The latest news from Strife Strips en-gb 10/03/2010 11:05:15 60 --> The end of Strife Strips!? Well kinda, to save money hosting this website on an expensive interwebs server powered by the latest SCSI hard drives, bleeding edge optical CPUs and gold plated CAT5 cables I'm moving it a little closer to home. Strife Strips will now be at http://strife.selfip.com/ Although it's really going to be an archive more than anything. There's so many years of memories and hard work that have gone into this, I can't let me it. However my website efforts will be directed at http://bridger.homeserver.com/blog . So if you get a kick out of reading my thoughts while shaking your head and waving your fist at the screen. You can now respond with comments! How very web 2.0 :) See you on the blog! Mav http://www.strifestrips.com/NewsView.aspx?nid=111 27/02/2010 00:00:00 111 The workers control the means of production SCE Studio Cambridge has done a great job with the PSP version of LittleBigPlanet . Before this game got shoved through my letterbox my PSP was just sitting around looking attractive and attracting dust. What impresses me most about the game is that it *feels* like playing LittleBigPlanet on the mightly PS3 super-computer device. Back when the centre of my digital world was my beautiful GameGear I waited months and months for a port of Robocod (AKA James Pond 2) to come out. I'd played it on my mates Mega Drive and was blown away by the vivid colours, zingy music and the general wackyness of it all. When it did come out I did enjoy it, but if lost some of the magic in the transition. Don't get me wrong is was a good conversion, but something got stripped away when they shaved away from 16 bits to 8. Which is why I'm all the more impressed by the job done own LBP PSP which captures the feel of the original! ZZT What really sets LBP apart it's the built in editing and sharing system for levels. More games offer built in editors these days, but that's not enough. Operation Flashpoint 2 has got a built in editor, but it's still an armed conflict simulator. It's like trying to come up with a new game by re-using a chess board and pieces, but just changing the starting positions. The first game to really allow people to change the rules was ZZT which was created back in 1991 by Tim Sweeney who went on to create Unreal and friends. You see the tools provided in ZZT let people truely create their own games, with their own themes, storylines and little machine-like devices. One of the best of breed user created games was Code Red created by Gregory Janson who pushed ZZT to it's limits. There's much more to this story and a whole community to explore, which I really recommend looking into if you're a fan of the classics :) LBP continues the legacy of ZZT by being more than a simple level editor, but a device to creating experiences that are about to make the player think "Wow, how'd they make that happen?" Mav http://www.strifestrips.com/NewsView.aspx?nid=109 28/11/2009 00:00:00 109 More time = more creativity It's going to depend on your age to how much you can relate to this, but when I was at school PC games were a rare resource. The lucky ones among use had a PC at home, normally because our Dads used it be boring work stuff (Spreadsheets, word processing etc..) - you know, the type of thing we use them for now :) So we had the hardware, but what about the gameage? Being a kid at school our incomes were limited, so when someone actually bought a game it got pirated like the plague. Disks swapped hands and were taken home for the holy ritual of churning out copies. Of course back then printers were pretty expensive to run (nothing much has changed I guess) so the easiest option was to churn out some quality home designed labels to crown the illegal achievement! I recently found a whole bunch of my own illegal labels from back in the day. Before sending them to the real-life recycle bin I captured their souls on digital film - not much point keeping the disks themselves any more, the data on them has most likely degraded anyway. I guess kids at school now don't need to swap disks, they just Tweet about a Bit Torrent feed for CoD . I prefer the illegal activities of my day :) Mav http://www.strifestrips.com/NewsView.aspx?nid=108 22/11/2009 00:00:00 108 Internet? You changed man... I can't remember exactly when I wrote the HTML and server-side code for the current incantation of this website, although I'm sure you can figure it out if you wanted to. But just looking at the source shows too many tables for the web of today! Since I last seriously changed this website YouTube, Flickr and other such content hosting and sharing websites have come along. The websites of today either link to existing content on other blogs/YouTube/Flickr of they create content which other website then link too. A jQuery? A few weeks back I had a sudden web urge to revamp this website and started to put together a fancy new front page with crazy jQuery effects kicking off and links to all the cRaZy web 2.0 social media and content sharing websites... but after I'd quelled the urge the result wasn't enough to upload and use. Although I don't actively bake and share lots of tasty content like I did back in the day I can't bring myself to stop paying for the hosting here as it doesn't seem right to condemn this site to digital oblivion. Windows Prime I've had Vista on my laptop (and my wife's) for several years now. It gets a bad press, but thanks to an ever present stream of updates I can't say I've had any real reason to moan about it. So even with all the positive cooing around the Win7 previews I didn't see the point in upgrading from Vista. In the end someone sent me a link to a very cheap pre-order from Tesco and my inner geek forked out. Back in the present I'm typing this on my FTW7 laptop and... it seems nice. Certainly the edges have been sanded down more and there are nice little tucks and tweaks. Tools for the people! I used to be such a geek I wouldn't use WinZip because I felt more powerful typing pkunzip keen1.zip c:\games\keen\ (It did feel nice to type that again!) . I used to also feel like crying when I saw people wasting the potential of their 486 , when I knew if I had one I'd be geeking out to the max! I've come to realise that computers are just tools, to be used by people to get stuff done. Sure it used to be fun playing with the new themes in Windows 95 Plus, but now computers (with the add of the Internets) can actually do something useful for most people. Who cares about how many clock cycles are being thrown around, go and enjoy the view . Mav http://www.strifestrips.com/NewsView.aspx?nid=107 24/10/2009 00:00:00 107 Flash is dieing, Silverlight is DOA I'm looking forward to this September when I'll be heading down to the windy seafront of Brighton to join hundreds of other Flash developers to discuss all things vector and ActionScript. It's a fantastically mind expanding and a creatively re-charging experience!...Also I think it won't exist in five years. How's that for a strong statement? A little over the top as I think it'll still be around, but Flash will be reduced to a side attraction. I say this as someone who's worked with Flash since version 6 in 2002, which to a fair proportion makes me as late joiner. I've used Flash for many projects over the years because there's never been any other choice, Flash was a consistant and unchanging constant in the standards averse world of web browsers. However these days things have changed alot: * JavaScript is much more standardised and worn in * Google have come to the party with Chrome (& soon Chrome OS) * Firebug practially makes Firefox into an IDE with a debugger * HTML 5 (Video support and others) * jQuery jQuery is the pretty little box that ties up the rest of those enhancements. It's now quicker and cheaper to create many of the same interactive applications that tradtionally required Flash in a standard web browser. Let's put it another way, Google Maps, Gmail and pretty much any other Google web application you can name is created in JavaScript. Flash was the sticky tape that used to hold the web together, but it's now grown up enough that we can get rid of it. Predictions! Silverlight: I think it'll stick around another few version, but in the end Microsoft will be crushed by support for HTML 5 features that make sure of it's abilities redundent. Flash: Adobe won't let this one go without a fight and I think it'll be a long slow drawn out death. When YouTube (owned by Google) introduces HTML 5 videos, rather than solely Flash it will signal the beginning of the end. After this is will slowly drop out of use apart from a few heavily animated fringe cases. Mav http://www.strifestrips.com/NewsView.aspx?nid=106 03/08/2009 00:00:00 106 What's up? I've had decent (i.e. Non-Geocities) web presence now for over a decade and while my desire to spend my free time creating content for a spattering of people I've never met has lessened, I still make my living from the internet - so we're still good friends :) I'd like to think I'll do something with this site, but I'm not sure what... At the moment I'm enjoying retro sites like http://www.iimusic.net/ , http://www.offworld.com/ and http://www.infinitelives.net/ but I don't have the time or contacts to maintain that kind of blog. If you're any ideas, thoughts or other noises in your head of the website, hit me up at maverickuk@gmail.com At it's peek this website was because of it's forum, because of it's community. I provided a meeting place, but it was everyone else who brought the colour and life here . Once the forums started to dry up, that was the beginning of the end. It would be great to revive the forums, but the original Strifers have now moved on with their lives and they'd need to be major event to bring back the crowds here. Glastonbury 2009 At work we recently finished and published our new Glastonbury police website. I've very proud of what our team managed to put together in a few short days , it's a very nice looking and functional website! Most of the content is taken over from the one it replaced, but we've come up with a brand new design, written it to be much more DIVy than it was, slapped in jQuery and AJAX everywhere we could think of and even included the konami code ;) My personal high point is that I've written the back-end to tie into a life weather feed from Glastonbury, so the weather on the site changes as the sky gods alter the heavens over the festival. It also changes the design at different times of the day, thanks to some dynamically generated images and stylesheets. Finally the header image of the stage will change depending on what stage the festivial is at. Crypto cool Baby July 2nd is the due date for my first child - it's amazing how quickly a pregancy flys by and you're at the other end waiting for it to all kick off. I've enjoyed the personal freedoms earning a wage has given me and living in my own house with my wife. However as the years have gone by I've felt like something is missing. Watching Sky movies and chipping away at the morgage each month is nice, but life can offer so much more. I know I'm going to be more tired and poorer but I also know I feel much more satisfied with my lot in life :) Mav http://www.strifestrips.com/NewsView.aspx?nid=105 21/06/2009 00:00:00 105 2009 predictions For the past few years I've made some predictions about where I think technology will be heading, so who am I to argue with tradition :) But first let's review my predictions for 2008 that I made in Dec 2007. 2008 review 2008: Desktop down, internet up The end of the desktop era is approaching as most applications and tools move to online versions. We're moving towards a time where an internet connection and a web browser can give you access to most the tools and applications you need. I've just ordered an Eee PC which I'm really excited to be getting my hands on, as it's ultra portable (weighs less than a kilogram) but with wireless built in it has access to everything I need. Google have continued to improve their web apps and have now released Google Chrome with industry leading JavaScript performance. To me this really shows that the internet will continue to be the battlefield the next generation of applications will play out in. 2008: Solid state Moving parts are bad news in electronics and platter based hard drives are starting their decline. Solid state memory is now taking over portable music devices and is starting to make its way into high end notebooks. As time goes on it will slowly push out motorised hard drives just as LCD monitor did to CRTs. I thought solid state would have made more progress than it has, but it's still only a matter of time before it hits critical mass and kills traditional spinning hard drives. 2008: Digital delivery With fast and common internet connections digital delivery of movies, games and other media is becoming more popular. This trend will only continue as it becomes more convient to get instant access to content than it is to buy a box with it in. Valve's Steam continues to lead the pack and was recently bulked up by the addition of EA titles. After a firmware upgrade the PSP can now also download games and other content, joining the 360, PS3 and Wii. and now onto some fresh new predictions for the year ahead! 2009 predictions 2009: Large companies, low risks With a global recession either here or coming it's going to wash away many of the smaller companies and with them much of the innovation which traditionally comes from them. The larger companies will be safer in the storms, but will cut away much of the excess spending that the more fantastical R&D brings. In summary, I don't expect that we'll see another iPhone this year. 2009: Browser wars - Part 2 Recently at work I've been heavily involved in a web project that makes heavy use of JavaScript, AJAX, DHTML and the other such buzzwords. Working on such a forward looking web app has highlighted to me where the web is going and how far IE currently lags behind Firefox and Chrome on the road to that future. Microsoft are hedging their bets as to the future of the PC, but there are certainly making sure they've got a solid foot into the browser market for 2009. 2009: Portable devices This has already happened really, but the trend will continue. Mobile phones, iPods, GPS and netbooks will all continue to thrive as people demand small portable devices that are good at their particular speciality. As the iPhone has shown the best user interface to have is close to none. By using natural gestures and real world concepts to be simulated by the computer interface it allows the wider world to accept such devices into their lives. Mav http://www.strifestrips.com/NewsView.aspx?nid=104 28/12/2008 00:00:00 104 Pandora: A revolution in portable gaming Portable gaming has always held a special place in my heart, there's a certain magic to it which TV bound consoles don't have. I guess a lot of it comes from when I was younger I didn't have my own TV, so when I used a console it had to be when nobody was using the TV in the living room. But when I got my Gamegear I could suddenly play games whenever and where ever I wanted to! (As long as there was a main plug, or 6 AA batterys). A few years ago I heard about the GP2X in a copy of EDGE magazine. They were advertising a portable gaming device powered by two AA batterys that ran Linux and thus had a world of emulators and applications ready to run after a few modifications. I bought one and loved it so much I even wrote a feature here about it. But as enjoyable as it was to play many of the classics again, the GP2X suffered from a numbers of flaws. For me the killer one was the controls, trying to map emulators to run on a console with a limited number of inputs is a challenge. The UK supplier of the GP2X had been on the scene a down time, starting from back when the Amiga was out. He'd seen how popular the GP2X was an wanted to work with it's Korean creators to ensure a follow up would be everythings the fans wanted. Unfortunately there's a bit of a culture divide over many of the ideas CraigX put forwards. To cut a long story short(er) CraigX and a group of other like minded people have spent the last few years creating the Pandora which is a handheld console designed around the needs of the community. Rather than re-word what someone else has spent more time than me writing, here's something ripped from the offical website: Features * ARM® Cortex™-A8 600Mhz+ CPU running Linux * 430-MHz TMS320C64x+™ DSP Core * PowerVR SGX OpenGL 2.0 ES compliant 3D hardware * 800x480 4.3" 16.7 million colours touchscreen LCD * Wifi 802.11b/g, Bluetooth & High Speed USB 2.0 Host * Dual SDHC card slots & SVideo TV output * Dual Analogue and Digital gaming controls * 43 button QWERTY and numeric keypad * Around 10+ Hours battery life Links www.openpandora.org | Pandora forums Mav http://www.strifestrips.com/NewsView.aspx?nid=103 09/10/2008 00:00:00 103 The future of the PC It's always had a strange position in the world of electronics - back in the early days it killed off the micro and mini class comuters. More recently it's pushed its way into the server market, so that an x86 architechture is the dominent way throughout the world. But in the world of gaming the PC is rapidly falling out of favour - in 2007 console gaming surged forward 75%. The reasons are easy enough to spot: * You can buy an XBox 360 for £150 (and then a copy of GTA IV!) Where as a PC will cost more and is a more complex purchase requiring knowledge of PC parts or the willingness to pay a company to have pre-constructed a PC for you. * Large High-Def TVs are cheaper than ever Games look better on a huge 40" screen rather than a 20" monitor - also in the living room a console can take advantage of any fancy 5.1 sound systems that may be installed * All consoles have internet connectivity This is a big one, something that used to give PCs a big advantage - now you can easily downloads demos and play with your mates online * The PC has lost its genre dominance You could say Goldeneye brought the FPS to the console, but Halo and CoD 4 really proved that you no longer required a PC for the genre. More recently Command & Conquer and LotR showed that RTS games are also console friendly. * War: Sony VS Microsoft Millions and millions of pounds have been spent on either side developing the best gaming platforms ever. They spent a fortune making very powerful machines that are designed to get a lot cheaper of time. PCs by their very nature are too open to benefit so directly and quickly from similar situations. So where does that leave the PC? This is where these discussions always end up, trying to decide if it's time for the PC to step aside to let internet connected fridges and other gadgets take over - except that can't happen. If you look at all the consumer gadgets in the world today, most of them owe their existance to the PC. All current generation console hardware is a direct evolution from technology designed for PCs. The iPhone and Windows Mobie based phones are also spin-offs from PC and Mac developments, both in term of hardware and software. The PC market is such a changable and constantly evoluting beast it will always be around in some form because it always for new possibilities to be explored and areas of technology to be created. By it's very nature the PC will always leave behind it a wake of technology that other devices will be developed from. Like the gaming console some of these will appear to threaten the PC, but in the end without the PC they could not exist. The PC can't die, but it will sometimes have to step aside to let it's talented children shine. Mav http://www.strifestrips.com/NewsView.aspx?nid=102 18/05/2008 00:00:00 102 A life time of computers It seems to be human nature to extrapolate unlikely future scenarios based upon things continuing the way they are at the moment. Take for instance the Terminator films, where technology gets so advanced it starts to think and then turns against humans. The problem with this type of thinking is the way we see things working today, just doesn't scale like that. I once thought computers would keep on going, getting better, faster and one day reaching that future dream. But in reality it seems IT has hit a glass ceiling , or at least entered a different era. You can now buy cheap laptops running Windows XP with a wireless internet connection. Then through the internet you can access free software and up to date information about virtually anything. Where do computers go from here? Speech recognition taking over from a keyboard and mouse, unlikely. PCs getting uber powerful? Most computers have enough power to do everything people need now - so this isn't the singular market force driving innovation. I've worked in the development of some form of software most of my professional life. The overall trend I can see is putting more of the grunt work on the computer, requiring the developer to do less coding or similar work. This typically means a less efficient piece of software, but we're at the stage were processing power isn't an issue. So the developer is being more of an architect , rather than a brick layer. Take for instance Adobe Flash: There are far faster development environments, but with Flash it'll work on any computer and is one of the faster and easier ways to create things. At the same time we seem to be reaching the limits of the way we interact with computers. Our interface may be more web based now, but most of the developments in the last decade have refined the GUI concept rather than re-written it. Computers have become a ubiquitous tool used for business and entertainment, but it appears for the immediate future at least, this is the extent of their purpose. Oh and by the way, I am now President of Mogulville :) Mav http://www.strifestrips.com/NewsView.aspx?nid=101 16/03/2008 00:00:00 101