Happy 2011 - You BASTARDS

Why? 'cos I've got Swine Flu that's why.

I hate you all.

Not really, I love you all, please don't leave me and please don't stop reading Good-Delicious. Without you all, there is no Good-Delicious.

See you on the other side!

The Tippex Experience

Clever!

http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=tippexperience

Dance Fortress!

This one is kudos to Blue Blood (who else!), and is also one of THE FUNNIEST machination videos ever made!

Before you watch it, here's the rules:

1\ Watch it fullscreen, HD if possible.

2\ Replay it and watch every character on their own.

3\ Once you've wiped away the tears from the hysterical laughing, you can download the 1080p file here.

4\ Thank Blue Blood on steam when you see him :)

New Widget (goodreads)

Just a quick heads-up, I've put a new widget in the sidebar to the right that shows my currently reading/recently read books via goodreads.com.

The books are shown with nice covers and ordered according to date read. Clicking on them will take you to the goodreads.com page.

Finally, if you like reading books then make sure you join goodreads, where you can discover new books and meet reading-buddies who share the same interest.

Good-delicious!

The 20-year Itch

It was 20 years ago, I still remember it like it was just yesterday. Like all bad (so to speak) things, remembering them is all to easy and all to vivid.

Manchester 1990 - a 13 year-old me is begging my mum for a new computer. I begged and pleaded and grovelled and wrote letters and left notes and everything I could think of, to buy what I thought was THE best computer ever at that time: A ZX Spectrum +2. 128kb RAM! built-in datacoder (cassette player)! The possibilities were endless. If I got it, I'd be the talk of school once we inevitably went back to Baghdad.

The begging eventually worked - and I went to the local Tandy (now called Carphone Warehouse or RadioShack depending on which side of the pond you live) and I was smiling all the way back, with me was my amazing ZX Spectrum +2A, complete with light-gun and loads of amazing games!

Oh how I enjoyed it! I hooked it up to the teeny TV we had in the flat and played and played and played! It was just superb.

Unbeknown to me at that time, my brother's friend was in London at the same time. They had spoken once or twice over the phone, and that friend was talking about the computer he had bought. He mentioned to my brother that we really should get one. I only found this out AFTER we had gone back to Baghdad. To say I almost wanted to kill my brother there and then was an understatement.

Fast-forward to 1991 - sometime after the first Gulf War. We were in Baghdad, a city mostly in chaos trying desperately to rebuild itself, but also one that was still high on the spoils of invading Kuwait. I started my 2nd year of intermediate school (college if you wish), and just couldn't wait to show my new Spectrum off, especially to all those friends that had a 48k last summer, just like me.

I was still making new friends early in the year (in their infinite wisdom, the school decided to shake the groups up after just one year) when a good-but-bad-influence friend suggested it would be a good idea to bunk school and go to "Hassan's" to play games.

Brief interlude:

Hassan was an Egyptian guy that owned a shop near our school where you went and played video games. The shop had a name, but we all called it "Hassan's". It wasn't an arcade as such, because a\ arcades were banned in Baghdad (cos they led to gambling allegedly) and b\ it didn't have coin-ops, but actual computers and consoles to play on. You paid the man a price and you got your go at say a football match, or a round of some shoot 'em up etc. If you were a good player and lasted long, Hassan would come threatening to reset the machine unless you paid up.

It was also somewhere to smoke freely. In other words, for a computer geek who also smoked during his teenage years, Hassan's was an institution, a Mecca, a way of life.

So, off we went to Hassan's. I walked in to the smoky room and also into a scene from my dreams - loads of kids playing games, shouting at the screens and at each other, swearing, and most importantly those amazing sounds. It was the sounds that hit me first - these were no ordinary bleeps and bloops, these were fully-fledged and meaty sounds. Amazing music, awesome voice effects, and rumbling bases.

By then, I could tell something wasn't right. What were these machines they were playing on? Some fancy console stolen from Kuwait, one which would have a few games and then disappear cos it's too expensive to maintain? That's what I thought initially.

I saw the first TV and stood to watch. I was transfixed by a scene I could never forget: two boys were playing a coop game. Each player controlled a dude who was just bad ass - jumping, shooting, and amazingly even FLAME THROWING (complete with 2D flame physics and effects!) through some amazing levels. All to the beat of some phenomenal music. The graphics weren't the usual 8 colours a Spectrum could do - these were graphics with MILLIONS of colours, pixels you couldn't see, and backgrounds that scrolled, not flipped.

I literally died a little that day. I watched with awe and an ever-dropping jaw that game, and then I dared to look at the computer below. What greeted me was the most sexy, beautiful, enigmatic, out-of-reach computer I had ever seen: The Commodore Amiga 500.

I traced every line of the machine, poured over every little detail, and took as many mental pictures as I could of this thing from the future. I watched as disks went in and out of the side, as the iconic hand-holding-a-disk would briefly flash before the game's loading screen came on, and as how the game loaded within a minute, as compared to after 3 or 4.

I also watched Battle Squadron being played that day. A space shoot 'em up with vertical scrolling and 2 player coop, and one of THE BEST SOUNDTRACKS you will ever hear.

I watched. I cried inside. And at home, I cried outside. A lot.

You see, my beloved Spectrum +2 was nothing compared to the Amiga. With its 8 colours, colour-bleeding, tinny bleeps, and stupid built-in datacorder, it was nothing but a huge disappointment. Still, I could show it off at school to my old 48k friends right?

Wrong.

All except a very few (who had actually moved on from playing games anyway) had bought an Amiga that summer, the same summer we were in Manchester, THE SAME SUMMER MY BROTHER WAS TOLD BY HIS FRIEND TO BUY AN AMIGA. Yup, his friend had bought one and told my brother we should. Except my brother kept that little fact to himself.

So, my friends were telling me how awesome their new computer is - how it had 4096 colours, how it had 4-channel sound, how it could read double-density floppies; and how, most importantly, it had the most amazing games ever.

By then, a jealousy of Othello-proportions had built inside me. I spent every waking minute obsessing over the Amiga. I would doodle the Commodore logo everywhere; beg, steal, or borrow scraps of Amiga magazines to read and read and read again and again. Trouble was, all the magazines I saw were UK publications: Amiga Format, Commodore User, Amiga Power, ACE (Advanced Computer Entertainment) and I would see what I missed out of in Manchester - all those great £499 deals, the Flight of Fantasy Amiga pack, the Batman Amiga pack and so on.

Of course, I also become obsessed with going to Hassan's A LOT. During the initial chaotic years after the war, we were kind of excused if we couldn't make the first lesson at school (cos of lack of petrol in that oil-rich land). I could walk to school (would take about 45 minutes) but the teachers didn't need to know that. Instead, I'd walk to Hassan's, help him open the shop (literally) and play most of the morning. We were so frequently there that Hassan reserved an Amiga for us. If we showed up that would be our machine that morning, and sometimes for the whole day. How we graduated is still beyond me.

And that's more or less how I spent practically all my teenage years. I was forever in the shadow of that C= logo, and my Amiga-owning friends. Of course I also begged and pleaded and cried to my mum that I really needed one - but deep inside I knew that would never happen. The period wasn't an easy one for her (my dad was in prison for exactly those years 1990-1995) so there was never gonna be any spare cash to throw around to buy me that stupid computer. And I already had a Spectrum and didn't I beg for that and claimed it was the best thing ever?

When I finally managed to get a new computer, it wasn't an Amiga. It was an Atari 520 STFM. Now, had that been in the UK it would have been fine - more than fine cos by then (1992) the Atari ST was more popular than the Amiga here. Not as good, but as popular. Many games, demos etc.

In Baghdad however, it was different. The ST had been imported by a company who's owner wasn't really interested. It wasn't advertised, and it didn't take on. I had a handful of games, all of which were a\ old b\ were much better on the Amiga and c\ crap mostly. This definitely was no Amiga.

I tried to show it off to my Amiga friends. I would quote how it was a musician's dream machine (to date some musicians STILL use an Atari ST, cos if its MIDI capabilities). Of course, this was nonsense to me and my friends - none of us were musicians. They had the games, I had MIDI.

Looking back, I loved my Atari ST then. Even though I thought I hated it, it was still my first "real" computer, one I spent many hours on playing games I mostly convinced myself were better. While it was miles better than the Spectrum, the fact that it wasn't an Amiga and had very few games meant that its image was always going to be tarnished.

Slowly, the tide started to change. In 1992 also, a certain German-Iraqi man who called himself Nile Warp came back to Iraq to live for a while. Nile happened to be friends with another guy called AveHave (pronounced aa-ve-haa-ve). AveHave was very large in the PC Scene back then, being a founder and site-op of many BBS groups and boards.

So, Nile came to Baghdad with 1.2 GIGABYTES of games - all on tape streamers. Nile was quickly introduced to two other guys, one called SnakeHead and the other called DMA48!!!

Together, they opened a computer office called Orbit Computer Company (or OCC) and the rest is history - the PC went from being a crappy bulky machine that played Prince, to a highly desirable games machine, with amazing 3D games like Doom, simulators like TFX, and even all those Amiga games like Turrican 2, Pinball Fantasies and the like.

It wasn't an instant transformation. The Amiga fought on till its dying breath (the ill-fated 1200) and the PC market never really took off before 1994 or so, mainly cos of the expensive components. Not many people could afford a PC that could run these newer games, and except for the elite few (OCC included), most of us started off with XT or simple 286 AT machines that could run perhaps one or two games properly.

OCC became the new "Hassan's".

The seed was sown, and people paid more attention to the PC as a games machine. Also, and perhaps most importantly, in the mid-nineties PC components started coming thick and fast, and very cheap from one important place: The United Arab Emirates. Jebel Ali area to be precise. Suddenly, a 486 with VESA gfx and a Super I/O became within reach.

By the time I left Baghdad (June 2000), the Amiga was well and truly dead, and the PC was king. But that still didn't change the first 5 years of the nineties, those years I spent longing for something I never got.

Until now that is.

You see, for the last 10 years I've been content with the amazing Amiga emulation scene. WinUAE and the great Amiga Forever packages are all good, and go from strength to strength. Except, you're not really using an Amiga.

So, a few weeks ago I decided to buy a real Amiga, and I went on eBay and bought an Amiga 600 + Joystick + internal Compact Flash IDE hard drive. Along with a MASSIVE 1mbyte RAM extension, and a HUGE 2mb Fast RAM card.

It turns out the Amiga hardware scene still hasn't really died. Companies are still making products for it, the CF/IDE HDD one of them. With that installed, games can be loaded within seconds from the Hard Drive directly. This turns the failure Amiga 600 into a very desirable retro games machine.

I've hooked the machine up in my spare room, with my old-fashioned CRT TV. I turn it on sometimes, load Battle Squadron, close the door, crank the volume up, and for a brief moment I imagine it to be 1990, and for me to be 13 years old in my room in Baghdad, playing this cutting edge game on this futuristic machine.

And sometimes when I press the reset keys (CTRL+AMIGA+AMIGA) I imagine Hassan, how he would come over to our machine, cigarette in his mouth, his fingers ready to press the reset button if we didn't pay up. All the time shouting at us (tikamil? tikamil?) - continue?

It's been 20 years, but I've finally gotten what I wanted: An Amiga all of my own.

Happy Greater Bairam!

Eid Mubarak everybody!

Stay safe.

Also, for the first time in ages I'm actually off this Eid!

How to climb a 1768 foot tower

Oh. My. God.

Remember Eubrick The Retired?

Of course you don't - unless you've recently played DeathSpank. He's the guy behind this good delicious post from many moons ago.

Eubrick is one of the most funniest video game characters you'll ever meet. A retired "bastard", his stories and dialogue in DeathSpank are just too clever and funny. The whole game as a matter of fact is just brilliant - full of humour at all levels, clever jokes upon jokes, all done in a subtle, semi-serious way.

If you do play DeathSpank (and why aren't you?! it's available on Steam, 360, and PS3!) then make sure you meet Eubrick and talk to him about his younger life, especially about his "eternal youth" remedy :D

Coming soon....

an exciting and new addition to the computer family here at Good-Delicious HQ.

STAY TUNED!!

hello, hello, is there anybody in there?

just nod if you can hear me....

Just a quick hello/sorry for being blog-less for the last few weeks. I've started a new job in Cambridge, which means each day I travel 40 miles to work, and 40 miles back. Which means that each day I leave at 8 and get home at 7. Which means I'm too tired to do anything when I get home. Which means I haven't had much time to blog. Which doesn't mean there's nothing new though. Which means more later.

Which means stay tuned ;)

I'm at Jarre live!!

Quick blog to say am at the London O2 waiting for the master to come on live!

Got a good seat and got my merchandise already, so all set!

Been tweeting regularly from there, so keep an eye out on twitter.com/alialsawaf. You don't need to have a twitter account to see the tweets.

Excited!!

I launched the Apollo Project!

Yes! I won the latest Civilization V campaign by launching the Apollo Project!

This scientific victory is a bit gruelling effort - your empire has got to strike a fine balance between Science and Production. You'll need the science to research the technology required, and a hell of a lot of production to make the 5 components of the rocket itself.

All the time while thinking about your citizens' food, wellbeing, happiness, work etc etc.

And it's testament to the game's amazing design that someone as un-strategic as me can learn the game, play it, get very addicted to it, and even win it! Albeit on chieftan difficulty though :P

Just.One.More.Click.

Can't wait to play your Steam copy of Civilization 5?

EDIT: I get a lot of hits to this entry when any Steam game is released in the states, but not in Europe.

To clarify, this method will work with any Steam game that you've got preloaded, but not released yet - as long as it's released in the states.

Also, I've discovered from using this method many times, that you don't need to do anything to the VPN/Steam once in game. What happens is, the VPN will disconnect, and steam will automatically reconnect using your real IP address - hence you can just keep on playing :) Unfortunately, you'll still need to do the VPN trick each time you run the game. Until it's released officially, that is ;)

Well you've come to the right place!

Follow these simple instructions, and get your Civ Crack fix TODAY!

1\ Make sure you've preloaded Civ V, and that Steam is OFF

2\ Download this file (it's a free demo from VPN company usaip.eu)

3\ Double click the file. You will see a window like this:

4\ Choose any USA PPTP connection (I chose California), and click Connect

5\ For the username and password, use "demo" (without quotations)

6\ Once connected, run Steam and decrypt the game!

Important
The proxy isn't the fastest, be patient.

Once the game is running, the VPN isn't needed any more. This demo VPN autodisconnects after 7 minutes. Put Steam in offline mode, or alt-tab to disconnect the VPN manually.

Unfortunately, each time you want to play the game you have to connect to the VPN then run Steam, as it seems that it keeps checking your IP each time it runs. If you don't do this, you'll be greeted with the "this game is preloaded and ready to play when released" message.

Enjoy.

Attention to detail

We're back to playing Left4Dead 2. It's a game I've always enjoyed, but after finishing all the campaigns on realism, we didn't really get back to it much.

But now there's a whole bunch of fresh blood on the scene (read: new L4D2 players) so am back to playing it, and I'm glad I am. It really is a fun game, very well designed and the zombies/effects are great. Also, like Bad Company 2, the sound design is just superb.

Anyway, today we were trying (and failing) to get through The Passing, when I noticed this bruise on Rochelle's arm. It looked just........ right. Exactly as a bruise should look, this attention to detail (that probably won't be seen most of the time) is exactly what makes this game so immersive.

Brilliant stuff.

Light painting with the iPad

Don't ask, just watch.

Making Future Magic: iPad light painting from Dentsu London on Vimeo.

Eid Mubarak!

Yes, yes, Happy Eid to you all! It's time to start eating lots all day, instead of just eating lots in the evening.

Today's breakfast, courtesy of Kelly (and my day off) was a typical Arab affair: Basturma and eggs; cheese, tomatoes, cucumber, and mint; Rashi (Tahini if you like) and Dibis (Date syrup if you must). With LOTS of hot bread. Mmmmmmm.

Have a good, and most importantly safe, one!

This road will be closed

Damn diversion yesterday made my journey home from work 2 hours long (normally it's 40 minutes). Grrrr.

Here's why: the road I normally use (the A14) takes me directly from work to home. It's a national speed limit road (ie 70 MPH). Except this Friday, the direction I take to go back home was closed from 21:00 to 05:00.

Of course, that Friday was also the day I'm on call, and don't finish work till 22:00.

The road signs mentioned there would be a diversion, and indeed there was one. So I took the diversion exit and followed the signs and drove on.... and on..... and on..... and on.... through country lanes at maximum 50 MPH (due to lorries), through at least 12 villages at 30 MPH limit.

To make things worse, the diversion was taking me WAY PAST where I lived, up up and up and then down down and down another road. In other words, I drove up about 30 miles and drove back down that 30 miles on narrow country lanes. Picture a triangle with one arm "closed"... so to get from A to B I had to go all the way up to C, then all the way down to B.

By the time I got home at 23:00 I was grumpy, hungry, and tired. The Big Mac I'd sneaked in just before leaving work came in very handy.

Quick Question

You know when you're playing a game and you have X many lives left. Do you prefer it that:

a\ X = the total amount of lives left, including the one you're playing with. Meaning when X=1 and you die it's game over.

or

b\ X = the total amount of lives left in stock, ie excluding the one you're playing with. Meaning when X = 0 and you die, it's game over.

I personally much, strongly, positively prefer the scenario B. In fact, scenario A just down right annoys me.

Super Mario Galaxy 2 star count at 97!

(twitter is down)

"my drawer"

I recently bought a new desk. My 10 year old classic was just too small - way too small in fact, still I had a love relationship with it (my first desk in the UK!) and it's travelled with me far and wide.

Anyway, my current desk is a nice big office desk, with cable management holes and lots of space for everything. It also has 3 drawers, and the most important thing ever: MY DRAWER.

Yes, my drawer. Our hobby (PCs? Games? Technology? Gadgets?) is messy. There's lots of odd bits and pieces, lots of fittings and adaptors and cables and tools and stuff that just don't go anywhere else. There's that 2nd favourite mouse, the extra headset you might use, the keys that came with your case etc etc, all little things that need to go somewhere right?

There's also the screws and screwdrivers, the joypads and the screen wipes, the glasses wipes and so many other things you just have to have near by to you, at arm's reach.

The best thing about "my drawer" is that it should never, ever be tidy. If it is tidy, it's not "my drawer" any more, and someone else has been in it and tidied up (a BIG no no). It has to be haphazard, with a cable here, a pen there, a screw here etc. Yet, I can tell you blind-folded exactly where everything is. Ask me about something and I'll just put my hand in my drawer and take it out without even looking.

We've all had that moment - you subconsciously knew that 6 years ago a video card you bought have a VGA2VGA extender. You put it away in your "my drawer" and "forgot" about it - not exactly forgot but filed it away under "could be useful later". This "useful later" moment comes after 6 years, and you know you own it, and you know it's in your drawer. You look and look and, initially, a small sense of panic comes along "Where did I put this? Surely it's in here somewhere? If it isn't, have I started putting stuff away "randomly"?"

Then you find said item - safe and sound in your "my drawer" and instantly a sense of calm, elation, and relief comes over you - a little reminder that you, and only you know what's inside "my drawer" and remember every little thing there. You also get that even better feeling of knowing that one day, that silly little cable that you put away all those years ago did come in useful.

So, what's your "my drawer"? Where is it and is it messy, or tidy and organised. And if you don't have one-liar.

How to watch TV, Adam style

Notice what's on telly....... money. He's got his eye on it already. Dear me.

Before Buyer's Remorse Kicks In

Let me quickly blog (happily) about what I just purchased. I have to explain/justify that, as usual, this whole chain started with me looking for a new headset for my PC.

1\ Sennheiser PC360 G4ME headsets: I currently use a PC161, and @anmarmansur loves and recommends his 350s, but I like open back cans (I prefer the soundstage) hence I didn't want the 350s. These new 360s are the 350s but open back.

2\ Razer Mako 2.1: YES, STEREO and not surround speakers! why you ask? Well ever since moving to our house the surround speakers (ie the side and rear ones) have been nothing more than dust collectors on the floor. The cables are in the way (particularly with Adam) and almost all surround gaming I do on the PC is via headphones (hence the new cans). The Razers are co-designed with THX and include a headphone amp and look gorgeous. The reviews all concur that they're the best 2.1 bookshelf speakers.

The creatives are also 5 years old and have gone through at least 3 house moves - they need to retire.

Perhaps when there's no babies crawling around I can reinvest in surround.

3\ Asus Xonar Essence STX - perhaps the stupidest thing of all. Said to be the pinnacle for stereo/headphone cards. With features galore, including the all-essential Dolby Headphone (for games) and even an EAX emulator (though I can't remember the last time I used EAX - ever since vista hardware legacy sound has dwindled). I am a little apprehensive about this, because I game as much as I listen to music on the PC (don't watch many movies on it) so proper headphone surround is crucial here.

We'll find out tomorrow.

Adam meets a tub of Sudocrem

Sudocrem = nappy rash stuff. He was literally alone with it for about 10 seconds :|

Night 7 - 09:25

And it's all done! Here's a picture of my 6 year-old air freshener :)

Night 6 - 05:25

Introducing the dreaded "150 bleep". Pronounced one-fifty. It's what I carry with me all shift long. I hate it :/

Night 5 - 05:50

I played some FIXPIX on the iPhone and this was one of them. I thought it was cool.

Night 4 - 04:30

This is what "greets" children coming out of their ward, poor bastards.

Now now kids!

I was messing about with Incredibooth this morning (recommended if you have an iPhone 4 and remember the days of the photobooth!) so decided to get Kelly and Adam together for one of those silly photobooth things that kids love!

Well, kids of the 70s and 80s used to love. Have a look at these 00s kids:

1) yaaaaaaaaawwwwwwwwnnnnnnn. OMG WTF are they up to?

2) eeeeeeeeeewwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww. Is that mum's tongue? GROSS!

3) LAME! Now it's both of them sticking their tongues out. I'm looking away..

4) F*** this, looks like they're never gonna stop. Imma outta here.

Night 3 - 06:25

The rip off keyboard. Meant to be hygienic and "safe". Said to cost mucho dinaros :/

Night 2

02:05 - mmmmmmmmmm! Everything tastes better at night!

Night 1

00:15 - is this thing working? Is this bad?

Oh shit........

Two Box Solution

I recently realised something - almost all the wireless devices in this house are Apple. The only other wireless ones are the Wii and the 360, and the PSP/NDS. The PS3 is wired so I can stream 1080p files smoothly.

Which led me to realise something else - all the wireless router/adsl modem devices I've tried aren't very good with Apple products. I've always suffered connection drops or slow speeds or what have you.

Which made me realise something else - why don't I invest in an Apple router. This was something I had categorically refused in the past, because of the higher price of their products, especially seeing that you can get a wireless router/adsl modem solution in one box for half the price.

But I did some research, mainly on non-apple websites (to avoid Apple Fanboi Bias) and it turns out the Apple AirPort Base Extreme is one hell of a capable router, especially as it broadcasts a dual network signal, hence making it compatible with older and newer devices. The only problem was that it's a pure router, ie it has no modem function.

This would be a two-box solution, ie one device as a modem, and the AirPort as a router. I bit the bullet (well, my bank account did) and ordered one.

When it arrived, I briefly smiled at the Apple aesthetic of it (white box, one light, no power on switch, just simple!) and then set about connecting it to my current router/modem (Netgear MIMO). The idea was that the Netgear acts as a modem only, while the AirPort does the routing.

Except that just wouldn't happen (of course). The AirPort told me from the start that there was a router between it and the net, and it can act just a bridge, ie just as a WiFi access point with all the routing done by the Netgear. Try as I might, I just couldn't get the Netgear to NOT route, and just act as a modem. While functional, this bridged solution wasn't idea.

SO - this lead me to another thing: a search for an ADSL modem. I looked around and ended up finding a Draytek Vigor 120. This simple (and small!) device does nothing other than being a modem. It has no router or NAT functions, and has only one ethernet port to connect one device.

The best thing about the Vigor 120 though, is that it acts as a "converter" of PPPoA (ie my ADSL connection) to PPPoE. This latter protocol works magic with the AirPort. Draytek even go as far as to say that if you have standard UK ADSL (ie not O2 or Be LLU), you won't even need to configure the Vigor. Just plug it in to your phone cable, connect your router to the Ethernet port, and then set up the router and you're done.

It is this part that amused me most. For all this time I've had ADSL (10 years), the modem as always been the device that requires the ISP details (user/pass etc). What the Vigor was doing was passing on the ADSL connection (and IP address) unaltered to the router, albeit in a PPPoE standard.

SO - I ordered the Vigor 120. It arrived, and to test their claims I just did the following:

1\ Connect Vigor 120 to ADSL line, power cable, and Ethernet to the AirPort base.

2\ Turned on Vigor 120

3\ Ran the AirPort setup utility, and configured it to connect via PPPoE

4\ Entered my ISP username/password IN THE ROUTER, not the modem

Within 2 seconds the all-encompassing status light on the AirPort turned a steady green, meaning all was ok.

And all was ok! I had a rock solid internet connection, a strong wifi signal all over the house, and all the routing done by one device. I have tested around the house, in the garden etc and signal has been fantastic. One interesting thing I noted wit the iPad and iPhone is that sometimes in the weaker areas the signal drops and then magically becomes full. I have a feeling the devices are automatically switching to the stronger frequency network. It's something quite nice and useful, and has yet to disrupt anything.

As an added bonus, the Vigor is syncing at 1mbit more than the Netgear!

So, know I'm kind of converted to two-box solutions. I guess it's the age old mantra of having one device do something VERY good, rather than one that does two things OK. The combination of a dedicated modem and new router with dualband networks has really stabilised the network throughout the house.

It's a solution that I'd only recommend to geeks, or technophiles. For my family and friends I'd just tell them to use the router the ISP gives them, or get the DLINK or Netgear they can afford. For me and you however, I'd strongly recommend you ditch the crappy modem/router and get yourself some proper dedicated hardware instead ;)

How Nintendo will advertise the 3DS

In case you missed it (where you been?!) - Nintendo demoed their latest handheld, the Nintendo 3DS at e3 this year.

The dual-screen device is like a more powerful DS, but with the added bonus of "glasses-free" 3D on the top screen!

Don't ask me how this voodoo works, but people who have used it are amazed at what Ninty have achieved! Problem is, screenshots can't show the effect, nor can videos!

This has given rise to the question - how can Nintendo advertise the platform? Will showing 2D images be enough? People might just think it's another DS (bigger, lighter) rather than a whole new platform.

Here's what I think they'll do - I think they'll do the same thing they did with the Wii, well before we even knew what it looked like. They showed videos of people playing with the wiimote, and the sounds coming from the game, but not the game itself, nor the device itself!

That way, all you saw were some genuinely impressed people experiencing this new device, without actually seeing it! You would see a woman pretending to chop vegetables with her wiimot, and you'd hear the sounds, just not see the game. A man playing tennis or golf, a boy swinging a sword, and so on.

It sound stupid but it worked, and it worked very well - whisking up a frenzy of hype for the Wii.

And I bet that's what they'll do here - show some "normal" and "core" people's reactions to playing on the 3DS - couple that with demo units in stores, and you've got yourself the best hype machine there ever is - the general public.

Remember, you read this here first!

too much to talk about

I hate having not blogged for so long - and I'm sorry. It's just a combination of too little time, too much to do.

And I still blame twitter. It's much easier to tweet a 140 character update, than it is to blog :P

But there's so much I want to talk about - mainly the iPad and the iPhone 4, and the amazing Wii game BIT.TRIP: RUNNER.

Unfortunately, this isn't the time :p consider this a teaser ;)

Doom 2's secret weapon!

And to think we've wasted so many hours playing Doom II, and we hadn't found this secret weapon out! And it pisses all over the BFG!

Amazing. Makes me want to play Doom 2 deathmatch all over again!

Test iPad blog

Quick test using blogpress on the iPad.

Lots to talk about. Soon, promise!

In the meantime, here's a picture I made earlier.

Happy Birthday Adam Alsawaf!

The little bugger is a big ONE year old today!

Soon, he'll be smoking and pretending that it was his friends that smoked, and he's as innocent as can be....

Pac Man is 30!

Happy birthday from Good Delicious to the awesome Pac Man, who celebrates his 30th birthday today!

I'm of the generation of 80s kids who grew up with Pacman EVERYWHERE around them - TV, cartoons, magazines, games, lunch boxes, bed sheets, EVERYTHING.

And we still love him just as much!

Also - make sure you check today's Google Doodle for a fantastic Pac Man treat!

Lost Planet 2 - The Trailer of Trailers

I didn't really like the first Lost Planet (360 version). Loved it initially, played quite a bit but then the mech sequences were just too...... boring. And clunky.

Doesn't look like I'll be playing Lost Planet 2 either, even though it promises to be an awesome coop game. Perhaps (if) when it's out on PC.

Still, that doesn't stop your favourite blog from posting about the game, especially when capcom have come up with a trailer that is JUST AWESOME. AWESOME I TELLS YA!!!

Watch it here

AVATAR

We watched AVATAR again tonight, the film everyone's heard about.

Watching it again reminded me of how fantastically visionary and advanced the film is. Mixing cutting-edge technology/computer wizardry with live action filming to create a very believable world, Pandora, with its natives, the Na'vi.

Amazingly, the computer cluster needed to render the film (which is from the same company that rendered Middle Earth for us) is made out of 34 racks: each rack has 32 machines, 40,000 processors, and 104 terabytes of memory.

Even more mind-blowing, the final film footage takes up 17.28 GIGABYTE PER MINUTE of storage. Remarkable, once you consider that the film is 166 minutes!

Best thing is that James Cameron (the director) is a gamer, and his gaming inspired this film the most. The gaming inspirations are to be seen everywhere - from the title of the film, to the main character's alter-ego, to the world of Pandora and it's creatures and habits, it's like watching an amazing video game come to life.

Superb. Watch it, love it.

So THAT'S why Bill wasn't there!

Courtesy of Nerf NOW!!

Like Father, Like Son

ilomilo

Southend Interactive, creator of the aweome R-Type Dimensions on XBLA, have released a trailer of their adorable puzzle/platformer (best. game. genre. ever!) Ilomilo.

Ilo and Milo work together in the game to solve puzzle, and traverse platforms, obviously..

Beautiful.

OCZ Vertex boot speeds

Fuck me, 24 seconds to load windows (desktop appears and usable), another 11 seconds to finish loading all background apps/anti virus and so on.

Here's a video

OCZ Vertex LE

As Wolf (semi)correctly guessed, my small update is an SSD. An OCZ Vertex 100gb LE SSD to be precise. As I'm sure you all know, they come in 2.5" form-factor ;)

First impressions - small, very light. Is this thing REALLY a drive that can take 100gb of data?
Installed it two days ago but a combination of sleep/long working hours (again) prevent me from testing properly.

But. OH. MY. GOD. The speed is OUT OF THIS WORLD. The time it takes windows to boot to desktop is about 12 seconds, everything responds BLAZINGLY FAST. One odd thing is that you don't hear it working (obviously) so that normal (and sometimes comforting) sound we're all used to of a hard drive churning away to run your application is now history. You just have to get used to very silent and lightning fast performance.

More later (am at work still) - but next post I'll tell you about how I was trying to save myself time installing it, but as Murphy's Law dictates, that cost me more time and effort and I ended up just installing windows fresh on the drive.

Stay tuned!

Small PC update

A small (2.5? :p) PC update is making its way to the good delicious
towers as we speak.

Stay tuned ;)

Hell - The Game!

Remember the excellent Hell comic? Well some clever bud has turned it in to a flash game.

Good luck!

A new kinda drum?

It all ended in tears, by the way :)

Hell

From the brilliant xkcd.

Pixels - the most beautiful short film you'll ever see

So what would happen if the end of the world means that the pixels we so love (and hate) jump out and obliterate us? Find out in this AMAZING short film by onemoreprod and Patrick Jean.

PIXELS by PATRICK JEAN.
Uploaded by onemoreprod. - Watch original web videos.

Flickering in Battlefield Bad Company 2?

Got the PC version of BFBC2?

Got some ATI cards in CrossfireX?

Suffering from flickering or horizontal lines when you play the game?

Well your lucky day has come! Just download this 500kb fix here, and enjoy the game as it was meant to be!

Now What?

The Deathadder has landed!

Thanks to @anmarmansur, and the USPS service, my left-handed Razer Deathadder is now with me!

First impressions are: WOW, so that's what you bastard right-handers have been enjoying for years.

More impressions later, but for now am trying to get used to "proper" leftie mouse settings, ie reversed left/right mouse button clicks (remember?)

Assassin's Creed II

Just a quick note - if you, like me, hated the first Assassin' Creed and got fed up with it's repetition and the same old "survey area, do side mission, kill target, rinse and repeat" mechanic, then I urge you; nay, beg you, to play Assassin's Creed II.

It's like the Assassin's Creed that was made to please us lot - the guys that hated the first one.

I can't say much more without spoiling it, but Ubisoft have really redesigned the game to a much better standard.

Oh, and while I'm at it - I played the Splinter Cell: Conviction demo the other day, the 5th in the Splinter Cell series. This one's been delayed/in the making for 4 years. Again, Ubi have done a great job at reinvigorating the stealth genre, and this game is nothing short of FANTASTIC.

Play both and support Ubi, one of the most prolific devs these days.

Adam tries Tomato Juice

Dante's Inferno GLITCH

Damn damn damn!

I was very close to the end of Dante's Inferno (PS3) version, when I encountered a glitch that has rendered my game USELESS.

In Woods Of The Suicide (Violence Circle), there's a clearing where you're meant to find a big throbbing heart, and you get ambushed by many baddies. Problem is, this doesn't happen for me :(

I went round and round in circles, I reinstalled the game, I reloaded the save (perhaps stupidly I was using a single save file) and NOTHING.

Problem is, you can't go anywhere without this section because what SHOULD happen is you kill the big heart thing and the path opens up. Instead, I'm staring at an empty clearing and a path that's blocked and useless.

Fuck it - I'm gonna count it as clocked.

Left-handed PC gamers REJOICE!

At long eff-ing last!

Razer, long-time maker of mostly hand-neutral gaming mice, have finally (FINALLY!) got together a left-handed ergonomic gaming mouse!

They have re-engineered perhaps their most famous creation, the Deathadder, as a left-handed ergonomic mouse.

The calls of left-handed PC gamers (me included) can be heard all over the internet - traditionally, we've had to settle for more inferior solutions, mainly mice that are neither left nor right handed. I for one use Microsoft's most basic Sidewinder (the X3), because it is their only one that is neutral to both hands.

Razer have tended to make most of their mice like that, but the Deathadder (and a their main top range ones) are right-handed only.

It's great too see that they've catered for the market at last - there's a huge gap and hopefully more companies will follow Razer's assured success.

THANK YOU RAZER! for making this left-handed PC gamer, a very happy one!