The Automatic. English Indie Band.

Ok, so they might be Welsh. But who cares, these guys rock. They have a good sound, they let you preview their tracks, they um... have a forum on their website?

Seriously though, do yourself a favour and listen to these dudes. Especially if you like bands from the UK or Australia, like Gyroscope. They have a similar sounding accent, but their songs are cooler IMHO.

Go now! Listen!




... You're not listening... LISTEN DAMMIT!

Thank you! :)

Our childhood dreams pave our futures

Some of you probably have heard about the big whooping dome they want to build over Houston. Just search on Google for "Houston dome project" and you'll find many links on this ambitious idea.

A rundown for the unacquainted is that they basically want to build a big geodesic dome over the U.S. city of Houston, which has gotten some positive coverage from the Discovery Channel's website. Now, why on EARTH would you want to build a big friggin dome over such a large city? Well, basically it's to do the same thing a Greenhouse does for plants but for people: condition the habitat for its occupants (in this case vegetables, including the special variant known as couch potatoes). It uses a material that allows UV rays to come through and thus allow plant growth, and the dome would be able to open up certain panels for ventilation et cetera. Overall it's a nice plan if you find a way to convince everyone to drive electric cars and figure out a way for the local new chopper to get it.

So sounds like a nice, futuristic idea, bringing the days depicted in science fiction one step closer. But this isn't the first example of human ingenuity reflecting themes and ideas brought about in science fiction. This makes me ask - are our fantastical ideas of the future as children or in the books we read or movies we see influencing our innovations of tomorrow? It certainly seems so. Of course, some things don't work out - building the tripods from War of the Worlds would be foolish as we A. don't have any murderous martians to put into them, and B. 3 legged transport is inefficient. Anyone who has watched Gundam would know 2 legged transport is the way of the future ;)

So if we really are making our future reflect what we think it should be like, how can we use this to make things better? Could this be used to implement perfect utopia? Could we have human-like AI controlled robots running around as bonafide members of society? And how come certain things (like city-wide domes and robot puppies) are worked on while other grand ideas like socks that never wear out that can be worn as shoes (not quite like this) or holographic HUD sunnies never quite grab attention?

Either way, the future looks very interesting, and given the trend so far, I think we can expect our lower-level dreams of the future to come to fruition soon. At least in Houston :)

Update: This is more what I meant by socks that double as shoes, but with a much less obvious sole (preferably none, but that's thinking a bit TOO big) and with a much longer neck/cuff/whatever the hell you call the long part of a knee high sock. Oh and a single colour, like long white school or sports socks. Now that'd be cool. You can probably guess that I hate wearing shoes.

A can of LOL.

The other day I drunk a whole can of LOL.

No, I wasn't in hysteria. LOL is a new kind of carbonated fruit juice (a whole 99% fruit juice! ZOMG@!!!!!@#!@!!!!!ONEW!!!! - altho 1%'s all you need to still something toxic in).
It's made by Golden Grove in Australia (maybe elsewhere too, I don't know nor care) and it, well, doesn't really taste all that awesome. It's not bad, it's just not good. Although it feels like you're drinking a UDL or Red Bear mixed vodka drink. I swear that remaining 1% not-fruit-juice is vodka.

I find this funny though, as this comes after the iSnack 2.0 debacle where people got emotional over naming a new vegemite product something so crud. But then that makes me ask - Why are you so emotional over something that looks like they put tar or crude oil in a jar and marketed it as spread for your toast?! Seriously, it's as if the Queen has gone an' knighted George W. Bush Jr and revived the East India Company and put him in charge!  Although that would be hilarious.

Gender bias and so called unacceptable grammar in English

Now, alot of peop's tend to think that English is evil for a variety of reasons - maybe because it's stealing the limelight from French, maybe because it's grammar isn't actually to hard, maybe it's because none of these English-dislikers have ever tried to learn Irish (complain to me about spelling then!), or maybe they don't like the future of the English language because simple 3 letter words aren't good enough for their complex tastes.

But one interesting aspect of the English language that cops a lot of flack (especially from feminists) is Gender bias. Now, lets just note for a minute that English is not actually that bad with Gender bias. It has no grammatical gender, it's fairly flexible in regards to pronouns (e.g. we don't have a system where a group of women with one man is still referred to as an all male group). So really, the main argument comes down to petty things like referring to people whose gender is unknown, and the fact that 'woman' has 'man' in it.

In regards to referring to gender-neutral things or people, there's a simple solution to this - just use 'they' all the time. I mean, why do we even NEED to distinguish the gender of the person, let alone the plurality?
Example - some dude called Roger comes home from work and his sister says this to him:
"Oh, Sam dropped by while you were at work. They looked upset".
Firstly, lets think about this - Roger would obviously KNOW who Sam is. And if he knows more than one male or female Sam then it's still as ambiguous as using 'Oh, Sam dropped in and he/she looked upset'. So there's no communication failure there.

Ok, so what about writing a book or being told about someone by a mate? If they are introduced as 'they', then how do we know the number or gender of this person? Well, quite frankly, in a normal setting, all characters should be properly introduced in a story with their gender explicitly mentioned to the reader. It's just good literacy practice. And in nonstandard settings, using 'they' actually gives the author more flexibility and ability to express themselves or create interesting plot twists - e.g. 'OMG THEY WERE A GIRL?! I THOUGH THEY WERE A BOY! AND I BOUGHT THEM HAIRPINS!'. Ok, how that counts as a plot twist is not really certain, but you should be able to understand where I'm coming from.

Nooooow, what about the 'man' in 'woman'?
This one is actually interesting, as many people try to explain this. Some Christians might argue 'Oh, well, this is because Eve came from Adam, and that's why 'woman' has 'man' in it'. But this isn't a very realistic theory, as the English language comes from a originally Pagan people. And it's unlikely the original word for 'woman' would have been modified upon the adoption of Christianity, considering how 'woman' is one of the most commonly used words in English.

So where did this 'woman' word come from? From 'womb+man'? Nup. It comes from 'Wifeman' (Old English 'wifman' if I'm correct). This literally means 'female man'. But 'wifman' wasn't just paired with 'man', nope, in fact, male men were referred to as 'werman' ('Wereman' nowdays - think 'Werewolf'). In fact, 'wer' and 'wif' could have been used alone. Which means that 'man' simply mean 'human' or 'person'. So, in fact, Modern English is actually Gender biased towards women because they still have their own word. Actually, wait, that gets cancelled out because of Werewolves and all other things 'Were-'. Darn :P

OMG! An evony ad WITHOUT women! A miracle!

This is scary stuff people. Today I found an Evony ad that did not have any women in it! Not only that, but it's a new one that I've never seen before too! Could this be the end of using mammary glands to sell a web-game which doesn't even have women in the plot?

A screenshot of the ad found on mangafox.com:

Interestingly though this ad came several pages after one of the more notorious Evony ads showing a bikini clad woman lying down (as they apparently did in medieval times). Oh well, at least it's a start towards somewhat-more-decent advertising principles.

Games that worked/didn't work on CrossOver 8.0

Here's a short and sweet list of games I could/couldn't get working with CrossOver 8.0:

Things that work:

• Lego Racers 2
• Worked perfectly with no hassles. Needs CD inside to play, but let CrossOver know that you don't want to install from the CD because it will ask you just as the game loads up if you're impatient like me.
  
• Sonic R
• Another fun-styled racing game. Pity it lacks depth in any degree. Worked well though, found the audio levels annoying and uneven but that might be the game as it's meant to be.
• Command and Conquer 3
• Refer to my post on getting it to work. Basically needs you to copy in a pre-existing profile as you can't start create one in game for some reason and you can't start the game without one.

Things that don't work:

• Sitting Ducks
• I remember getting this game cheap for $9 AUD at some store when it was still new. I played it on a friend's computer and it looked neat, installed it on my computer and it told me my graphics card did not support T&L shaders (this was maybe 3-5 years ago?). Apparently T&L shaders were these special things that made lighting and textures (thus T and L) look nice in games. Nowadays though such terminology is redundant - I know netbooks which handle shaders well. Anyway, it simply didn't install on CrossOver (which can utilise shaders fortunately). Maybe the disk was scratched too much?
• Buzz Lightyear of Star Command
• First game I had ever played that used cell shaders (which apparently are unique and different to T&L shaders). It was epic nonetheless to be playing a 3d game WITH cell shaders on a computer with an astounding 4mb Intel graphics chip. Didn't work on a computer with an Nvidia 128mb graphics card, unfortunately.

Things I would like to try:

• Rayman 2. I tried installing this classic platformer but to no prevail. But this wasn't because it came up with an error, rather I just got bored waiting and had something more urgent needing attention. I'll letcha know what happens there. PROVIDED I don't get pre occupied reading Urusei Yatsura.
• A PS2 emulator. Just any. I think there's only one, but I don't care as long as I can play something like Killzone or Sonic Unleashed on my mac mini. That'd be epic.

Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars working on Crossover 8.0!

I feel accomplished. In a sad, "I've never been the first to achieve anything but now I've beaten someone!" way.


Allow me to explain. There is a problem (I'm not sure what it is, but it's a big one) when running Command & Conquer 3 on the latest version(s) of Crossover that make it so the keyboard does not work when starting the game. Important, because to start the game you first have to enter your name. And if you can't use the keyboard you can't enter your name so basically it means the game does not work.


HOWEVER this is NOT the case. Someone's probably figured this out already but if you already have a profile, then the game will continue to load without the whole unable-to-type-your-name hullabaloo. In fact by putting in your own profile from an already installed windows copy it works absolutely perfectly (except for me raising the Shader quality too high made this disappear).


This works for Crossover 8.0, not sure about other versions. Firstly, go to the windows computer/virtual machine that has Command & Conquer installed (and played/run at least once). Look in (forgive me if this is wrong):

c:\users\YOUR USER NAME\Application Data\Command & Conquer 3 Tiberium Wars\

This folder may be hidden or otherwise invisible, so you may have to manually type in the address in Explorer. Copy a profile folder (if the person is called "Shirley" in-game, their profile folder will have the same name).

Then after that you need to hunt down:

Main Partition/Users/YOUR USER NAME/Library/Application Support/CrossOver/Bottles/Name of the bottle which has CNC3 in it/drive_c/users/crossover/Application Data/Command & Conquer 3 Tiberium Wars/

For me that'd be:

Macintosh HD/Users/Christian/Library/Application Support/CrossOver/Bottles/Windows XP/drive_c/users/crossover/Application Data/Command & Conquer 3 Tiberium Wars/

Simply copy your profile into that folder by means of networking, USB, Floppy disk etc and you'll be able to fire up CNC3 in Skirmish mode in no time. And if for some reason that doesn't work or you are missing the CNC3 folder in Application Data, just copy the entire Command & Conquer 3 Tiberium Wars folder from the Windows PC's copy.

This ALSO works for the demo, so if you are thinking of buying the entire game but worried about whether it'll work on your Mac, just install the demo on a Windows machine, steal the settings folder for it and chuck it on your mac once the demo is on there. After all the windows copy is cheaper and still easily available (in Australia the mac version isn't even in stock and no longer being shipped).

I might put up a link later for my demo profile for anyone who needs help running the PC version on their Mac. It might only work on the demo though, so no guarantees for people with the full copy.

Here's a screenshot of my large army bravely traversing through a small tiberium field. Let's just say by the end of that push my army's numbers had been humbled/severely depleted due to contamination :)

Needless to say I want the full version now. That'll probably have to wait till after I get Pokémon Platinum.

Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Vegas PSP Review

Pros:

• Fun 1st person shooter
• Easy to shoot and strut your stuff without having to find cover to remember the controls
• Levels are replayable
• Some level of aiming assistance in hip-fire mode, but aiming down scope is troublesome.
• Player's character will yell or shout out if he is hit, stuff like that.
• Night Vision well implemented.
• Weapon animations not too shabby.
• In-game cutscenes are done in-level and not using more stolen PS3 elements.

Not Pros:

• Graphics aren't as good as they could be (e.g. Resistance Retribution level of graphics) but still not too bad (makes some PS2 games look bad)
• Feels a tiny bit artificial at times
• Suffers from quick and dirty port syndrome:
• Decent start up movie of the Ubisoft logo and PS3 intro. That's it.
• Menu interface looks like it's from the days of Rainbow Six Rogue Spear. Blocky and ugly.
• Game can be a little uneven difficulty wise.
• No optional mid-level save, all done at certain points :(
• The terrorists need brains

Warnings:

• If you've seen the cover for the PSP version and gone 'whoah what beautiful screenshots!', think again. They're from the PS3/Xbox360 version of the game.

I'm playing this game right now to get a feel for it again so I can review it. To be honest it's not too bad, but it can feel a little artificial or uninvolving when compared to things like LocoRoco or Resistance Retribution. Yes, I know LocoRoco is completely out of place among PSP shooters, but the point still stands. There's no constant inspiring background music or sound comparable with Call of Duty 4 (even on the DS), and it can feel like Quake 2 singleplayer with the sound turned off because of this.

Once you get past this though it's not too bad for the casual gaming session. In a way the lack of engagement with the player is good because you don't get addicted to it to the point you HAVE to finish it in one night, and that way it's always there ready to be progressed-on (is that even a word?). However there are some problems with keeping the players interest. The terrorists aren't exactly original. In fact, their skills could be summarised in an algorithm like this:

If (player is seen/comes towards you/shoots your drinking buddy)

then walk sidewards back and forth while shooting

end If.

That gets a bit boring after a while, and also makes it hard to make long distance shots if they don't stop moving. The problem is that the terrorists are no where near as skilled as they are aware of the world around them, and that they can't react or fight with much strategy. Another problem with Rainbow Six Vegas is that your own soldier feels more like a robot than a human being. The camera does not follow human movements, rather it slides along the floor like the player is on a segway and not walking. Although, don't get me wrong, segway combat would be awesome. Regardless, the gun swaying left and right is not enough to make the player feel as if they are in the game and not just playing it.

It's not all bad news though. Despite feeling a bit unengaging, the game does have a nice balance of challenge and shooting action, which is why we're all here, no? It's not like some older tactical shooters where having no gun on the hud was apparently the way to go, and there's enough sparks, smoke, blood and bullets to make things interesting. Plus the odd explosion.

There is also some aiming assistance with hip fire to keep things moving too. The normally blue crosshair is surrounded by a red circle indicating that you're aiming at an enemy, and then at this point if you hold L in hip fire mode you can lock on to that target and kiss difficult PSP-esque aiming goodbye. Additionally if you sight an enemy with your scope you can press L on them to track their movements and anticipate their moves. This only works for one person though, so you can't just track the entire enemy force and see through walls :)

I'd say that if you can find a cheap copy of the game, and are looking for a casual 1st person shooter challenge on the PSP, Rainbow Six Vegas is a good buy. If you are looking for something more addictive, maybe Resistance Retribution (albeit it a bit more challenging at times) and LocoRoco (albeit it completely unchallenging full stop) are classics.

I give Vegas a rating of 78/100.

I got first post! Whoot!

Oh wait... first post means nothing on here because I'm the only writer... Darn.

I guess I should start by welcoming you to my new blog, although I'm not sure what I should be writing. I guess that the purpose of this blog is for me to write about things that interest me, like languages, computer technology, video games, anime, manga, etc et al. I'm also a conlanger (conlang = constructed language) and so I'll probably post excerpts from conlangs I'm working on.

Now, without much further ado, I declare this blog OPEN!
*smashes a bottle of champagne on the bow of his eMac*