May 2006 Archives
[Moozik: Curve - Forgotten Sanity]
For the past couple of months my desire to play video games has all but disappeared. A combination of work, school, and the lack of decent games have all contributed to this rather sad state of affairs. Well, this weekend marks a gaming resurgence of sorts as I'm currently playing Tomb Raider: Legend.
Developer Crystal Dynamics has taken the 'starting to get a wee bit crap' Tomb Raider series (I'm looking at you Angel of Darkness) and have actually managed to make a good game. Yes you read that correctly, a good Tomb Raider game. The visuals are stunning. Breath taking vistas and the fluid movement of Lara performing precise acrobatics are par for the course.
Speaking of acrobatics, if you're a fan of the Prince of Persia series (and I count myself heavily in that group) you'll be quite pleased that Lara climbs, jumps, leaps, grabs, and somersaults in true Prince style. In fact it's not only acrobatics that the developers have borrowed from the Prince of Persia series as exploration and puzzle solving elements feature heavily in Legend.
In short, I'm hooked and enjoying every minute of it :-)
[Moozik: Depeche Mode - More Than A Party]
President Bush delivering his West Point commencement speech:
When the United Nations Security Council gave him one final chance to disclose and disarm, or face serious consequences, he refused to take that final opportunity. So coalition forces went into Iraq and removed his cruel regime.Disclose and disarm those WMDs you mean? I'm not entirely sure what I find more amazing. The fact that Bush is still sticking to that same old script or that people still believe it.
[Moozik: VNV Nation - Genesis]
This week I've changed my development habits slightly. I now run my code through Perl::Critic as part of my test & build process.
Perl::Critic is rather slick actually as it performs some rather impressive source code analysis to determine if your code adheres to certain coding policies. The coding policies themselves are mainly (but not limited to) those listed in Damian Conway's excellent Perl Best Practices book.
Just today in fact I'm particulary pleased that running some code through Perl::Critic actually taught me something new about Perl which, you know, is always a good thing.
shell>perlcritic CC.pm
'return' statement with explicit 'undef' at line 267, column 5. See page 199 of PBP. (Severity: 5)
So how cool is that? Not only does it tell you what it doesn't like, it tells you where to go read up on the subject. NICE.
So, in this particular case, I was interested to learn that an explicit return undef doesn't always give you what you'd expect, that is, it isn't always false. If you call a subroutine in list context, a return undef from that subroutine becomes a one element list. Which might cause you some grief:
my @list = getList();
print @list ? "Have a list\n" : "Don't have a list\n";
sub getList {
return undef;
}
Prints Have a list. Ouch. Luckily my code called the subroutine in scalar context so no harm no foul in this particular instance. So today's mental note to self is always use a bare return; instead of return undef; to indicate failure.
[Moozik: The Bravery - Tyrant]
Sometimes it's all rather easy to spot some incredibly lazy and factually inaccurate blogging.
Apple's technology makes it really difficult to play music on its iPod if it comes from sources other than its iTunes online store.Really Matt? Interesting then that of the 42.3GB of music on my iPod, exactly one song came from the iTunes online store. Everything else was obtained from my CD collection. The tracks are ripped to MP3s, imported into my iTunes music library and, the next time I hook up my iPod, the tracks are copied.
So Matt, what was your point again?
[Moozik: Depeche Mode - Clean]
The thing I'm still not used to about living in Arizona is the effect the summer heat has on car batteries. They just die unexpectedly and without warning. Typically if you live in the Phoenix metro area, you should replace your car battery every 2 years. This year marks the second year in the life of Sally's car battery so you can probably guess where this post is heading.
So, it's dark, late, and we've just finished our weekly grocery shopping. Everything is loaded in the back and we get in the car to go home. Put the key in the ignition, turn it... nothing. Dead as can be. As you can well imagine, a few choice words were uttered. Followed by some further choice words.
After two failed jump-starts, a complete unpacking of the groceries to take them back into the supermarket's walk in freezer [0], Good Samaritan #3 pulls up alongside the car. He's more than willing to attempt another jump-start. I hook up the cables he starts his engine and we wait a couple of minutes. I turn the key... Success! Car starts. Thank you Mr Anonymous Good Samaritan man. You rock.
Needless to say, I'll be buying a new battery today.
[0] Because ice cream, milk, eggs, and cheese don't really like being out in the warm Arizona night :-)
[Moozik: Orgy - Gender]
Sometimes you read an article and you're left speechless.
BRITAIN'S biggest water supplier, Thames Water, is thinking of towing icebergs from the Arctic to London to solve what could be the worst shortage in a century. "We have to look at any possible alternative, including towing icebergs from the Arctic and seeding rain clouds," a Thames Water spokesman told the Times newspaper.An iceberg 1.6km long, 300m wide and 270m deep would contain would contain 90,000 megalitres of fresh water, enough to supply 445,000 families in Britain for a year.
While admitting that many people might find the idea "daft", the spokesman did not rule out using icebergs.
[Moozik: Grendel - EVP]
Dude like, if there's no snow, we won't be able to, like, practice our frontside 540s.
Riiight because not being able to rip it up on the mountainside is entirely the most important reason for stopping global warming.
Others attending included snowboarder and Olympic gold medalist Shaun White, who said he was interested in global warming because he believed it had reduced snow pack."The lower elevation mountains are not getting as much snow," said White, known as the "Flying Tomato" because of his red hair.
White said the sport would suffer if "you can't go to your local mountain and ride"
[Moozik: Angels & Agony - One]
Bloody litterbugs. You know if I had a Pound everytime a climber left a Piano near the summit of a mountain then...
A musical mystery today surrounded Britain's highest mountain after a piano was discovered near its summit.Volunteers clearing stones from the 4,418ft peak were astonished when they discovered the musical instrument on Ben Nevis. An appeal has now been launched to find out how and why the piano came to be within 200 metres of the top of the mountain.
The piano was recovered at the weekend by 15 volunteers from the John Muir Trust, the conservation charity which owns part of Ben Nevis.
The squad was removing litter and stones called cairns from the summit plateau when they spotted the top of the piano.
[Moozik: Garbage - As Heaven Is Wide]
I'm still trying to run at least every other day. I say trying because I've done bugger all for about a week now. Anyway, running at night in Arizona in the summertime is probably not the best time of the day to be attempting such nonsense. So, starting this morning I'm getting up at 6:00am to go running before work
Now, bear in mind that I'm not a morning person AT ALL, I give this maybe two, three days tops :-)
[Moozik: Tears For Fears - Prisoner]
Oh yes, the mighty triple digits have arrived in Arizona. I swear it gets hotter earlier every year. So obviously I took the opportunity yesterday to go outside to mow the lawn & do a wee spot of gardening. Mad dogs & Englishmen eh?
Still the ice cold beer and Killing Joke blasting from the ol' SoundDock helped tremendously. Hopefully my neighbors appreciated my taste in music :-)
[Moozik: Siouxsie & The Banshees - Shadowtime]
I've owned a 125-gallon saltwater reef aquarium for the past 4 years or so. Just recently I've managed to somehow become allergic to saltwater. Which, you know, is a little inconvenient because routine maintenance and cleaning dictates that I have to submerge my arms in the saltwater every few weeks. About 24 hours after I've had my arms in the water I start breaking out in hives. Not exactly much fun.
So what to do?
Those cunning chaps at Coralife have the answer. Aqua Gloves of course.
Did I buy some? Yes.
Do they help? Yes, no more itchy bumps for me.
Do I look like a complete wanker while wearing them? Oh yes.
Sally says that if nothing else I can always be happy in the knowledge that I can safely handle nuclear waste.
My wife. Always looking on the bright side.
[Moozik: Collide - Frozen]
IN 2002 Mitch Davis, an Australian businessman, was hijacking cars on his video console when he had a startling idea: what if he could put real ads into the background of his video game.Well mate I don't know many gamers who would agree that this 'would be phenomenal'. Just so I understand, I've already paid somewhere in the region of $40-$50 for the game to begin with, and now I'm going to get in-game advertising too? Sign me up.Now Mr Davis's idea is set to revolutionise the video gaming industry and net him a fortune, with the maker of the XBox, Microsoft, reportedly set to buy his firm, Massive, for up to $US400 million ($526 million) in an effort to boost its online advertising revenue.
Mr Davis, who is from Sydney but is now in the US, had his idea while playing the popular car crime game Grand Theft Auto - "for research".
"I'm driving down the street in the car and there are [ads] all over the place and they were all fake ads and I thought, 'Oh my God, what if these were real ads? It would be phenomenal'," he said in a recent interview.
I'll just consider this one more reason why I'll be avoiding the XBox and sticking with my trusty PS2.