One More Mob

Does anyone ever get confused when names in reality sound like names in 1990’s computer games. Take this article Rival mobile Linux consortiums smoke peace pipe, consolidate. now it’s a fine article written by a good online technical magazine, but when you start reading about the protagonists it really does sound like some sort of futuristic space game, here they are in no particular order:

• Linux Mobile Foundation
• Open Handset Alliance
• Symbian Foundation

Now if that isn’t due to people wanting to be members of some futuristic mega-corp with people growing up with Star Wars and Judge Dredd I don’t know what it. Now when the next wave of companies with names based on anime characters I shudder to think what’s coming!

Sometimes you just have to acknowledge that someone has made a great list.

If you ever needed a list of nice free software this one has it all….

The Famous vbMark Big List of Freeware Alternatives

Very nice indeed……

I have a nice shiny HTC S730 phone. It sucks. For many reasons. The first of which is my own fault. I really wanted it to have GPS built in. The pre-production models sent out for review had GPS, you can see links to it working here:

You Tube S730 GPS

An in Reviews here:

http://www.coolsmartphone.com/article745.html

Even though everyone knew it wasn’t going to be supported we all hoped that as it was there on the pre-prod then we would have GPS glory on our phones too…

WE WERE WRONG

It seems like HTC in their wisdom decided to disable or cripple the on board GPS, the software can see it but can’t use it. Oh well, I accept that the HTC specs didn’t have it in so I was just hoping

Unfortunately HTC also decided to include a woefully small amount of memory. Many people have been seeing issues with memory running out all the time, with only 17mb available even after reboot of the device. Obviously this is just rubbish and hopefully will be fixed soon by HTC.

until then if you are thinking of buying one…. DONT, stick with the S710 or something, which is a cool phone and has enough memory to not have to reboot it every few hours….

Don’t Buy Me !!!

Not a game related post but sometimes you have to promote a bit of good fun writing. Although some people might have you think otherwise, there are some people in Microsoft that have a sense of humour. This is a great article about how Architecture and how it has evolved from big mainframes to the current SAAS and S+S confusion….

A Planet Ruled by Software Architectures

Personally I moved to the ‘People’s Republic of the Online World’ about 10 years ago from the ‘Great Duchy of Enterprisia’ …. I wonder if I will be there in another 10 years time. I definitely know my game playing is much more fun there

A group of us recently decided to try some old school online gaming circa about 1999 with StarCraft. I think I must have missed the wave of hysteria about the game when it came out and was keen to give it a go. The main problem I found was getting hold of it, especially at reasonably short notice.

Whilst I might have been able to break out bittorrent and get a not-so-legal version of it I actually wanted to buy a kosher copy, if for nothing more than being to play online. I like the idea of being able to download games without actually going out to personally purchase them from a shop or having to get a company to package it up and sent it to me (like I can here). This saves not only allot of packaging, but also fuel and save me having to clutter up my house with a box that I will only look at a few times and a manual that will be next to useless in a few days (don’t get me started about Prima guides). Unfortunately StarCraft isn’t a game that you can do this with (well not that I can find anyway) so I’m forced to get it delivered if I want to play it.

I find it quiet strange that companies with a back catalog of games that many people might like to play, don’t allow people to download it from a source such as here. I’m sure not only would it allow for a company to maintain a revenue stream (in a long tail sort of way) but also would allow people who would rather not have a load of printed material, that is effectively just waste, cluttering their houses and landfill. I’m sure this will be the way people get games in the future, indeed whilst I was looking for StarCraft I actually grabbed a copy of Supreme Commander from the latter site (effectively the same game no?), something I might do for other games which I like the look of.

Doing this promotes the casual browser who doesn’t want to run into their nearest Game store who cant even work out how to sell a PS3 to someone (now that’s another tale of credit card fraud and losing cars in car parks) and will inevitably give me a paper receipt and a plastic bag which will add to my game clutter which I just don’t need. So long live game downloads IMO!

We have just had a table football installed at work (go go!). Whilst my skillz are quiet good (I specialize in 10-1 demolishing’s of opponents), they are not yet this good.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BjH-DDa2xSs

Pity our table has a glass top otherwise I would give them a go

You can see that there must be money ‘in them there games’ when a company as straight laced as IBM write a comprehensive article about designing MMO games.

Massively multiplayer online games, Part 1: A performance-based approach to sizing infrastructure

I’ve always loved the technical detail of IBM articles, usually at the right level between techy and business to make them readable. This one is a good start to artcles about designing and running a massivley concurrent system. Good Read! (if a bit long).

The other day I had a dilemma, after building my garden office I was wondering how to get a network connection down there. The company had put a cat 5 cable down for the phones, so I tried to adapt that for use with UTP. Hmm unfortunately my networking skills have become rusty over time. Now I had tried with the wireless, but unless I wanted to work at the edge of my open office door I think I might be out of luck

So I had a panic… omg I’ve spent muchos poundos on a useless play room for my daughter Well useless for me …… where can I play games now?

Well trying not to accept the inevitable I logged onto WOW, no honestly I wasn’t looking to try and ignore my problems by playing games…. !! I asked around there whilst killing mobs (you do know these MMO’s are just overblown MSN don’t you?) and one guy came up with the idea to use these HomePLug or Powerline adapters.

Now these work by passing the signal over your existing house electrical wiring, some sort of magic ;). I was initially skeptical about whether this worked and did a bit of searching around on the interweb Eventually I settled on the Netgear HDXB101 which is an AV system.

NetGear HBXB101 Page

I didn’t know anyone to borrow the system off of so I had to take the £120 punt on buying it. It was expensive but I had read some good reviews of other people in similar situations to me, i.e. garden office on a separate wiring system, having good results so I decided that it was what I needed and hey one day I might pipe some HDTV down there

HDXB101 is a kit system, it comes with two adapters which plug directly into the wall (they recommend direct plugging) and each has an Ethernet port on the side. It also comes with two Ethernet cables so you don’t even have to have any of those.

When it arrived I skeptically plugged it into the wall in the house and fed the supplied UTP cable from the wireless router. It has three lights on it, power, link and Ethernet. The power and Ethernet lights were lit up on this unit, the magic blue middle light would only light up hopefully when I plugged in the next unit in the office. Eagerly I took the other unit down the garden to the office and holding my breath plugged it in.

Initially nothing happened, I didn’t know what to expect, with only the powerlight coming on. I waited a few minutes not knowing whether the electrics in the house or the new shed (it’s has it’s own consumer unit) would be good enough to route the signal (after my catv failings I wasn’t too hopeful). Then the blue light magically came alight. Wow I thought this is great. Plugging in the second utp cable and connecting up to my laptop, I waited to see if it managed to be able to get an IP connection, within a few moments it did and I was up and running.

I haven’t done much testing about the speeds of the network and whether it works for HD, but I’m just amazed at it working at all. More tests will have to be done and the system will need to be secured, aparently you can have up to 16 of these on a single wiring system I can imagine that in flats it might be a problem.

Now when I get some blinds I can then move my office finally down to the end of the garden from the living room

Playing games and writing software for many people require a good deal of caffeine, sometimes provided by a soft fizzy drink other times provided by a hot beverage. It’s not often that the two are combined into some uber beverage, image the marketing!

So I was very surprised to notice a strange sight whilst I was drinking my latest hot caffine fueled beverage (a medio skinny latte if you care). Thus I present to you the Costacoke, a wierd fusion of coke and coffee. Obviously it was trying to hide it’s ‘cokeness’ under a layer of respectable Costa goodness. But there laid bare for all to see after 1 minute of unwrapping it was:

Very strange !