They shuttered AC2 yesterday - Warcry has the moving message displayed to anyone still around at 10pm EST.

Enjoy:

Yes... I know nobody “buys” these anymore. Nevertheless...

10. Goldfrapp - Supernature?

“Which makes this pretty much what you'd expect: the prime-time flagship of glammy electroid dancefloor pop, curiously expensive-sounding and accessible to all, but strangely stripped of the functionalism of the dance record and the full thrills of pop. Sometimes that lands it in the sweet spot. Just as often, though, it seems to have forgotten what in the world it was meant to offer in the first place.” [7.0/10.0] [Ooh La La (ram)]

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My brief trip to Scotchland™ to see Grandma and my Uncle and Aunt went well. They were having a duty-free-for-all sale at Dixons in Gatwick (or Scotland has now become a seperate country), so I picked up the aforementioned DS (silver version with Mario Kart DS - the other choice was a pink one with Petz DS Nintendogs) there so I'd have something to do during the quiet moments. Grandma is reasonably well given her various illnesses (and what appeared to be a bad attack of something turned out to be indigestion from eating the nuts in the Christmas Pudding).

I think I've persuaded her that neither myself nor Dad have any musical ability and her worry over which instrument she should buy either of us is akin to worrying which sort of bicycle the fish in the pond need. However, her belief that everyone in the family is a polymath just lacking in opportunity persists and at one point she suggested my Mum has, against all evidence, a wonderful singing voice...

There was, sadly, no snow up there, the closest being the mist filling the valley in interesting ways. When I got back to London though, I had to drive through a mild snowstorm on the M25 and the snow was actually settling as I arrived back home. It didn't last, though.

I have however collected evidence the human race is doomed.

I've been told on several occasions that Nintendo use cheap components in their consoles in order to turn a profit on them. Perhaps that explains this...



(got it working - the DS didn't like the firmware on the router. And then, my ISP didn't like the settings on the upgraded firmware... I could connect to the router, but not route anywhere outside 192.168.0.1. All fixed now - requests for my DS friend code to auz(at)auzsoft(dot)net.)

Have a good one.

A bit late for Xmas though I suppose but apparently certain of Nintendo's patents have lapsed in the US, so anyone can make a clone of the NES now.

...Bloglines “top links” goes... bad.

...is David Furnish now “Lady David Furnish”?

“British pop star Elton John will tie the knot with long-term partner David Furnish on Wednesday, joining hundreds of gay couples in England taking advantage of a new law to formalize their relationships.”

Elton John to tie knot with long-term lover David - Yahoo! News

A Turbine-vetted review of Dungeons & Dragons Online: The Wossname of Thingy. Some interesting evolution in the combat, where someone has finally broken free of passive defences (putting aside the Matrix, which botched it anyway).

“DDO combat has elements of twitch in it. The short course is this: WASD movement, right mouse button swings your weapon. Two right clicks in short succession perform a swing and then a backhand swing. Holding down the shift button raises your shield to block (or allows you to tumble using the WASD keys if you have the skill). By watching monster combat animations you can see when they are going to attack, or use a special attack, and time it so you can block it/tumble out of the way.”

However, later things get ugly:

“There is no player economy to speak of (and no easy mechanism for one), no housing, no exploration beyond exploring the quest instances themselves, no pvp, no crafting, no elder game, and no wookie table dancing.”

f13.net - Impressions of Dungeons and Dragons Online

Odd thing is, I own exactly one album from each “page” of this list.

“Our list includes a pair of self-released records, two singles collections, a mixtape, a genre comp, a DJ mix, and an unreleased collection of mp3-only demos, reflecting that the biggest sea changes in contemporary music aren't the sounds but the ways tracks are compiled and distributed to audiences, as well as the ease in which artists-- even ones without corporate backing-- can engage directly with an listeners. The slow decentralization of the music industry-- radio and video increasingly being supplanted by ezines, band and label sites, blogs, and boards-- helped bands such as Sleater-Kinney, Spoon, the New Pornographers, and others sell crazy amounts of records on indie labels, and assisted a large number of people find new, exciting acts.”

Pitchfork: Top 50 Albums of 2005

Start viewing from the bottom up (literally)...

“Devvo is Darren Devonshire, a "chav" from the Doncaster/Hull area. Devvo lets me follow him around and film his life in exchange for cigarettes, alcohol and small change. I suppose the following films are just documentaries about the "chav" scene/problem in Northern England.

The following videos contain offensive language, drug consumption, violence and generally shocking scenes of chav life...and remember; all I do is film him, I am not responsible for what he does.”

Official Devvo Site :: Chavs On Film

At last - no more tripping over the carelessly laid Cat5 cable lying on the floor, for my Linux box is now using its wireless card. I used Ndiswrapper to get it working, which basically allows you to run (some) Windows drivers under Linux.

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I've been working on the Cricket game at work. On the actual game itself as well as the web interface, which is nice because my C++ was getting very rusty. It was a bit of a drop in the deep end mind you, as the first things I had to fix was the botched Duckworth-Lewis calculations in the game which change the score the second-batting team needs to achieve to win when a game is shortened by rain.

Actually, that said, the problem was less with coding than with finding out how to implement the “D/L”. Whilst almost all descriptions of it say something along the lines of “[t]he D/L method is relatively simple to apply” they forget to clarify “as long as your score matches one of the examples we've supplied”.

The main problem is that the D/L is actually sooper-seekrit and all they sell is the resulting look-up table. The previous programmer had not only used an old table but also just part of it, averaging out the missing values - meaning the games calculations were generally off. Compounding that, it was always adding its adjustments, which meant that on the occasions were the new target was supposed to be smaller it was in fact much larger.

The other problem is the difficulty in confirming my interpretation of the calculations. I'm all but certain I grok it, but the lack of absolute certainty led me to put up a few examples and solicit feedback from the players. People were mainly happy but a couple were convinced I'd got half of them wrong - though without supplying any calculations to prove it, just generally “feelings” things were wrong. But then, as the WIkipedia page notes: “the D/L method can produce results that are somewhat counterintuitive”.

I think we're going to go live with it Monday. Even if it's slightly wrong, it's an improvement over the current one.

On my route home from work the tailback from the Blackwall Tunnel can sometime back up as far as Bromley-by-Bow. Due to a quirk of the road design there, the three-lane A12 splits into two: the left hand land turns off towards Canning Town and West Ham whilst the two other lanes continue on and split into three again after the junction.

The eagle-eyed passing through there will notice that the “barrier” between the lane turning off and the new third lane is just painted on the road. As a result, when the other two lanes are packed, the more enterprising drivers will take the less busy “local traffic” lane and not turn off, gaining a small advantage over those who loyally remain in the two right-hand lanes.

But wait... there's more. The vulture-eyed will have noticed that if you actually take the turn off here, then Gillender Street runs alongside the A12 for a bit before re-joining. Even less people use this than the “third lane shortcut” so you can get a jump on them by heading down that.

Furthermore, Gillender Lane is in fact a two-lane road - but during busy hours one of these lanes is for buses only. After 7pm though, both lanes are open and you can, if you want, skip to the head of Gillender Street past the smallish queue in the non-bus lane.

And so it was, at 7.07pm tonight that I rolled up to the end of Gillender Street having shaved a few minutes off my journey. At this unfortunate point, all us cheeky low-grade scum who've exploited the road design have to re-join the A12 - after first merging the two lanes of Gillender Street into one. For some reason though, the driver to my right and slightly behind is miffed that, although he or she has also skipped past long queues of vehicles, I have apparently skipped past more, including them, and is trying to avoid leaving any gap between themselves and the car in front so I will be blocked from a minor amount of my ill-gotten advantage.

No honour amongst thieves I guess

Perhaps its just me, but not all of those seven criteria would seem to be available “long before it is even made”...

“A scientist in the United States says he has come up with a computer programme that helps predict whether a film will be a hit or a miss at the box office long before it is even made.

[...]

Sharda applied seven criteria to each movie; its rating by censors, competition from other films at the time of release, star value, genre, special effects, whether it is a sequel and the number of theatres it opens in.”

Computer spots a blockbuster from box office flop - Yahoo! News

Apparently, my Internet provider don't work with third parties either, since forwarding on Cogent's reply resulted in an email telling me the problem was with someone else and I should contact them...

b3ta.com board

Sam & Max are back.

Regarding the Laaaaaggggg:

Please direct any correspondence to your internet provider. Even if an issue is traced to the Cogent network, we can only work with directly connected networks to achieve resolution, not with third parties.

Oooh... hark at her...

It's been laggy recently in AC. I suspect the problem lies somewhere between Cogent and AT&T.

Here's some guy's analysis on how all the launches of the recent consoles stacked up, based on the scores on the doors for the launch games.

“When it comes to software, the 360's launch has been heralded by some as the "best launch ever" and by others as a total bore, with no compelling reasons to get the system. I did a little research.

I went to www.gamerankings.com and got the average review score for every launch title for the last several major home consoles.”

Jason Cross's 1UP Blog: Best Launch Ever? Worst? (via Major Nelson)

“Guess who's coming for honey? As part of a barrel-full of Winnie the Pooh anniversary events, Disney is working on a new animated series that will replace Christopher Robin with a 6-year-old girl.

[...]

"We got raised eyebrows even in-house at first, but the feeling was these timeless characters really needed a breath of fresh air that only the introduction of someone new could provide," says Nancy Kanter of the Disney Channel.”

USATODAY.com - Disney lets girl into Winnie's world

(via Neil Gaiman, who has his own comment)

“Manchester United crashed out of the Champions League and had the safety net of the UEFA Cup ripped away as well as they went down 2-1 to Benfica.”

ESPNsoccernet.com - UEFA Champions League - Benfica v Man Utd Report

Speaking of the X-Men 3 trailer announcement teaser, if you need Quicktime and don't want to download the waste of bytes that is iTunes, here's the solution.

Or announcement teaser, whatever that is.

Apple - Trailers - X-MEN 3 Announcement Teaser

Don't forget to alter your Xbox 360's privacy settings.

“We here at HEXUS became a little anxious when the boss sent me a voice message over Xbox LIVE asking what I was doing viewing pictures through Media Connect instead of playing games on my Xbox 360. I assumed he'd made a lucky guess as he knew I was still playing around with the Xbox 360's media functions, using Media Connect to view stored family photos from my main PC. What I didn't realise was that he could actually see what I was doing as it was being relayed over Xbox LIVE and showing up in my profile!”

HEXUS.gaming : Feature : Xbox 360 LIVE... Privacy? What privacy? : Page - 1/3

I think I've seen some of these examples before, but I don't think there were as many before.

Glenn Feron - The Art of Retouching

My favourite has to be this one, mainly for it's later use on a magazine cover under the tag “the natural beauty of Erykah Badu”: