Wave

Posted on November 29, 2009 by Arthur

I suspect that Google Wave is going public really soon now. I signed up for Wave a couple of months ago but got an invitation via Alfons. Just a couple of hours ago, I received my official invitation. How about getting two invitations within 2 days?

My initial thoughts are mixed: Like other social media forms, Wave would work perfectly if you have hundreds of friends and relatives and participants. This doesn’t mean that it doesn’t have its usage. I guess, you could use it as a personal notes keeper for your sources.

When I have time, I’ll have to take a closer look at this.

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A President

Posted on November 21, 2009 by Arthur

One surprise this week was the appointment of a European president (EU announcement), which went to a former Belgian prime-minister, Van Rompey. It appears he’s a pragmatic politician, who has been quoted the following words:

The universal values which are in force in Europe, and which are fundamental values of Christianity, will lose vigour with the entry of a large Islamic country such as Turkey.

On the other hand, the other contestants were Tony Blair and the current Dutch prime-minister Balkenende.

If you’re European, you may not have noticed this in the news: Oprah’s announcement that she’s stopping her show in 2011. I have never liked her show and I don’t understand how people like her get to a meteoric rise to fame: the most likely answer to that question is ‘targeted marketing’. Last year, when I saw Oprah stumping for Obama, I thought that was going a bit too far. Maybe Oprah knows more about the Obama presidency.

And finally, the moment we’ve been waiting for, the Large Hadron Colider has restarted. Fourteen months ago, a bunch of time travelers stopped the machine from operating, possibly delaying the creation of the Great Black Hole of 2107. Uh. Or something. On a serious note, the next coming years the LHC will help scientists narrow down the search for the Higgs boson, a sub-particle that has been predicted but so far, has not been found.

1. Slightly related: The creation of the universe and that

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Mauer

Posted on November 7, 2009 by Arthur

I‘ve Brickbeen fairly busy recently and at the height of the H1N1 drama in Canada (‘H1N1 overplayed in Canada’), I ended up catching a cold too. A normal cold, that is, of the house and garden variety kind (@rebelalfons): It started with a strep-throat, I ended up with a medium to high fever which was gone within 6 hours. I felt excellent the day after the fever. Tired, but excellent. If I had contracted H1N1, I’d be probably the most sought-after person in the world. That is a funny thought.

Talking about H1N1: I’m not certain how it has been played out in the European media. Over here it felt la sort of like a panic. I agree that risk groups should take the necessary precautions, particularly pregnant women: Before the media paid attention to this, I remember reading a US article about serious infection cases that seemed to affect pregnancy and I think that at that point serious advisories were sent out to medical institutions and practitioners.

In a couple of days, it’sDeutschland Einig Vaterland the 47th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin wall, which if you click today’s link at Google news, details all the self-celebratory self-pats on the backs of the glamorous and the entertainerous (that’s not a word, I know). Including U2. There’s a lot of confusion how, or rather, why the Wall fell: from my memories of the days around that event, I recall that the main engine behind the sudden rise of rallies in East Germany was Mikhail Gorbachev. Kohl, Reagon and Bush? Not so much.

Anyway: no matter how you turn it, the Fall of the Berlin Wall was an astounding event, but as far as i remember, didn’t affect the life of yours truly: the days after, I was probably back in school writing up exams or something.

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Games redux

Posted on October 25, 2009 by Arthur

I finally managed to find some time to play a couple of rounds of ‘Civilization 4: Beyond the Sword’ (2007) and while I’m hesitant to judge it right now, I’m not overly enthusiastic about it (previously.). Particularly considering the current hardware I’m running it on, all across the board (from the custom dialogs to the AI) it is god awful slow. I’ll see if I can revisit this in a separate item.

People who’ve followed this blog, should be familiar with the praise I heaped on X3: Reunion (old material right here): I decided to pick up the game where I left it a couple of years ago. Just recently, I decided to move up to ‘X3: Terran Conflict’ (which incidentally, is also available for the Mac): Excellent once again. Since this is the last game in the X-Universe, it’s going to be curious to see what Egosoft (company site) will come up in the near future.

Minor update: Additionally, I noticed that in Civ4:BTS for some of the technology discoveries some other person’s voice was used (definitely not Leonard Nimoy’s).

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S.

Posted on October 4, 2009 by Arthur

So, with Autumn slowly taking care of the leafs of the trees on our property, the spiders disappearing one by one, a couple of thoughts from computers to the personal stuff:

I like Autumn. In our younger years, our teachers always insisted that Spring marked the start of a new year. I always thought they were wrong and that the actual start of a new year starts around this month. Time to rake up the dead and the forgotten.

Alfons forwarded me a youtube video of the (old) DDR national anthem, ‘Auferstanden aus Ruinen’, which was composed by Hanns Eisler, a protégées and student of the great composer Arnold Schoenberg. Complex and intricate music: Obviously there’s a link between this composition and his ‘Dr Faustus’ Goethe Rhapsodie work. I’ve been planning to add Eisler to my ‘Past the Bridge’ collection of sound fragments. I would not be surprised if a lot of Germans get nostalgic if they hear that anthem.

I worked a bit on my Ubuntu box: I have no idea why the ‘graying’ part was added to Ubuntu (or if this is actually part of X), but I cannot tolerate it (basically, if a program is busy or has 100% CPU, it will temporarily ‘gray out’. It makes it appear that Ubuntu is bad at multi-tasking, which it definitely isn’t.

Update 1: A kind of hilarious: Google translates ‘Auferstanden aus Ruinen’ to ‘The Train Station’. No really.

Update 2: Some call ‘Auferstanden…’ the most beautiful national anthem ever written.

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Elite 25

Posted on September 23, 2009 by Arthur

Via-via, I heard about the 25th anniversary of the computer game ‘Elite’ (Wikipedia), indeed as Wikipedia calls it, the seminal Space/Trading/Combat game released in September of 1984. It was first released for an Acorn BBC and over the years it was (succesfully) ported to other 8 bit systems, like, in our case, the MSX computers.

If I remember correctly, we found out about the game in a popular tech magazine, which detailed the addictiveness and open-endedness of the game. The graphics for the game were pretty much advanced too, that is, for the early Eighties: I mean, who would have thought of using vector graphics to draw 3D spaceships and celestial bodies?

Eventually, a lot later than everybody else, we got our hands on a copy of the game and found out that ‘docking’ at space stations was a nearly impossible task. We weren’t the only ones who thought it was impossibler: Twenty five years later, David Braben (co-designer of the game) admitted:

Pt2. I might want to make docking a bit easier – but we did try at the time – we had no more memory to make it any more sophisticated.

Et tu, David?

That didn’t stop us from playing the game though: in fact, we managed to reverse-engineer the savegame file format. Which meant that we were able to give ourselves a whole bunch of credits, specialty upgrades and the inevitable and necessary ‘docking’ device (of course). Not bad and I wonder if that part was the foundation for the “file-format studies” I eventually embarked on in my career as a programmer.

I personally never made it to the rank ‘Elite’: I can’t even remember how long I played it but it definitely wasn’t for years. Like all other games, it eventually wore out. I don’t think we ever discovered the proper bits to set this rank in our savefiles (we assumed it was heavily encoded with checksums). That is, until recently, I hear that the magic word was 0x1900.

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The odds?

Posted on August 30, 2009 by Arthur

IA bench discovered a couple of coincidences the other day:

1. Hurricanes: I noticed that they (the hurricanes) always seem to hit during the weekend. Bill did so last week and (the remnants of) Danny did this weekend (oh, that was a lot of rain for sure). Mark my words.

2. Traffic lights: Every time my bus stops at King’s Square, Saint John, the (pedestrian) traffic light hits green. Last week this happened to me every day and if I was religious I could have claimed this to be an act of god. I’ve asked for a peer review of my observations.

3. People: I hardly run into people I know (that is people outside of my profession) and if I do, it’s because I recognize them and not the other way around.

Reminder to self: bring some dice in next time.

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The sound of the season

Posted on August 23, 2009 by Arthur

NowFall around the corner that Summer is almost over and the weather is bringing us more of the wet stuff (I look at you hurricane Bill): the last couple of nights, I noticed that the crickets (Wikipedia) were out in full force doing their things with their legs. I had a theory that there’s a correlation between temperature and the noise they make and, apparently, I wasn’t too far off.

So, yes, logically, my brain is now thinking that “when chirping crickets == Fall is around the corner”. This is of course so obvious. I find it funny that I’ve been starting to associate particular sounds with seasons, as I did before when birds marked the return of the new growth.

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Hate My Way

Posted on August 9, 2009 by Arthur

I‘ve beenThrowing Muses a long-time listener of the Throwing Muses music: I was actually a Throwing Muses fan before I started listening Sonic Youth (previously on xsamplex). However, I’m not going to write about the hows or whats: the reason for this entry in my ‘Past The Bridge’ series is that a couple of weeks ago I found out that it was the 25th anniversary of the ‘San Ysidro McDonald’s massacre’ (Wikipedia, personal thoughts of the only reporter at the scene). Obviously, the aftereffects of the massacre (one of the first live covered murder/massacres on TV and radio) had a huge impact on American culture and politics, particularly because of the apparent random killings (the youngest victim was an 8 month baby, the oldest was a 74 year old man).

The Muses’ song “Hate My Way” (30+ excerpt) references that event and (literally) captures the words broadcast by the news organizations (from that earlier mentioned/linked to CNN article):

“I looked down and could see that there was people ducking for cover, and there was a fire truck there with everybody behind it,” she recalled. She saw two boys lying on the ground, tangled in their bicycles after being shot by Huberty, and people hiding behind the low walls of the restaurant’s playground.

The song itself isn’t specifically about the killings but about being a teenager and the insecurities that come when you’re that age: Kristin Hersh at one time explained that the song was written when she was 18 or so, and that at that time ‘like all people that age, she probably took things too serious, or, even, not serious at all’.

Personally, what makes this song so compelling to me is its chorus-less musical narrative: from Dave Narcizo’s signature intricate rythmic section to Hersh’s ‘out of harmony’ singing (obligatory Youtube video, sound out of synch though). This was the Throwing Muses at their best.

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There’s a deer in your yard

Posted on August 8, 2009 by Arthur

No really, there’s one right there.A deer in a yard. Besides deer there are fawns, Cardinals, hummingbirds and cats.

Every morning I let the oldest cat out: it wasn’t until yesterday I found out that the first thing she apparently does is head to the dog’s grave. She sits there for a while and then continues her hunt or search for the inevitable. I’m not particularly sure what to think of this: if cats were mourning fellow-pets that would be extremely unsettling. Not to mention that elephants apparently pass the self-awareness test.

Earlier this morning, I upgraded the current WordPress installation to a point 3 security release. I’ve noticed that WordPress has a built-in ‘core updating’ system. I still upgrade using my faithful shell-scripts (a mish-mash of wgets and the regular recursive delete, copy and move Bash-commands). DOS is a joke: however, I hear that Windows 7 will (finally) include the Unix-inspired ‘PowerShell’. You can (of course) download PowerShell for your other Windows versions.

And last but not least, I’d like to call out the weather for last July: If this year wasn’t a record cold and wet month, I’ll eat my mouse.

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Blocks

Posted on July 25, 2009 by Arthur

We Bloom? Who?were in Saint John the other day and ran in a couple who attracted attention because they were strolling around with their (6 month) twins. One woman (after telling the couple that she was fascinated with twins because her mother was part of a fraternal twin1) offered to make a family photo of the couple and kids.

From the twin’s parents, I found out that the boys were fraternal twins. Currently, the parents said that they could only tell the difference because one of the boys had more hair than the other. Other details were exchanged but before we laughingly parted, I advised the parents of the fact that ‘(when they get older) twins will be forming a block against you. Good luck’.

Very much needed so. I know from experience.

1 Obviously, the lady missed out on the fact that there were twins occupying a park bench, right in front of her. On the other hand, adult twins are less interesting than baby-twins.

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Arma 2

Posted on July 12, 2009 by Arthur

Earlier A town called alicethis month, I decided to get Arma 2 (official site), which is a tactical first person shooter produced by Czech game maker Bohemia Interactive. Originally, BI wrote Operation Flashpoint (which in turn was published by CodeMasters), but both companies have gone their own ways: CodeMasters is currently developing the ‘original’ successor to FlashPoint: if you’d say that Arma 2 is the true successor to the whole FlashPoint line, you wouldn’t be off the mark (see Wikipedia).

Anyway: if you played and finished Ghost Recon (PC) (earlier), you’ll probably like Arma 2. If you’ve played Arma 1 and Operation Flashpoint, you’ll find that Arma 2 has graphically and geographically improved (more land to uncover, I think around 200 square kms) but that most of the commands have stayed the same. This time the game puts us in combat in a fictional land called Chernarusk where (in single player mode), you fight for the US against either one or more of the 6 available factions.

Let me take a step back for a second: there’s one single player campaign (Blood Harvest) and (despite what reviews claim) most of it is scripted. Certain reviews also laud the option to ‘walk around’ freely in Chernarusk and while this is possible, at the end it still feels heavily scripted particularly knowing that the campaign is only 12 missions long. It’s particularly this single player campaign I’m mixed about: it is buggy for sure and I feel that the AI is too unbalanced, that is, for some reason when it finds you, you’re dead. I’ve only been playing Arma in ‘Regular’ mode, but I feel that the AI is hurting the game.

However, the game shines in multi-player mode: literally each vehicle and aircraft is available to drive or fly around. You can even parachute in if you feel so inclined. Complex orders in the single player game suddenly make sense in this mode too: there’s a whole range of commands you can issue to and/or receive from your fellow players. Additionally, the moment you’re on the battle field it’s all about battle tactics with the number one rule: if you can’t flank the enemy, you’re stuck in a rut with bullets flying around you.

I don’t think there’s a need to elaborate too much on Arma 2 today, though: graphically there’s nothing to complain about. On my system (a 2.0 P7350, 4 gigs of RAM, 512MB NVIDIA GeForce 9600M GT) the game runs fairly smooth (in 1280 x 800 no less). You probably don’t want to run it on anything lower than that. There’s also nothing wrong with the multi-player part of the game: however, some elements of the single player portion are absolutely buggy. Sure you can make your own missions in the built-in mission editor, but if the AI is buggy the fun will be gone fairly quickly. However, I must admit that ‘The Armory’ (a subsection of the game where you can try out vehicles and planes) can be fun, and is probably the first place to try/practice flight before you start doing this in the multiplayer world.

So, cautiously, if you like tactical fps games and prefer multi-player games you’re fairly good with Arma 2. In other cases, you may want to wait for CodeMaster’s “Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising”, which seems to come with a totally open and unscripted single-player campaign.

See below for more in-game screenshots:

08/09/09: Patch 1.03 was released a couple of days ago with, reportedly, AI and performance fixes.

Continue reading →

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Feel it?

Posted on July 11, 2009 by Arthur

I was going to mention Michael Jackson’s death (+06/25/09, Wikipedia bio) a couple of days ago, but ended up too busy doing other stuff. While I don’t consider myself an MJ fan, I do admit that his music has influenced and generated many other music- and subcultures. Michael Jackson was the first and most important pop-artist of the Eighties and while his legacy slowly fainted away because of the high oil price, his music and videos (youtube channel) will inspire many upcoming acts, artists and, of course, sound-a-likes, dance-a-likes and look-a-likes.

This is going to be a different type of “Past The Bridge” posting though: since His Royal Badness’ music is so readily available around (his official site), what’s the point of cutting up a piece of song? So, when I think of Michael Jackson, the first song that comes in my mind is The Jackson 5’s “Can you feel it” (YouTube) and not the typical Eighties songs ‘Billy Jean’ and ‘Thriller’. That’s only because I think the accompanying video of ‘Can You Feel It’ defined Jackson’s further and future video-repertoire: that is, using all possible (technical) visual means to get the music across. If you think the photographic effects in that video look cheap, don’t forget that this was all done before computers became staple.

Anyway: I don’t think our household ever had a single Michael Jackson album which brings me to the point of this posting (well, that is, his death was another reason). During the height of the popularity of ‘Thriller’ (the LP), we ran into a female classmates who bought the album together and on the question how they would share it they blurted out that since they were best friends, it would most likely be a weekly thing.

Almost 30 years later, I wonder what happened to that record.

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