Ye Olde Blog of Dave Webster

I wasn’t too sure what to expect of Bioshock. I know it has been a long time coming and was not sure what to expect. I know that there had been some criticism of the game, but that sounded like the criticism of Deus Ex 2 and Thief 3 over their PC only predecessors in that the games were cut down or simplified for the console. Personally I liked Deus Ex 2 and Thief 3.

When it came to Bioshock I was hoping for a sequel to System Shock 2. I was initially disappointed about the setting, as it did not feel like System Shock 2 at all and did not invoke any sense of fear. However, I accepted that this was a different game in its own right and saw the game for what it was. I really enjoyed that game; the story, the level design, it was a fantastic game. My first reaction to Bioshock was the visuals. Wow, it really does look good and goes a long way to pushing what to expect from a ‘next gen’ game. The level design is beautiful and game me a suspicion that some of the level designers from Thief 3 were present during the designing of this game.

It was then that I understood the limitation of the game. There was no inventory as such, the levels (although having limited puzzles) never required you to backtrack too far and there was a cursor telling you where to go and not encourage you to explore the levels. I did like the idea of the resurrection chambers, however, as they did help smoothen the gameplay in a similar fashion to Prey. I finished the game in (let me think about this), perhaps eight hours, although I had it on the default difficulty level. The story was good, if a little predictable. I rescued all the Little Sisters, so I got the good ending, which to my liking was far too short. This brings me on to the last point. The Big Daddies. I like the idea, but never found them too much of a challenge (same with the final boss), although I did really enjoy the last hour of the game relating to this, but I won’t go into details so I don’t spoil the plot.

Overall I did enjoy Bioshock and will probably play it through again. It is not System Shock 2, not by far, but is one of the more enjoyable FPS (light)RPG games to come out in this generation of games. If you have played neither, it’s difficult which game to recommend, as playing this first will spoil the visual appreciation of System Shock 2, but playing System Shock 2 will spoil the appreciation of the story and experience of Bioshock. To end with, here is a screenshot of System Shock 2.

Are interruptions killing productivity in the mordern desktop computing environment? At least in my experience this seems to be the case.

1) Application updates.
This is one reason that I prefer to use Linux or Mac OS X over Windows. With both of the first two cases, updates are handled in a consistent, unistrusive manner, whereas there are SO MANY popups when the OS and applications start up on Windows. To give credit to Microsoft, the Automatic Update notifications are handled rather discretely and I don’t think that Microsoft is to blame for this. I think the problem is that application vendors assume that their own custom update mechanism is the only one running (not forgetting their own pop-up system) and don’t consider that there may be 50 other applications fighting for desktop real-estate and your attention. OK, I eggagerate, but the point is there. For example, I boot up my machine, log in, then wait a few minutes for the desktop to load. Then I get a message such as, “would you like to update your anti-virus”, etc. Fine I do that. I then start work and want to open a PDF file at some point, “Would you like to update your PDF viewer”. For ***** sake, I just want to get on with my work. I am not saying that the Mac is immune to this phenomenon, but rather that this sort of thing does not happen nearly as much.

2) IM and other communication pesterings.
IM applications were one of the first things to go when I started my degree. I think the problem may be down to my single tracked mind, but I find repeatedly replying with “Sorry, I’m buzy” really causes me to loose my train of thought on the task I was supposed to be doing in the first place (and that’s on top of the application update pop-ups). I found that I just set my IM client to not start up at boot time, then never bothered to load it up.

Don’t get me started on phone calls from tele-advertisers, who apparently don’t understand what the ‘telephone preference list is’.

A great article looking at a similar train of thought is by Rafe Needleman at CNET.

It’s been too long since I’ve used a Linux box since I bought my Mac Pro in October.  As good as Fink for the Mac is, it’s no Linux replacement.  So today I’ve decided to install Ubuntu 7 on my TV media machine, currently running Vista.  The first thing I did was to pop in my Partition Magic CD, however, it didn’t like the Vista partitions.  I thought I’d go into ‘Computer Manager’ in the advanced controls in Vista and check what the partition type was.  When right clicking the parition, I noticed  that there is a resize partition option.  I thought, “this will never work”, particularly on a primary volume.  But it did.

Yes!  You can dynamically resize paritions from the primary drive in Vista.

Microsoft got something right.

Here’s a link to a related article that I’ve just found.

http://www.pro-networks.org/forum/viewstory.php?t=78111 

Following my decision last year to invest in a cheap second-hand PSOne, I have decided to take upon myself the ownership of a PS2. Seeing as the PS3 is due for launch this month, I expected the price of the PS2 to plummett, just as the XBOX did on launch of the 360. Looking at this particullar case, however, I can that this is not going to happen due to two things. 1) The PS2 is still the biggest selling console (who’s still buying one?). 2) The PS3 is £425 at launch, which by anyone’s standard is costly. In light of this, I plumped for a second hand one in the original larger black design.

So, the PS2 then. I did things backwards. Last week, after being spurred on by a friend of mine (cough .. Mike), I decided to look at the cost of second hand PS2 games. I was very surprised. I thought second hand XBOX games were cheap, but these are just being practically thrown away by retailers, with some titles selling between £3 and £5. I even picked up a copy of ICO new for a fiver. The first game I have decided to play through first is Forbidded Siren (terrible British dub and all), which is a Japanese horror game. If you took Resident Evil, then go on to Silent Hill then go on again, then that’s what Siren is. Graphically the game is a bit simple, but PS2 games seem to look somewhere between PS1 games and the original XBOX, but not rough, which was surprising. I guess I wasn’t looking for realism.

I have to admit that I am a gaming snob and used to look down on the Sony consoles, but I decided to sit down and write a list of PS2 games that I would like to play. I thought I would be hard pushed to hit 10. I hit 45. That’s more than my Gamecube and 360 collection put together. I think it’s a matter of proportions. Whilst there are a lot of poor PS2 games and sequels, film cash-ins, etc. there are still many quality titles going back to 2001 that stand up today in 2007. Perhaps one could look at the PS2 as a modern day Sega Megadrive (Genesis to the US folk) as the XBOX could be compared to the SNES.

I have finally decided to implement something that has been rumbling around in my mind for a while and that is book reviews. This is mainly for my own personal reflection, but if it’s of any use to someone else, then that’s cool by me. It’s easy to forget reading a book after a few years, so it will be nice to look back on in years to come.
I’ve decided to link this in to the Amazon associates programme, which means I get a small cut out of any click-throughs that result in a sale. Yes, I have no shame

Anyways onto my first book. Naruto - Issue 1. Naruto has been one of those Mangas (and Anime’s) that I’ve heared of for a couple of years now, but never bothered to read. A friend of mine showed me a fan-subbed version of the japanese release a year or so ago, which really did impress me. I thought, ‘great, I’ll buy the anime when it gets licensed in the uk’. Lo and behold, it got licensed, but I decided to go for the manga instead. I tend to go by the rule with manga and anime that I go for the one released first. In this case the manga, which has a few benefits in this case, in that it’s already at issue 13 in the UK and it’s cheaper than the DVDs

What can I say? I’m impressed. It’s fairly similar to the anime plot-wise. The story starts out with Naruto, who is at a ninja academy in his small rural Japanese village, wanting to become a ninja. Naruto has a love of ‘instant ramen’, that I later learned was the Japanese name for instant noodles, then later of the passing of it’s creator. I practise aikido, and as such, it’s nice to see some Japanese culture in this area in a traditional sense. Perhaps, the most important thing about the story is that I have that feeling that one gets when reading a compelling in story in that the pages fly by and you think ‘I’ve read all of it. I want more!’

My verdict: 9/10 - Great light-hearted and easily digestable manga that’s compelling to read and will have a little of a lot of things that will appeal to the typical otaku

After a few months of pondering the Wii, Xbox 360 and PS3, I decided to plump for the 360. After a start with a fairly uninspiring set of launch and early titles, the 360 seems to be graced with some truly impressive titles lately. The Wii, whilst innovative and having a lot of great first party Nintendo titles, gives me the impression that I’ll be playing the same games that I’ve been playing for over ten years, such as Metroid and Zelda. I got to a point a few years ago with Metroid Zero Mission, where I realized this was happening.

So, the Xbox 360. Virgin Megastore in Leeds has a deal for the console (Premium version) with Project Gotham 3, Oblivion and and extra pad for 300 quid. A large initial investment, true, but much cheaper than anywhere else for what you get. Ah! There was a catch. I was told not to place the transformer near to the console to stop overheating and not to move the console whilst it is running to prevent the lazer head hitting the game disk. Fair enough. I got the machine home and played PGR3 for an hour or so. But then I decided to connect it up to my router for Xbox Live, whereby it prompted me to install the update. I did. Things started to go wrong. Every hour or so the machine would lock up. I was told Mr Mike that this was due to the update and there was an article on The Register. Grumble, grumble, grumble! I then invested in a Nyko cooling system that slots on the back. It’s a bit (wall a LOT) noisy, but so far I have not had a lock-up. The last thing I invested in was a proper RGB SCART lead, as composite really does look crap compared to an RGB cable which makes a HUGE difference tgo the image quality. I’d much rather invest 15 quid in a cable that in a HD TV for the moment.

I’ve decided that as I get round to finishing games I will try and review them, if only as a log for myself.

A rather strange experience I had yesterday was in York. Myself and Alex happened to walk through a part of York that I haven’t been past in a long time. In this area I took the photo below:

This building (now empty) used to be an Internet Cafe in 1996 (10 years ago) and was the place I first used the Internet. It is weird to think back to that day and look at where we are now. Back then the Internet was a bit specialist and if you had access at home, then you were really someone. If I remember correctly, the web browser was Netscape 3 and was installed on their two machines. They also had some really old version of Realplayer installed, which let you view video at a mighty video size of about 100×100 pixels over the phone line. That may not seem like much now, but for then it was an exciting experience and the start of something that would change the way we consume media forever.

It is interesting to see how the web has changed from now to then. At that point the web was a bit of a niche and people tended to stick together in communities, particularly in the days of Usenet, where you got to know the posters as people. This all seemed to go away at the turn of the millennium when the web became popular, but slowly we seem to be reclaiming this community again with the blogging culture of late. I’m not sure if it’s the same as before, I’m not sure if it should be.

I remember almost getting thrown out on my second trip as I had gone into Dixons and bought a 20 pack of floppy disks to save pages to and read them at home. The manager wasn’t pleased and we had a disagreement about my putting a possible virus onto their machines. From a blank floppy disk! I was stubborn then and still am now, so I made my case. He then said that I may end up with a virus on my own machine from transferring the files from their systems to mine. I said I would take the risk.

But alas, the building is now closed and the Internet cafe was probably gone a long time ago.

In the news recently there has been talk about the new HD DVD formats, namely HD-DVD and Blu-ray. It seems at the moment that movie companies will have to produce two different HD version for each movie release and movie stores will have to stock DVD, HD-DVD, Blu-ray and UMD. This is silly. It won’t work like the games console industry. Perhaps hardware manufactures will incorporate both standards into their players and a movie publishers will implement only one of the standards, each chosing a side of the fence. Possibly.

There is a better way, however, at least my suggestion. DVD video consists of two parts. Firstly the DVD disk medium and secondly the MPEG2 video compression. For a two hour film, this will fill a 4GB DVD. In 2000-2001 DIVX/MPEG4/XVID became popular and people started to rip DVDs in MPEG4 and burn them to a 700MB CD with not too much quality loss. A new DVD player will even play DIVX/MPEG4/XVID.

The lesson. Newer video compression formats will compress the same film into less space.

OK let’s take this further. The video compression format for HD-DVD and Blu-ray is h264, which is more advanced than MPEG4. HD video is of a higher resolution, which must be noted. However, once you consider these two factors, compressing a 2 hour film at HD quality will take up little more space than an MPEG4 video at standard screen size. This could easily fit onto a common single layer 4GB DVD. Hell, it could even fit onto a CD.

So the point of the rant. Why not just upgrade current DVD players to output to HD TV sets and decode h264.

A new book I picked up today is Pragmatic AJAX: A Web 2.0 Primer, by the same publisher as the Ruby ‘pickaxe’ book. So far I’ve only had chance to have a quick flick through on the train. The book has some really cool stuff with AJAX, such as working with Google maps and autocompletion. There is a large section of the book concerned with DOM and JavaScript debugging, which given the problems with this in JavaScript, will come in useful. Towards the end is a section on the SVG and Canvas elements, with an example of a Wolfenstein 3D esque shooter written in JavaScript and rendering onto the canvas.

Link to the book at the publisher’s book.

Day 4, the last day of the conference started with a keynote concerning the medical sector and the relationship to the west.

This day was the day I showed my poster between speaker sessions. I had a few people ask me about it and someone left me a paper concerning some related work, that he had been working on, which was nice of him.

After the break I dropped into Advancements in Semantic Web, chaired by Eric Miller from the W3C. Most of the presentations revolved around the idea of health and life care, with the exception of the last talk by Ben Adida, furthering RDFa from the earlier developer track presentation. After lunch was Semi-structured Semantic Data, focusing on trusted semantics and semantic wikis. The latter looked like a silver bullet for bridging the Semantic Web to today’s web and Web 2.0. The third session was concerned with search, with talks by Microsoft and on natural language search and personalization.