 |
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
The Magpie Developer
Jeff Atwood is one of the best programmer/writers around. I love reading his stuff, some I agree wholeheartedly with, other stuff we disagree, but this post is about a dead-on as they come. This idea has been floating in my head for a long time, but it is hard for me to conceptualize it in words, Atwood does a brilliant job at it. Must read for any developer. |
|
|
|
Andy Olmsted's Last Blog Entry.
(Warning: Pretty rough) No matter how you feel politically about the war, this reminds you that each number people throw around as statistics is a human life. This is extremely well written, and pretty rough on your soul towards the end, but something everyone should read. Its a shitty situation all around, but there is always a human face behind the statistics and I want to make sure I never forget that. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Drinking stories that put yours to shame
Via Keith
To preserve his body during the voyage home, the second-in-command stored Nelson's body in the ship's vat of rum and halted all liquor rations to the crew. Not a bad idea, but when the ship reached port, officials went to retrieve Nelson's body and found the vat dry.
Disregarding good taste (in every sense), the crew had been secretly drinking from it the entire way home. After that, naval rum was referred to as Nelson's Blood. |
|
|
|
making vodka pills in 24 hours
Recently, Chef Fabian was experimenting further with the Adria/Torreblanca technique of making 'vodka pills.' I use this word to describe the process of making liquid-filled candies by pouring flavored alcohol syrups into cornstarch and letting it set until a hard outer shell forms. |
|
|
|
Strategy Letter VI - joelonsoftware.com
As a programmer, thanks to plummeting memory prices, and CPU speeds doubling every year, you had a choice. You could spend six months rewriting your inner loops in Assembler, or take six months off to play drums in a rock and roll band, and in either case, your program would run faster. Assembler programmers don’t have groupies.
Entire Article is Dead On. A must read for anyone in the software biz. |
|
|
|
 |
| |
| |
| |
| |
 |
|
 |
 |
|
(Sunday, January 8)
Why it is a "Revolution"
About 3 weeks before xmas my wife and I were coming up with a specific list of Xmas items that we might want from each other. I have to have a specific list from her or things just won�t turn out right. We both throw in a few surprises, but generally we try to get one big thing from each other�s list every year. I really didn�t have that much on my list this year besides a couple of books that had been on my Amazon wishlist list for awhile and one of the two handheld gaming systems on the market. I was stuck between the Nintendo DS and the Sony PSP and I did not know which one I wanted. I was so stumped that I posed the question to Yahoo Questions (? Here). I got a few responses back but didn�t really end up with anything that helped me decide. On one hand we had the PSP, the pros for the PSP included the all important hack-ability, it also had the ability for me to put movies on some type of writable media. A few problems that I had with the PSP was the price tag (around $225 about $275 and case and a decent game) and the game selection for the PSP just sucked. I am a big RPG fan and I really did not see all that many great RPG titles for the PSP. The EAtacular sports games were plentiful, there were also some shooters, but overall the PSP lacked on the RPG side. Now the Nintendo DS was really not that much better, although it had a few more things going for it in the game selection category than the PSP. I had heard good things about Castlevania and Lunar, but the DS had the ability to play Game Boy Advance (GBA) titles via backwards compatibility. It also had a version for $150 with Mario Kart DS. It had a few pretty good things going for it, but the hack-ability factor of the PSP was a big bonus that left me undecided.
About 2 weeks before Xmas we had out annual �Guy�s Thanksgiving Dinner� basically all our friends from college get together ever year for Thanksgiving. We were all so busy during thanksgiving week that we ended up doing more a �holiday� dinner in between Thanksgiving and Christmas, but Andy�s spiced turkey was there so it was all good. The reason I am writing about the holiday dinner is that my friend Brian said one thing at dinner that could be the very core of the marketing for the video game industry for the next 10 years for people of my age. I really don�t even know how much Brian has time to play video games, but his remark was seriously an amazing insight into the battle for the home console market for people in their late 20s who grew up playing Video Games. Brian is an extremely busy guy; he is a real estate agent that is either in front of a computer trying to make some numbers work for a client or out on the prowl showing houses to clients. He is your atypical 25+ married male that played video games all the time growing up, but now has a mortgage, bills, and all sorts of other responsibilities to contend with (aka real life) and doesn�t have that much time to game. We were discussing how much we really don�t use our Playstation 2�s that much (in the context of a discussion on if we were planning on buying the xbox360s) and Brian said the following [paraphrased]:
�See the Nintendo is great for me because I can come home with a brand new game, sit down and be totally into the game in 5 mins. With the PS2 I am reading the manual, figuring out all the buttons, with the Nintendo it is just nice because I can just play�
It was at that moment I decided I wanted a DS for xmas. But it was also at that moment that I really realized Brian was right. A whole generation of people like myself, Brian and all our friends really don�t want figure out everything about a game before we sit down to play it. As of now, minus my DS, I play mostly computer games (mainly MMOs) which are amazingly in depth, require hours to install, hours to patch, and require credit cards to sign up for. I am not complaining about this, I understand that this is necessary for me to play within the infrastructure of a persistent online world. I actually don�t mind huge patch times sometimes, that means there is more content to explore. But, when I want to play a console game, I am very much like Brian, I want to sit down and play something quickly and I want it to be creative. The PS2 (and Sony) has moved away from that idea in my opinion. Don�t get me wrong a lot of people love that games have more advanced frameworks and that is fine. But as a busy adult, when I am not playing an MMO on my computer and I want to play a console game, I really want to sit down and just PLAY.
I ended up getting a Nintendo DS and I can tell you it is the best decision I could have made. I bought Advance Wars which is a great Strategy game (think Risk on a city scale), I got MarioKart DS (SUPURB), and I also bought Final Fantasy I, II, and IV that came out for GBA. These are all 3 old RPGs that I played when I was a kid and I am having a blast going through them again.
I will probably post more about the games in the next few weeks, but I have to say that the hardware on the DS is a piece of work. It has a built in chat program and wifi setup on the device, along with IR for that can be used. The wifi will allow me to play any other people within 30-40ft with the same game, or some games allow others in the vicinity to download a small client side version of a the game to play (so not everyone has to own the game for everyone to play).
It also has wifi connectivity to the net over 802.11a/b/g which is cool because it will automatically connect to the net to find other players for wifi enabled games when it detects an open connection, and will also accept security credentials for closed wifi connections (like my house). I set it up for my network in under 2 mins and now I can sit in my living room and play Mario Kart with kids from Japan (they are good damn it).
The DS also comes with a touch screen/stylus and headphone/headset plugs, and I want to say it includes a small gyroscope in it too so that games can tell which way you are holding the device but I have not encountered this yet.
When I think of a PSP I basically think hand held computer. When I play my DS it is a gaming device, and I really see that distinction. The games are extremely creative (not your standard EA franchise crap) and the game developers have a pretty great platform that includes odd stuff like a touch screen and gyropscope to develop with so I am really expecting some creative games in the future.
That�s what games have been lacking to me for the last couple of years (and yes you could argue I just play the wrong games I hear Katamari is a trip). The reason I love MMO�s is because the other players create the dynamic environment. When I sit down to play a specific linear game on a console it just bores me. I always went back to the dynamic MMOs. Now with the DS I am starting to see creative console games again. Nintendo may have been making them the entire time I was just being ignorant and calling them �kids games� the whole time. Nintendo is doing some pretty cool stuff.
By now I am sure most people have seen the new Nintendo Revolution controller. Yeah, it looks different than normal, but I am going to try it. I thought 2 screens on a handheld video game device sounded stupid when I heard about the DS. I now see it was a brilliant idea.
Also check out what everyone has been talking about for the last week about the Nintendo �Floor Vision�. Looks like something that isn�t your standard video game input either does it?
I guess the point of this rambling article is that I never game Nintendo enough credit since the PS2 came out. I passed them off as kid�s games, but they are really doing some really creative stuff, and they have me as a customer now for console gaming. I am now really excited about the Nintendo Revolution and I can't wait to see what they have instore for it.
|
|
 |
|
 |
 |
| |
Disclaimer
The opinions expressed herein are my own personal opinions and do not represent my employer's view in anyway.
© Copyright 2003-2007, Eric Thompson |
|
| |
 |
|
|
|
