt you to do some reading around. I know I need to do a lot more, but i's certainly food for thought. Personally, i'm still pondering over the symbols I'll end up using in my new blog, i'll let you know how it turns out.

It's good to be back..

2009-02-11T14:54:00.012Z

My second day back at uni and the feeling of optimism is infectious. Yesterday's module, Hypertext to Cybertext, was actually quite stimulating. It's basically a primer for the dissertation in year three so the first coursework is looking at the advantages and disadvantages of research methods and concepts, while the second coursework is to develop the proposal for our year three dissertation project.

I've been fiddling around with CSS on and off for the past few weeks, and learning a thing or too in the process, particularly about making web pages accessible (Try running your blog/site through the W3C validator). Something that I hadn't previously considered, but piqued my interest, was the way visually impaired users use technology such as screen readers to access websites. This is really cool, it means you have to be responsible about the use of images (using alt tags, and text for menu items), and by hiding text off the screen - but still readable by screenreaders - you can provide supportive information. I really like this idea.

Motivated by all this then, as we were introduced to the module yesterday, I found myself yearning to focus my research on accessibility in games. Not only for my own benefit through the discourses I might discover, but also since my project could have real world applications. That is really the end product of the dissertation: we write up our ideas and provide some kind of prototype. My thinking at the moment is centred around accessibility. I use that term loosely because I still need to do some reading and pondering before I focus more specifically, but it could mean looking at developing games for hearing impaired or visually impaired users, or some other 'disability' (Again, I use that word as a placeholder only since I know many out there may find the term offensive - and that too will be revealed during my research). The end product then could be some kind of prototype game. At the moment I am more interested in visual impairment rather than deafness, if only because to me it appears more challenging or possibly under-researched, however I do have deaf resources through Fallingstar and it would be wrong to ignore that. I need to take a look at what sort of games are out there at the moment anyway and see if I can fill the gap or address the issues.

That said, accessibility could simply mean "is it possible to make a game that is accessible to all?" Not only looking at physical limitations, but also racial or linguistic barriers, and the level of game playing ability itself. Some gamers prefer fast paced "twitch" gameplay, while others prefer more deliberately paced, possibly turn-based gameplay, or somewhere in between both. Can a game be made that caters for all? Is it even worthwhile attempting this? I'm not really sure if I want to go in that direction, since I suspect there are games out there that do try to cater to all tastes so I'm not sure how effective further research in that area would be. Fallingstar's own experiences in the discrimination faced by members of the deaf community suggests these issues may also be found in videogames, so that may be a more useful area of research. The lack of access for the deaf in media is something of a sore point for us in particular, and i'm always interested in ways to alleviate this, even to the extent of taking matters into my own hands by captioning with Submerge.

Anyway, these are early ideas so nothing is set in stone at the moment. Furthermore, if i've used 'labelling' terms that you deem offensive, that is purely through ignorance. I've used labels like visually impaired/disability simply to get my early ideas down on the page. With further research, I hope to develop a language that is inoffensive but still informative. Since these are early ideas, I would be interested to hear anyone's thoughts on anything i've said. Maybe there is another direction I can take my proposal in? I don't even have a proposal yet as such, just that I want to do some kind of research under "accessibility" which leads to a prototype game (or game-based experience) that, hopefully, has ripples reaching further than the university walls. One idea a friend suggested was looking at demonstrating deafness or visual impairment in a game. I'm inclined to steer well clear of that area, however, since it could easily be misinterpreted as a caricature of deafness or 'the token deaf character'. Also, for what purpose? Aside from the possible gameplay experience - and again, it's easy to see how this could reinforce stereotypes - what would gamers gain from interacting with a deaf or visually impaired character? Is there some way the game could be used to raise awareness about deaf issues without being patronising? Would it be more like a Serious game (See the Serious Games Initiative) which aims to educate as well as entertain? Again, please hang around long enough to chip in your two cents. All comments welcome.

Today's module, Management of Multimedia (or some other variation we all came up with!) was two parts exciting and one part terrifying, lol. Essentially, we'll be given a brief from a real client: "a game based marketing product" I think was the wording. It sounds like it's more biased towards a general media focus - maybe some kind of interactive branding space - but i'm relishing the challenge. It's the first time we get to work in groups and between us I think we can come up with some really cool ideas. We already have a great modeller (nods to Habboi). I'm a bit apprehensive since we have to give a pitch to the client, but I think i've overcome the absolute fear I had of public speaking in my younger days. Hell, if I could keep a room of about 70 people occupied at my brother's wedding, blethering to a couple of clients should be alright. Plus, it's about games, so we get to talk about what interests us, which makes a nice change from all those school assignments: Sure, you can write an essay all about robots, oh but we forget to tell you, now you've got to make it an interesting speech! (Not to say robotics is a boring subject to talk about, but you try discussing factory floor automatons to a class of "cool" teenagers)

After class today I got a chance to speak to my tutors about my career plans - or at least, the avenues I'd like to explore to further my skillset. Interestingly, one of the lectures on our module focuses on developing an online portfolio, which will be really helpful. Anyway, we discussed my intentions for the dissertation as above and the remarks overall were positive, with a few pointers about where I could go for information. I also enquired about maybe adding a module to my course in something like journalism, since writing reviews for a games magazine would be a good string to my bow. It turns out we can actually do 7 modules if we want at no cost, although for struggling students they do dissuade you (not in my case I was pleased to hear!). But through our discussion, and the options available, I've decided it's better to just take matters into my own hands and continue writing reviews and try submitting them to websites and magazines. I'd rather that than slog through a non-fiction module that didn't really touch on the style of writing I want to do. There's actually a magazine-focused module available in year 3, with no prerequisites, so I might revisit that later.

We had a long discussion. I was actually quite surprised at how enthusiastic and outspoken I was. I got a lot out that I had been pondering for a while, and I was pleased to receive positive reviews for my Natural History Museum scene, despite missing out my sketches. While they didn't divulge my mark - I get that tomorrow - I feel a lot more confident about it now. Surely they would've told me if i'd failed? Surely? Please?! We will see. I'll put my images from CW1 and 2 up on the blog tomorrow so you can see for yourself.

I got one of my tutors quite excited about a game I discovered in Edge this morning: Scribblenauts. It's a Nintendo DS title from 5th Cell, the developer's behind Drawn to Life, a game where you draw your own character using the stylus. I don't have a DS yet (wah!) but both got me really excited. Especially Scribblenauts. It's basically a very basic looking 2D platformer, but the hook is a huge dictionary of nouns you can write in to conjure up things you need to solve the puzzles. The examples they gave included spawning a ladder to get a star out a tree. Or use an American football to knock it down, or a beaver to eat through the trunk. The developers say that there will be nouns that won't be in there, obviously, but there are lots of obscure ones so trying to think up different ones sounds quite fun. One they mentioned was "dialysis machine" which can be used to cure you or electrocute sharks and so on, lol, so it's good to see multiple uses for items. This kind of word generated content is something i'd though about before, but was intimidated by the asset creation required. 5th Cell addressed this by using nouns only. There are no descriptive words, so you just get a "bear" rather than a "green bear" but for all intents and purposes it sounds very impressive.

There's a few other titles mentioned that really interested me, namely "Wet" for PS3/XBox 360 by A2M, with "acrobatic action wrapped around gunplay with a Tarantino twist." Having a female lead has drawn obvious parallels with Lara Croft, but the game bears little resemblance to the globe-trotting archeologist. It probably has more in common with Heavenly Sword. I need to look into it further, but things like being able to shoot while pulling off acrobatics sounds cool. Also mentioned is "The Another World", an RPG for the DS by Level-5, with a Studio Ghibli collaboration (I recognised the art style immediately), and "Section 8" by Timegate Studios, a team-based shooter for XBox 360/PC/PS3 that is really appealing. Particularly, the way your combat boosted marine drops (literally) into the action anywhere at the start of play. It's an idea I've wanted to see ever since I saw Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within. Allowing you to drop anywhere allows for a greater element of strategy than some First Person Shooters allow, and the addition of flak cannons that can be captured and used against the dropping troopers sounds cool. What's more impressive is the introduction of 'Dynamic Combat Missions' to shake things up from the staleness of tediously fighting over controls points. These are missions that you can activate to spice up your experience. The examples they give include a sniper initiating an assassination mission. An NPC enemy general could be spawned in an enemy outpost, that you then have to go and assassinate. This feature alone really gets my juices flowing. Finally, there's Aionguard for XBox 360/PS3 by Avalanche which looks absolutely gorgeous and appears to have the gameplay to match: I don't know yet, I haven't had time to read the review since i've been ogling the screenshots. I can't really sum up the genre either but a few key words: fantasy, flying beasts, golem, magic, armour. Interested?

I have to admit to a feeling of apathy towards triple-A games of late. Not through any bad experiences with the latest games - I've yet to try many of them since I don't have a PS3 or XBox 360 - but there has been a festering jaded feeling over the holidays. It could be just that, holiday blues, I suppose. I haven't really had the time for games in the last few weeks anyway so that could also be a contributing factor. However, I'm pleased to find I have renewed enthusiasm now that i'm back at uni, and the time away from the computer has done wonders for my ideas.

Phew! You still with me? Seriously, I don't know where all this crap comes from, I really don't..I have much more to go on about, particularly around my games design ideas. I'll keep schtum for now, as I said last post, but there is one idea i'm toying with that I think could be good as a collaborative effort. Perhaps not even to be developed as a game, but just an exercise in brainstorming. I found a similar conversation a few months ago - i'll find the link eventually - where a coder/artist was discussing ideas for a sci-fi strategy game and morphing the idea through feedback from others. It actually had a lot in common with my own ideas for the illusive "ultimate game", which was coincidental since Habboi had shortly before asked me what mine was. That one's on the shelf for now, at least until I find that link, but this little idea i'm playing with could be interesting. I'll discuss it in more detail next post after I've thought about it for a bit longer, and we'll see where you take it from there.

'Til next time.

'Sup?

2009-02-09T13:50:00.001Z

We're officially back from Scotland now so breathe a sigh of relief. Actually, we've been back since wednesday but it's been a bit of a lazy week. We got snowed in up North so we spent a couple of extra nights with my family, which was welcome, but I had to shell out another £70 to change the date of our tickets - not very welcome! I got to see my little nephew when we were up -uh, I think he's four now? - and he's mad as ever. Still daft on Doctor Who. He's also spoilt rotten on all the games systems my sister's husband has: Xbox 360, DS, PSOne, and I think a PSP at one point. When we arrived I was quite shocked to find him playing what looked like Call of Duty or something similar on the XBox 360. Get this - he knew exactly what he was doing! He was driving a long in the country in some kind of armoured car, shooting at enemy infantry. He hasn't quite worked out that the red arrows meant where the enemy fire was coming from, so he gets a few shots in the back of the head as he turns all the way round, but he quickly jumped out of the vehicle saying, and I quote, "I need a bigger gun", before he ran off and found some grenades to play with! Being the concerned uncle I am, I game him a load of child friendly games from my Playstation collection. We also had a go at Spiderman on the DS too which was cool. He showed me how to play and I attempted to get him past the tricky bits (and failed miserably!). I better keep an eye on him, especially seeing as he introduced himself as "the bad spiderman" when I first saw him!

Despite the lazy week, yesterday Fallingstar and I went on a mad DIY bent and made three cd towers, a chest of drawers, a small table and two designer storage boxes, that we got from Ikea. It's cheap and cheerful but you have to admire the ingenuity in the fixings (despite the guilty nagging that it's probably racked up a lot of airmiles? I dunno). So yes, the room is becoming more "ours" now as Falling put it. If you don't see any pictures in this post, it's probably because we're still trying to put all our stuff away - we have SO much stuff between us it's unbelievable! I have to admit though, i'm finding it much easier to part with stuff nowadays, games included. Also, because i'm typing this on my lunch break at work so I won't get a chance to post a final version until I get home tonight. I'll add the photos in later.

It took me two and a half hours to get to work this morning. It was ridiculous. I ended up having to go back north again just to get south because of all the train delays and station closures. I was 45 minutes late for work in the end, but my boss' wife made me a cup of tea, which was nice! I start back at uni tomorrow so here's hoping I get off to a better start (I left at 7:30ish this morning!!).

I'm looking forward to going back to uni, although I have to admit to feeling pretty low concerning my future these past few weeks. I want to arrange a meeting with my personal tutor to discuss some of my intentions. Oh yes, I finally found out I have one. At my first time at uni, we had to have meetings with our personal tutor every week. This time around, I found out I had one just before the Christmas break in year 2! I also have quite a few personal projects I want to get underway with. I have to admit, since finishing the last of my coursework and the trip to York/Edinburgh, I haven't had much time to fiddle around with things. It's slightly worrying to consider how much Director Lingo I may have forgotten, so time for a hasty brush up this week;-)

The new blog is progressing, although it's been slow going since I got myself so confused about a few things. It's alright now though as I have a much clearer plan of what i'm trying to achieve, and I found some REALLY useful tools that make the whole process so much easier (Namely the Web Developer Toolbar and Firebug for Firefox). That said, I won't go into any more detail for the moment. I'll just keep plodding away in the background. The reason being, I have the feeling that whenever I have an idea for something I want to do, then share it, I end up never doing it. Right now I have about 5/6 little projects I want to blether on about, but until I make some serious progress, I should keep my trap shut!

iGoogle today brought up the latest MacWorld news. In it today is an article about the ongoing lawsuit between Psystar and Apple. I can't claim to have known anything about this until I read about it today as it's been a while since I signed into iGoogle, and at least a couple of months since I picked up a magazine. However, the jist of the matter is Apple started proceedings against Psystar who were selling intel machines with the Mac OS X operating system (ie, Mac OS X on non-Apple hardware). Psystar launched a countersuit saying that Apple is breaking anti-trust laws by tying the Mac operating system to Apple hardware. That countersuit was rejected, but today's news was about an appeal where Psystar has been able to change their countersuit to Apple "breaking copyright laws".

I've read a little about it in the time I have on my break here, but I have to say that the whole thing sounds ridiculous to me. I have no problem with Apple software only being on Apple hardware. That's one of the main reasons I like Macs so much - the hardware may be overpriced, but since Apple controls software and hardware, it gels that much better. "It just works" irritates the hell out of non-Mac users, but 99% of the time it's true. I really don't want to see Psystar win this battle as this could ultimately lead to the wonderful Mac OS X sitting astride a variety of machines with unpredictable hardware configurations. I try not to sway the boat too much with the Mac vs PC debate (I have and still do use both), but the reason for many of those random Windows error messages is the hardware underneath, which is out of Microsoft's control. While I know my way around the inside of a computer, there's something nice about buying a box, plugging it in and seeing it work first time, every time.

Coincidentally, I saw a little video yesterday showing Leopard running on a tiny notebook. It was impressive but reading further into the whole "hackintosh" deal and I realised how fiddly it is. Even if you get Mac OS X on a PC, chances are critical functionality like sound, ethernet etc won't work, and even if it does, the above blog said that simply trying to use Apple update will wreck your installation. So why bother? I can understand the allure of getting Mac OS X but why not just get a Mac? Okay, they are expensive (Touch wood nothing happens to this one when its guarantee runs out!), and you do get more bang for your buck buying (or even building) a PC, but if you want to have the Mac experience, there's no better way than to get the real deal. Anyway, there's always the Mac Mini if you want a taster, except you have to supply all the peripherals to go with it.

So anyway - sorry for going off on a rant there! I've got about ten minutes of my break left. Just enough time to finish my coffee and eat my doughnuts;-)

Hope the house is still standing when we get back..

2009-01-23T01:36:00.002Z

We're away for a week and a bit. Tomorrow we head up to York for Falling's Master's graduation ceremony - all hats and robes, you know? - and on sunday we're heading on to Edinburgh. Quite looking forward to it as I haven't been home since the wedding in July and there's a lot of catching up to do!

I'm still recovering from the insomnia I developed in the last week or so, and I've been mostly working this week so that doesn't leave the energy for much else. I've been pottering about with the new site again for the past couple of nights - it looks a right mess, lol, but i've mostly been slapping on garish colours to help me figure things out behind the scenes. I hope to finish it before I go back to uni in February=)

Anyway, look after yourselves, ya hear?

2008 in retrospect

2009-01-17T14:19:00.006Z

There's still some life around these parts, don't worry, I've not abandoned you yet..

This past year has flown by. I honestly cannot believe I'm half way through the second year of my degree already - it still feels like early days. How's it been? Well, on the one hand I've met some really cool people on my course and had a great time (mostly) staying in uni accommodation for the first year. I'll stick with aliases as usual: Elite, Habboi, Twin Pistols, CrowbarSka, Remi, and you who has no nickname yet afaik?! It's been great. I said in my uni application that I was looking forward to discussing games with other gaming enthusiasts, and for the most part that's been the most interesting (and enlightening) aspect of the whole experience.

Academically speaking, it's been a mixed bag. While I really enjoyed the Creative Writing module in the first semester of the first year, the second semester's The Writer's Voice left me feeling pretty frustrated and disappointed with my writing, although I think I did write some of my best pieces so far. This years module Story and Myth was better, but I didn't find the approach very helpful: writing a part of a story every week meant I had more ideas than I knew what to do with. I think I got a decent story out of it in the end though, but it's very different from my original synopsis. I'm still not sure where I'm going with my writing. I still like writing, but I'm not a writer. I don't live and breathe writing. But I do have ideas and, to be honest, at the moment it feels like writing in some form as a career is a lot more attainable than any hands on creation of games (coding/graphics/design etc).

This brings me to the other focus of this year's modules: 3d graphics. I'd been really looking forward to this module. I LOVE 3D graphics and animation. I was really looking forward to sitting down and learning 3D modelling in a structured environment, rather than the dabbling I'd been doing over the last few years. It wasn't quite what I expected really.

The lectures were pretty good with (mostly) straightforward explanations of 3D Studio Max. But I found that it wasn't such a hands on module like the Java or Pascal modules I've studied in the past. The support didn't really seem to be there in the workshops - I mean, the lecturers were there, but it was kind of a case of following the tutorial online and then they'd come around and rip your attempts to shreds. I also got the feeling that some of our tutors hadn't used Max before (one of them said she hadn't). In one of the last lectures, they actually said there weren't any good tutorials for UV Mapping in Max online (there are, if you look around!), so they'd written a tutorial. Problem was, the tutorial was very basic and, in the limited time I had during class to follow it, I just came away more confused and frustrated.

I don't know. The module was good in some ways. I mean, I think I'm actually at the same level, if not further, in 3DS Max than I was with Lightwave a few years ago. In a lot of ways I don't like Max compared to Lightwave - the interface leaves a lot to be desired and some of the workflow is so much more simpler in LW. But I think the rigidity of university classes has been beneficial overall. I actually have some original work to show for my efforts now, compared to the odd tutorial render from my workings in LW.

Still, completing assignments in this past semester has kinda felt like a chore and sucked my enthusiasm - at least at the moment - for 3D work. My undoing is my tendency to over complicate things and focus on the details. Ironically, this was rated as a good thing when I was in school(!) The deadline for our second piece of coursework was two days ago. I made it but only just, and in our panic to get my sleep-deprived carcass across London to hand it in, I left all my beautifully detailed planning sketches under the printer. Needless to say I've given the Gods an earful and I'm awaiting an email from my tutor to see if he'll accept the scanned pdf I sent him, but I'm not too hopeful.

Overall, I'm still enjoying the course. On the one hand, it's not as games focussed as I expected, but also not as games writing focused either. I'm probably one of the few on the course who appreciates the need for a solid grounding in traditional writing classes though, so the lessons I've learned so far have been invaluable. However, I still really don't feel confident about going into the games industry. I just don't feel employable. I think that's partly just me, I've always been kinda pessimistic about my skills, but also I know I need to do a lot more self-study. To be honest, I'm really not sure what direction I'm heading in and I feel obligated to avoid changing my mind again. Sometimes I wish I was the kind of person who could be happy in a 'traditional' job, you know office work or some manual labour. It seems a bit selfish to have have aspirations beyond that. There are people out there who can't get work, while I can, I just don't want the work I can get! Anyway, I have a few 'career ideas', but I'll talk about them in another post.

Moving on, the last year also saw me move in with Falling and her family. It's working out well. I've fallen in love with the cats completely now, despite feeling kinda homesick these days. Our relationship with her 'rents is working out well, they're pretty understanding considering I don't think we've been pulling our weight as much as we promised, but we're helping out more now. I like the area round here, despite the long slog down to uni and the office. This year I have to find another job closer to home as the availability of work (and subsequently money) has been so unreliable, and the travel fares are crippling me.

2008 also saw the marriage of my big brother to his beautiful Catalan bride. I'm really made up that things are working out so well for them, what with their house together and everything. The wedding was a memory I'll cherish for a long time.

There's not much more I can think of about the last year. My mind's kinda still dead from all the stress of the last week. Looking to 2009 I plan to get to better grips with my coursework, actually starting the assignments as they're handed out. I'm having my favourite tutor for one of my modules this year I think so I'm really looking forward to that. Also, one of the modules is meant to focus on developing another game, this time as a team. I'm REALLY looking forward to that, although I will have to get a handle on my time management if I'm going to make an effective contribution to the rest of the team. We'll be using Director and from some of the stuff they showed us (simple mind), and my own work using Reactor's physics in the last week, it's looking really cool. I'm interested in doing an RPG type thing, if only because I'd like to write some dialogue. They suggested running a games story development module (next semester?) including dialogue that sounds really cool - albeit a bit late considering the gorram course is called 'story development'?!

Anyway, despite the rather pessimistic tone of this post, I am feeling quite cheerful. I've got big plans for 2009, quite a few ideas I want to mess around with. I really want to be more creative this year, ploughing my energy into not just coursework but also personal projects, game related or otherwise. I also want to crack on with the design of my website - I got the web space in 2008 but the facelift is long overdue - and incorporating the content I want to see up here.

That's my lot for now. I've got a few projects to mull over for the next few weeks before we go back (Geez I need a real holiday!) so I'll let you in on those later. Next weekend we're in York for Falling's graduation ceremony and then it's a long overdue trip home to Scotland=)

Rambo's Movie Rundown (Issue 1)

2008-12-03T21:23:00.010Z

We just finished watching The Forbidden Kingdom (2008 - Rob Minkoff) as part two of our two night dvd treat. What a disappointment. I have great respect for Jackie Chan and Jet Li, between them they have some of my all-time favourite films. I really admire their martial arts choreography and, in the case of Jackie Chan, his penchant for comedic thrills. From the few interviews/biographies i've seen on t.v., they both come across as really down to earth individuals.

It was a surprise then, given their combined legendary status, that they appeared in a film of such low calibre. If you were to take all that is exotic about Chinese culture, combine it with the high-kicking kung fu we've come to expect from Asian martial arts films, and a healthy dose of mystical forces. Take all that, and then water it down into some dumbed down Western cliche, you'd have a pretty good idea of what The Forbidden Kingdom is like.

It was worse even than Bulletproof Monk. A film that was unashamedly Westernised but nevertheless enjoyable for its entertainment value. I tried to enjoy this film, the fight sequences were very well done, but the wooden acting and cheesy dialogue from all those involved was hard to stomach. Oddly, the dialogue randomly jumps between English and Mandarin (it's expected that in an Americanized film the characters will speak English around the American character, but they also randomly speak English to their Chinese counterparts too?!) and Jet Li's English is delivered very uncomfortably, despite both himself and Jackie Chan speaking fluent English on other occasions. The Forbidden Kingdom could have been so much more and yet failed to take itself seriously. I get the impression that Mr Chan and Mr Li only took part in this film as a favour (one would hope). It would have to be a pretty large favour!

I think Western Audiences are smarter than this film gives credit for, and I would be very surprised if Eastern audiences were happy with the stereotypes on show here. In fact, I have to give the director credit for showboating almost every film cliché possible in the time allowed (Including the hero-stance close up of the lead character stepping up to fight back). Its time that i'm wishing was more well spent. It is seriously worrying that a film this bad made it to No. 1 in the US box office. This certainly won't be the last Jackie Chan or Jet Li film I watch, and my impression of them hasn't been tarnished by this outing. I sincerely hope this isn't the last collaboration between the two masters.

Stray Dog Strut rating: 2 paws.

The other film on our roundup was Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008 - Steven Spielberg). I avoided this film when it first came out, expecting that the ageing Indy would be outstarred by his younger sidekick. My concerns weren't altogether unfounded, but Shia LaBeouf surprised me. I haven't seen him in a lot of films and i've carried misgivings since seeing Transformers: The Movie, but reading his filmography just now has reminded me that he was in Constantine and I, Robot, both of which I favour highly. He does well in IJ, playing the role just enough to complement Harrison Ford but not outshine him. Harrison himself does well to leap around like Indy and delivers the expected quips on cue.

Overall though, the film left a lot to be desired. The plot is preposterous and steamrolls in that direction as it goes. There seemed to be quite a few elements borrowed from other films/tv, not a cut and paste job but i'd seen it before. To be honest, I got the feeling I wasn't watching a real Indiana Jones film. This is probably tied up with the addition of a younger side kick as I feel this tends to spoil the 'seriousness' of these films more often than not. I got the same feeling watching Die Hard 4.0. An enjoyable film, but it just didn't feel like a Die Hard film. Overall, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is a very watchable film (compared to The Forbidden Kingdom which had me itching to turn it off half way through), but easily missable too. I would recommend the original trilogy over this any day.

Stray Dog Strut rating: 4 paws.

Ten reasons to go Mac

2008-11-24T23:50:00.012Z

This is by no means a definitive list or a hard sell ;-)

It doesn't take into account the latest Mac OS, "Leopard", with all it's cool new features like Time Machine for backups. I'm still happy with "Tiger" myself, but maybe Leopard will arrive in the form of a joint family Christmas present? *hint hint*

(Score another one for Macs: Mac OS X is significantly cheaper than Windows and comes in only ONE version)

Nor does this post mention the renovated .Mac service, now under the moniker MobileMe, with it's suite of cool online services and iPhone connectivity. It also doesn't mention Vista, which, for all intents and purposes, has quite a few nice features. Problem is, we've seen them all before ;-)

These are just a few of the personal reasons I have formed since going Mac and why I haven't looked back. Enjoy=)

1) Gorgeous

Although I take exception to the black border around the screen of the new iMacs, the first thing that attracts with a Mac is definitely the look. Macs aren't the grey box under the desk (unless you count the MacPro ;-) ), they're sleek, futuristic pieces of kit, that you just can't help but show off. Of course, with nicer looks comes a higher price tag - especially if you prefer black to white - but it's worth it in the end if you want a machine that doesn't scream "I'm a computer!!"

The thoughtfulness doesn't end with the Mac itself either. The box it came packaged in was up there with some of the best designs i've seen. Every Mac item treated with care in it's own little section. There's a bit of a ritual around the opening of the box, it's just something special. So special that my box is safely stored for when my Mac needs to move again. Then I can open it all over again=)

2) Stable

This is relative mind, and it's possible to break any technology if you try hard enough. Can't say I have the technical background to assess Macs' real stability either, but in my experience they just 'feel' stable. The OS is chunky and what really pleases me is if an application does have a (rare) hiccup, you can easily force quit the app and keep working. I can even force quit Finder (The Mac version of Explorer) and all the apps I have open stay open, the OS doesn't just kick the bucket. Of course, all technology can have it's hiccups, but there's reassurance in the whole Mac package being an Apple product, and it shows. Plus there's regular, one-click updates (None of that "Installing x of x please wait...") I haven't had a single serious problem with Tiger in the year that I've had this baby, yet several with Windows *sigh*

3) Free software and decent third party software

Spoilt for choice we are. Macs come with the iLife suite of applications: iPhoto, iMovie, GarageBand, iWeb and iDVD (The newest iLife also comes with MobileMe Gallery for sharing pictures online). The best thing is, they're all actually pretty good. No 30-day trial or frustratingly limited features. Within a few weeks of getting my Mac I made a wedding DVD for a friend using iDVD - always something of a difficulty on my old PCs thanks to mismatched hardware/limited or expensive software. The software pre-installed on a Mac is designed for the Mac so it works straight out of the box.

Good third party software is subjective, of course, but in my experience I've found lots of applications that really feel at home on a Mac. Most of them also take advantage of all the nice drop-shadow and aqua effects of the Mac OS too so they look suitably gorgeous=)

4) Automator

This nice little app deserves a separate mention all of it's own. Automator brings scripting to the masses with a nice, easy to learn drag and drop approach. No coding experience required (although you can get into that too if you want with AppleScript), Automator lets you create workflows to automate tasks on your computer just by dragging actions together. It's brilliant! Combine it with iCal - Apple's calendar program - and you can easily automate any 'task' (I highlight the word 'task' because Automator's not just used for housekeeping, you can create all kinds of useful scripts). I've currently got one to backup of all my emails and one to play my favourite iTunes playlist as a wake up call in the mornings. I've also used Automator for FTP'ing, launching websites and batch processing files. It's great fun just to combine actions to see what you can come up with.

5) Windows

Yes, Macs can run Windows now and at the time this was the final tipping point for me. You have two choices - using virtualisation software like Parallels Desktop or natively using Boot Camp (Basically dual booting). I've gone for the latter because virtualisation software isn't quite there yet with making full use of the Mac hardware. If graphics aren't important for what your doing, virtualisation is definately worth a look since I believe you can now drag and drop files from a Windows 'window' straight to your Mac and vice versa.

In my case, it's a slight hassle having to dual boot, but I actually prefer to keep Windows and Tiger separate. Besides, Tiger can access the Windows partition if you format as FAT32 - Just not the other way around which, from a security point of view, suits me fine. To be honest, despite HAVING to use Windows, I try to spend as little time as possible away from Tiger;-)

6) Intuitive

I have to applaud the designers of the OS on this one. Considering the different working methods between Microsoft's solution and Apple's, I was pleased to find I didn't have to so much as look at a manual when I first tried the new OS. Everything is intuitive, the menus are clearly marked and once you unlearn the Windows approach to storing files such as pictures, it just makes sense. Macs are action-oriented, they let you do things, without having to worry about all the techno-babble (no perplexing error messages!!). There's also a full range of in-built accessibility options such as voice-overs and display settings - something that can be a pain to setup correctly in Windows - and there's in-built voice commands. You can talk to your Mac as soon as you take it out of the box!

7) Customisable

From the icons right up to the applications themselves, a Mac is geared towards customisation. There's all the usual wallpaper and screen saver settings (Really cool, there are RSS feed screensavers installed by default), but you can tweak loads of other stuff. A very nice feature is changing icons: it's as simple as copy and paste.

8) It Just Works (Real Plug and Play)

Again, the whole system being built by one company helps, but I haven't yet found a situation where plugging in a device led to me hunting around for a compatible driver. With the exception of my Sony Walkman mp3 (All the more reason to get an iPod), the cameras, scanners, PSPs, USB drives, and tablets i've plugged into my Mac have all worked first time. Plus, Macs come with built in iSight cameras and, in the case of the iMac, a handy magnetic remote for controlling Front Row (The Mac's media centre) and iTunes.

9) Easy installs

It might be a small detail to some but this really impressed me. To install an application you simply mount the image (usually done automatically when you download the application, or when the cd starts up), then just drag the icon of the application into the applications folder. Tiger does the rest and for most apps takes a few seconds. Let me repeat that: A few seconds!! More often than not there's no need to restart either. It's so simple, this really rates up there on the intuitiveness of using a Mac. Your average user doesn't need to worry about complex installations, they just do what should be natural on any system. I don't know if it was difficult, but this seems like a real coup to me. I really like this approach, more so because it keeps the apps folder looking nice and clean=)

Of course, not every developer follows Apple's advice on making a drag and drop app, and some older apps don't have that functionality. But they just give you an installation window and three clicks later and your done. Another cool feature is .plist files. These are property list files, (aka preferences files) for applications. If something stuffs up in an application, you can usually just delete these to fix it - no need for a full reinstall (Of course, this resets all your saved preferences for that app).

10) Masochism

At the end of the day, I simply derive pleasure from the sound of Habboi's weekly catchphrase: "Macs Suck!" I simply smile to myself knowingly. You know, strangely, someone once called me "Smug";-)

Wordpress woes

2008-11-15T20:46:00.004Z

Work continues slowly on the new site. I've started writing some of the content for the additional pages i'll be adding to complement the existing blog and i'm knee deep in the template's innards at the moment. Nothing to show off yet though.

Annoyingly, i'm still having trouble with the Blogger to Wordpress conversion. Remember I said that the importer doesn't import images? Well I found the Blogger Image Import plugin over at Notions which allows you to get around this. It works well except it only works for jpegs really and it puts the images in a convoluted folder structure in the Wordpress uploads folder.

I probably could have soldiered on like that but it bugged me. I'm also not sure that it updated all the links correctly as promised - it's been a while since i tried it. Anyway, to satisfy myself I manually downloaded all the images from my Blogger blog, placing the images into a folder structure like Wordpress uses - uploads/year/month - before copying this over to Wordpress. It was a monumental effort - nearly 300 images - but I did it. Now i've discovered another problem: despite the files being stored in the Wordpress Uploads folder, the Media Library can't see them!

Apparently, the only way the library can see them is if they are uploaded using the built-in Wordpress uploader (ie, at the time of writing a post). Since I don't fancy having to manually import them one by one (something I may have to do), I had another look round for a solution. I found two plugins by Dion Hulse (DD32). Add From Server and dPost Uploads.

Add From Server allows you to copy images from a server into the WP uploads folder, at the same time telling WP to recognise them and show them in the media library. A downside is that it dates them as today's date. I haven't actually tried it yet because it has another feature: When you select to copy files already in the uploads folder, it doesn't copy them but it still creates the links to show them in the gallery AND it dates them based on the folder they were found in - so 2008/11 would yield November 2008. This would be perfect, except it didn't work for me=(

It has certainly created the linkage to show the images in the media gallery, but it seems to have assigned their urls as the full directory structure of my website (ie from the root folder on the server right down) and the result is broken links in WP. I'm still waiting for a reply to the Q I posted on Dione's forum so we'll see how it goes.

His other plugin, dPost Uploads claims to allow you to change the date an image is posted at based on the existing post's date, rather than just using today's date. It's useful if you're adding an image to an old post. I've yet to try it though.

Anyway, if I come up with a solution, you'll be the first to hear!

Mwuhahahaha

2008-11-02T01:20:00.003Z

We watched Heat tonight, a typical cop thriller with Al Pacino, Robert De Niro, Val Kilmer and John Voight. Oh and a young Natalie Portman. It was the usual deal, a flawed hero cop hunting down a flawed criminal. Thing is, like many of these films, I usually end up rooting for the bad guy, despite knowing that Hollywood rarely lets them win (Oops! Sorry to spoil the ending, but the film is like thirteen years old!).

It's not that I glamorise the bad guys, but I can usually empathise with their aims, despite the controversial stuff they pull to get there. Besides it's always nice to play the villain, and contrary to what my lecturer said about not being able to play the bad guy in games, I find it REALLY FUN!. In Black & White the first thing I did was fling those needy villagers into the sea..build a boat? Pah! Try swimming- woosh! Also let's try to forget the countless Sims who've starved, drowned, burnt to death, and gone insane with me as a landlord. Or the innocent villages my armies have burned to the ground on our march to victory - well, we can't have any enemy sympathisers can we? Think nothing of all those poor Mudokons blindly following my lead, or all those helpless inhabitants of Liberty City or Tamriel that i've bludgeoned to death for the sake of it (and a few gold coins).

I'm sure there's many more but you can't expect me to remember them all, after all it's hard being an evil mastermind you know?;-)

Augmented Reality

2008-10-28T01:02:00.006Z

Image from the Augmented Reality article on HowStuffWorks.com

Several of the newsletters I have delivered to my inbox each day cover the latest technological and scientific advances from around the world. The other week I got one about another example of augmented reality in practice. Augmented reality is the combination of the real and the virtual, with the major focus on realtime videos of the real world overlaid (augmented) by computer generated graphics.

Turns out I've lost the vid, but it wasn't that impressive (It featured a virtual keypad of some sort that ran at a sluggish 12 fps). What is impressive is the report by Think Artificial on work on an AR app for the Google Android mobile phone. The app takes the form of a travel guide, identifying and displaying information of points of interest in the local vicinity in real time as the camera's viewfinder passes them. Check out the vid on the Mobilizy website. Think Artificial briefly mentioned a similar app called Enkin, and their website is also worth a look.

This is all interesting stuff but it's all the more fascinating when you consider the real possibilities. Apart from having artificial implants, I look forward to the day when AR is close to the complex systems explored in my favourite sci-fi novels. Notable examples include the "wetware" or "cyberware" evident in Ken MacLeod's 'Engines of Light' trilogy, and Peter F. Hamilton's 'Commonwealth Saga'.

Imagine being able to walk down the street and invisibly pull up information on your surroundings such as reviews and additional information on products in shops. Or a Google maps like route finder that waypoints directions right in front of you as you walk about.

Even more exciting is the possibilities for games. I found a few vids on YouTube that really wet your appetite. One of the projects in production before the Gizmondo went under shows a cool catapult game - notice the 'damage' being done to the table - imagine AR Starcraft played on any surface=) This vid show cases the control of virtual radio controlled cars, while really cool is the physics on show in this vid. While, the vids here showcase an AR version of Quake, and here the modelling and manipulation of virtual objects in real time. Imagine being able to try out virtual furniture and decoration in your home before purchase, and if your device or implant is online you could order your new sofa there and then=)

With this kind of technology, virtually any surface or space could become the playing field and as technology improves, I think we will see smaller and smaller devices capable of accessing these experiences. With the addition of some kind of glove device or sensors placed in or on the body, we could most likely simulate feedback from the object and then there would be no limit to how we interact with these augmentations. Cool eh?

Today I'm Playing...

2008-10-20T19:12:00.011+01:00

Boxhead: The Zombie Wars

Call yourself a zombie?!

A nice little bloody game by Sean Cooper where the objective is simply to survive the onslaught of brain hungry zombies! It has cool weapon upgrades like shotguns, miniguns and missile strikes, as well as defensive elements like exploding barrels and barricades. Note that i'm not doing too well in the screenie above - it's hard to splatter zombie brains and take a screenie at the same time (atleast on a Mac, heh). Try the version on Kongregate that I've linked to above as the one on Sean's site is slowed down with ads. Enjoy=)

The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas

2008-10-19T18:51:00.007+01:00

We've just been to see The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, a very moving film concerning a couple of children during the Holocaust. From a technical viewpoint, it was a very well made film with realistic sets as you would expect. A couple of the early dialogue sequences felt a bit wooden but overall the actors and actresses delivered a powerful performance.

Story-wise it was a very emotionally charged portrayal of the breadth of human character and, while possibly not as thorough as Schindler's List, it is easy to draw comparisons. Obviously, it is not a happy film by any means, but i'm glad to have had the chance to experience it. I think it is especially important to remind younger generations as it's one thing to read about history in books, but personal stories like this one really bring it home. I think it's important that directors continue to make these films (so long as they treat the subject with respect) because it is important that we never forget.

Cake or Death?

2008-10-19T11:20:00.014+01:00

I considered staying silent on this since many other bloggers have done an admirable job highlighting this already (and as usual i'm late to the party but dressed fantastically!), however part of this blog is intended to be about games after all, so here we go.

Last week I got a copy of Official Playstation Magazine UK - one I normally avoid in favour of the (usually) more balanced ramblings in Edge but I was after the free Kratos sackboy for LittleBigPlanet. Having not touched OPMUK for years, my misgivings weren't exactly laid to rest by the tagline on the back of the magazine: "Fat Princess: It's the super-cute PSN game that outraged feminist blogs. And inevitably, we love it." A statement like that says a lot about the magazine - it's put me off reading the rest of it anyway - and pissed off my usually mild-mannered self. Not least because you just don't start a sentence with "And" - idiots!

So, the post proper (and if you haven't guessed at the reason i'm concerned, you REALLY need to read on!). Fat Princess by Darkstar Industries (now Titan Studios), and published by Sony, takes the traditional gameplay mode 'capture the flag' (where two opposing teams attempt to steal the other's flag back to their own base - ah the fun we had in UT) and remix it with a big twist.

They decided to present the game in a lush cartoonish graphical style (nice), with different player classes like archer, warrior, builder, mage (introducing an element of strategy), and with really bloody battles (i'm not averse to that, heh). Oh but wait, some teenage industry temp making the coffee has the fantastic idea: "Hey let's make the flags into princesses and, as if that wasn't offensive enough, let's have the players force her full of cake to make her really fat so that the other team has a hard time carrying her. It'll be hilarious!"

Oh yes, did you see my mouth twitching - no? But it's hilarious! Um, in a word - no. Firstly, the whole 'saving princesses' idea has become such a cliche in every entertainment form, it would be comforting to think that we're trying to move our stories beyond that, however it seems, in games at least, not everyone is. Note that it is not always a 'princess' but the same idea can be seen in many stories: some 2-dimensional romantic reward awaiting the buff hero at the end of the tale. In any case it presents woman as an object to be acquired and reinforces the stereotype that women need 'saving.'

Secondly, while I think the game 'mechanic' of introducing obstacles to prevent players stealing your flag, although not original, is a good gameplay device, surely it doesn't take too many brain cells to realise that the whole 'feed up a princess' concept is sexist, not to mention the idea of 'force feeding' has dark connotations.

It's a shame because the gameplay itself sounds like fun (excluding the princess part) and with a little thought, the princess element could easily be replaced with something else. Mighty Ponytail suggests "Instead of running out into the forest to find cake to fatten up the princess with, why not go out and find gold (which is a lot heavier than cake) to stuff into a treasure chest. The more gold in the chest, the heavier it would be, and the harder it would be to carry." A pretty good idea really, seeing as you could also attribute points to the amount of gold you bring back, introducing a toss up between going for the easily carried low-value chest or the extremely heavy more-rewarding chest (Capitalists everywhere are licking their lips..) I'm not too sure about the suggestion of using animals, but another approach could be to embellish the builder class of the game, allowing them to build all manner of traps and contraptions to slow down the opposing team.

In his article, Nick McCavitt ends with the ubiquitous phrase "it's just a game", however I think we have to be very careful using excuses like that. It may be a game, however, it's influence reaches further than we might expect. Like all media, it sends subliminal messages that we are not always aware of, with the added element of interactivity to reinforce those messages. Fat Princess is obviously a very blatant example, but it could just as easily be a wolf in another sheep's clothing. It is only in recent months that I myself have started to examine how much the media I consume is imperceptibly shaping my beliefs/thoughts.

In that respect some may call me a hypocrite since some of my favourite media reinforces these stereotypes I am talking about. In any case it may not be possible (or ultimately helpful) to apply blanket standards equally to all media, but I think it is important for each of us to decide how far is too far. Similarly, with regard to the intermittent 'violence in videogames' debate: I think that most videogames are inherently violent, or at least inherently competitive, and, while the amount of violence in a game is obviously important with regards to the age of the gamer, I think what deserves more consideration is the reason for the violence - remember the furore that surrounded Manhunt with it's 'snuff film' getup? - but this deserves a much larger post than I can give it at the moment.

It's interesting to observe the reaction to games like Fat Princess, not least because they themselves reveal the prejudices still hiding in the woodwork. I very much doubt that the game itself was intentionally created as a satire of the problems in our society, more likely it's a simple marketing ploy that no doubt, when all is said and done, will see the game rocket through the rankings. But if just one gamer stops to think about the messages behind the media we are consuming, questions like those raised by bloggers (more eloquent than I) will have at least been worthwhile.

A few articles:

Mighty Ponytail
Nick McCavitt
Danielle Riendeau
Leigh Alexander

Go on, have a giggle...

2008-10-15T20:03:00.006+01:00

Hanging out on YouTube today I was reminded how funny Eddie Izzard can be. We used to have his Dress to Kill gig on VHS - hilarious! Here's a clip from his 'Glorious' tour=)

(Sorry, couldn't find an English subtitled version, but if you can speak Hungarian..)

Off into the textual hills we march..

2008-09-24T00:03:00.000+01:00

You are in a dark and musty room. Oak barrels are stacked neatly to one side, and there is a long wooden counter that smells strongly of varnish. The room is crammed with people, heaped around the few tables and chairs. Many familiar faces and names come to mind in the friendly, bustling atmosphere. You suspect that this is a bar. A woman behind the bar smiles at you warmly.

>Take table

You can't take that.

> sit

You are sitting on the floor

Several shadows can be seen moving through the legs of the room's occupants. You realise the floor is crawling with rats. A mass of fat furry brown rats approaches you.

> rats, hello

The rats don't understand because you don't speak rat.

The rats gather around your feet. They seem friendly enough but you can never be too sure.

> Take rat

You can't take that.

The rats ferociously attack your feet, nibbling fiercely at your bare toes. You scream in agony as your feet are devoured to bloody stumps while the room of onlookers smiles down on you. As you black out you wonder where you left your shoes..

Apologies for the little prologue there, I got a little carried away, I hope the thought of rats chowing down on your extremities hasn't left you too scarred. Macworld reported today on a new app for the iPhone, Frotz (iTunes url), which lets you play interactive fiction on the iPhone. For those of you who don't know what interactive fiction is and are left unconvinced by my own narrative above (I wonder why..), I would point you in the direction of this wikipedia article on Interactive Fiction and on one of the more famous IF games, Zork. While i've only dabbled with IF myself, I've always found something deeply fascinating about the simple act of gaming with words alone (later IF includes multimedia of course but for pure imagination-embellished fun you gotta try the originals).

After I watched the Apple keynote about the introduction of the App Store for iPhone developers, one of my first thoughts was that someone should try IF on the iPhone. Heh, I humbly had aspirations myself (Afaik the iPhone SDK is free/open to all?) but that would mean learning the SDK, not to mention actually understanding what gamers expect from an IF .. oh well, while I day-dreamed someone else went ahead and did it, surprise surprise=P So anyway, I simply urge you to check out the Macworld article and for all you iPhone users to try out the new app.

Similarly, through this Macworld video on writing tools (unsubtitled but the webpage links to each product), I discovered another cool Mac app today: Scrivener. It's writing software that helps you write novels and screenplays by simply being focused on the act of writing. Previously I mentioned WriteRoom (Windows users try Dark Room) with its decluttered full-screen blackout effect to encourage distraction-free writing. [Side Note: I've just discovered there's an iPhone version of WriteRoom too. Direct iTunes url].

However, while the effect is really cool, there's not much more to it . Scrivener has that functionality AND THEN SOME. In fact it has so many bangs and whistles that I really should leave it up to the developers at Literature and Latte (loving the title!!) to explain. Check out this vid (again unsubtitled sorry) or the product homepage. I've just downloaded the 30-day trial so i'll give you a proper StrayDogStrut flavoured review soon, but from what i've seen, i'm thinking this might just get me writing seriously (Not to mention being a big help for screenwriting this semester!).

Later folks=)

Phew!

2008-09-15T11:24:00.007+01:00

I'm pleased to report that I got the results of my resit today and my game passed with flying colours. Of course, regardless of my real mark, my module is still capped at 40%, but i'm just really pleased that I passed!!

I'm learning more and more about Wordpress as I go - this morning I finally got my head around widgets and plugins: something that wasn't exactly straight forward since the plugins didn't seem to appear on my page and adding a widget cleared the whole sidebar. It turns out I needed to select the plugins (once activated) under the Design > Widgets menu (a bit of confusion since the docs refer to the Presentation menu, which is now the Design menu), and clearing the sidebar is normal, you just add all the widgets you want - heh, it helps to read the documentation I guess!

I have to say that Blogger's visual drag-and-drop template is easier to use than Wordpress: It seems you can only rearrange items in your side bar, to change the layout of the page requires a new theme altogether/messing around in code. Still the tinkering under the hood is what keeps me happy=)

Ooh, iTunes has recently been updated and looks NICE! I haven't played with it too much, but there's a new view for albums showing all the covers (reminds me a bit of Vista's Media Center, heh) and there's the Genius bar which provides song recommendations based on selected songs in your library. Oh and unless i'm mistaken, the default iTunes Visualizer theme has had an overhall: all spinning globes and goregous firework effects=)

Well, this is a quick post as i'm rushing off again. This time up to York to help Falling hand in her dissertation and say goodbye to the uni. We're camping rather than staying on campus/in a B&B this time so i'm really looking forward to it. I haven't been camping for years - it was the staple diet of my family holidays in my youth.

Later.

(Cool, WP gives a lot more functionality when inserting images than Blogger)