That was a Natal move
Posted on June 1, 2009
Filed Under Gaming | Comments
E3 is on at the moment. It’s a big games show which us gamers get to have new technologies and games banded about and then told we can’t have it for another 6-12 months. I keep a bit of an eye on it for new consoles and what is coming out there.
Nintendo have set the bar high with their Wii console. I have heard many reports that even parents of 60+ are taking up the Wii-mote and getting on the race tracks/platform games/baseball etc. I’ve been mainly wondering though, what the competition will do, ‘cos they was always gonna copy this little hum dinger, even if it killed them.
First on the block is Microsoft’s Project Natal, where they have decided to completely take away the controls and allow you to wave about blindly as you try to beat Asteroth or some such back guy. Anyway, check out the video. My question is, will it work properly? Or will there be holes? In any case, I’m happy with my Wii and the original games. It’s just always good to see what the competition is up to. Let’s see what Sony do now.
And now for some Donnie
Posted on May 26, 2009
Filed Under Music | Comments
Right, over the last several posts I’ve got well into the tech. I still am, but there is so much more to this world. So, back to some soul.
One of my favourite music blogs is called Soul Sides, it covers more than just what its URL suggests. It delves into funk, prog rock etc. and is well worth a look. Today they posted about a fairly little known artist called Donnie. He’s been around for quite a while now. I heard about him in about 2001 on the then Jazz FM soul show. He sounded like Stevie Wonder and Donnie Hathaway (he even started singing at his church, like so many others). I managed to get my hands on some early releases of his music (which had different production for most songs) and managed to get to a gig at the Jazz Cafe in Camden. I waited for an album, and about a year later it finally reared up as a release on Giant Step records (later signing to Motown).
This boy has some serious talent. It took a few listens to fully appreciate. But the album just keeps giving, even 7/8 years later. It’s very socially conscious, but intelligently so. You can hear samples at: http://soul-sides.com/2009/05/donnie-soul-brother-from-another.html. His album “The Colored Section” is also on Spotify.
Circuit Porn!
Posted on May 22, 2009
Filed Under Development, Technology | Comments
It’s 1am and I really should be going to bed. I received my Arduino board today which, for me, is very exciting. I had a few problems setting it up (nothing more than user error, by not selecting the right board). First stop was to get the light flashing, which I did, then to make a simple circuit with a button to light an LED. I then customised it up a bit to play about. And here’s where I got to.
I’ll finish here, it’s quite a thing re-learning stuff you learned at school roughly 16 years ago. Looking at ohm ratings for resistors, but the fun is all there! Just a nice little hobby to pick up, start from the start and then be able to get some decent little projects going once you’re a bit better at it. At this point, it’s just me and the learning curve.
Arduino!
Posted on May 20, 2009
Filed Under Development, Technology | Comments
I am waiting impatiently for something I have been looking for for a while now. A way of programming hardware in a fairly easy way, being able to build circuits and make real life things work. This thing I speak of is called an Arduino Board. There are other controller boards out there, but this is the one which is open source and has a huge community. Projects show how creative developers can get.
Arduino was built to be a simple device for artists to build cool installations. More recently, developers have become more aware of it and have created projects like Baker Tweet from the tech team at Poke and the singing sock puppet (see below).
Singing Sock Puppet & The Meters – Blues in F from Matt Brown on Vimeo.
I’m excited, very excited. I was pretty damn good at circuits at school, so something like this is potentially a dream come true, in a very, very geeky way, which is what I love. Come on Mr Postman, deliver me my board!
Server Migration
Posted on May 19, 2009
Filed Under Development, Internet Stuff | Comments
Today something has changed on my site and blog. In fact, all the sites I am hosting myself. I’ve changed servers to sparkly servers up in the sky that everyone is now calling the cloud. The servers are now based in California rather than London. I’ve loved my London based hosts Supanames for about 8 years. They’re cheap, reliable and get the job done (I’ll still be recommending them), but I needed servers that can deal with multiple sites better and allow me more flexibility with SSH etc.
Media Temple have stepped up now. The URL for my blog is now http://blog.whoisfrancisgilbert.com/ though everything should still work as with the old URLs, thanks to some confirguration magic.
For you it should all be the same, for me, it is very exciting!
Wolfram|Alpha, like magic, almost
Posted on May 19, 2009
Filed Under Internet Stuff | Comments
This weekend something amazing happened. That thing is almost human, it is Wolfram|Alpha (ok, from now on I will stop putting in the |). It is a new way of getting answers, some say it’s like an encyclopedia. They’d be right really, kind of. It consists of a vast database and some very clever algorithms to make it a powerful way of getting answers to almost anything. You can watch a video here:
http://www93.wolframalpha.com/screencast/introducingwolframalpha.html
I love this but it has baffled some. A lot are comparing to Google, saying it could be a “Google Killer”. Anyone saying that doesn’t quite understand it. Google is a Search Engine, it finds sites, people, possibly sites with answers you seek, but it doesn’t primarily provide answers (it does a little for calculations or “1 USD in GBP” etc.).
Wolfram is a tool to answer, purely to answer, and it does this pretty well (remember, it is an Alpha so is not complete) with a different template of answers depending on your question type. Have a play anyway. The tech channels have been going crazy about it (try 88mph or “how many roads must a man walk down?”). I like the humour on some answers.
Open Hack London
Posted on May 11, 2009
Filed Under Development, Internet Stuff | Comments
I went to Open Hack London by Yahoo this weekend. Anyone who likes programming will probably love this event. As it is a Yahoo event, there is a slant towards PHP which is good and bad. But the main thing is to see what is coming out of the programming community at the moment! I always come away feeling refreshed and with too many ideas to actually execute. A curse about working with computers is that they are always changing, the revolution battles on. The blessing is they are always changing and it is great to be part of the revolution.
Anyway, it isn’t hacking as in cracking machines and making them do your bidding, this is the old style hacking. It is, however, taking every day objects such as a sock to platforms like the web and making them do something. You get an idea, get a team together and work through the night eating sweets, drinking beer and listening to music. I feel like a bit of a fraud as I was one of the guys who went purely to watch the talks and see people like Rasmus “I wrote PHP I did” Lerdorf do talks. Next year I will try to get myself in gear, find a team, and get the hack on! Why not!
And if you want to see some truly happy geeks see: http://www.flickr.com/search/?q=openhacklondon&w=all&s=int. I’m in there somewhere.
Bring coding back to childhood
Posted on April 1, 2009
Filed Under Development | Comments
Ask your average coder when they started and a lot of the time they look back tearfully at the days of their childhood and they say “I used to code stuff in BASIC” or “it was my commodore 64 for me”. Myself included. I started on my Amstrad CPC 6128. It didn’t make me into a coder (and it probably didn’t for most of them out there, but it was the first), I didn’t really understand much when I was typing (sometimes it made the vaguest bit of sense), but at the end something happened, and it was magic!
Nowadays it is all Object Oriented, high level languages based on rapid development principles. Lovely, but where is the innocent fun? The 10 print “Hello” 20 goto 10? I was shown yesterday that it still exists. Microsoft have decided that we need these innocent, simple, low level, not very powerful languages.
Ladies and Gentleman, I give you Small Basic!
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/devlabs/cc950524.aspx
I actually have no idea how serious they want this to be. It is based on .NET so it could potentially be incredibly powerful. But it only has 15 keywords.
Keep the dream alive!
Rubber ducky
Posted on March 18, 2009
Filed Under Development, Life Stuff | Comments
As a programmer, I am well into its different methodologies. Not all are completely serious, but all carry a message. My favourites being KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid) and DRY (Don’t Repeat Yourself). Something I discovered recently was that there is a Rubber Duck methodology which is described at Jaffa Monkey:
1) Beg, borrow, steal, buy, fabricate or otherwise obtain a rubber duck (bathtub variety)
2) Place rubber duck on desk and inform it you are just going to go over some code with it, if that’s all right.
3) Explain to the duck what you code is supposed to do, and then go into detail and explain things line by line
4) At some point you will tell the duck what you are doing next and then realise that that is not in fact what you are actually doing. The duck will sit there serenely, happy in the knowledge that it has helped you on your way.
Interestingly, I have been doing this for some time unknowingly. I do have a rubber duck that was given to me a few years back. His name is Baxter. Baxter sits on my desk and ponders life. He rarely leaves that spot, and sometimes gets lost in paper and thought. Until I get some work that requires some brain power, at which point he becomes my sound board.
I actually think this is a fantastic thing. So many of us internalise our thoughts, which is fine. But sometimes saying them aloud just helps. I’d recommend anyone to do this with anything that requires thought. I think Baxter might become my therapist now. Here’s to Baxter.
In the 80s zone!
Posted on March 18, 2009
Filed Under Life Stuff, Nostalgia | Comments
After the last post, I decided to have a look at Roller discos from the 80s. I searched on Flickr and my hankering was almost instantly satisfied. You really can’t fake the shots. They look like they were taken in the 80s. You can try and get the style back in modern times, but it would never look quite as real. And who introduced roller blades? That just made the hobby harder! I’ll leave you with my favourites.
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