dogsolitude_v2

I love computer games with a deep and undying passion. I have been playing them since a friend of the family bought me a copy of Helichopper for my 48k Spectrum, which I'd only used up til then for learning the BASIC programming language.

Over the following 20-something years I've played through the evolution of this media form, from simple sprite games and platformers like Jet Set Willy, through the advent of 16-bit home computers that could handle solid 3D graphics and up to 4000 colours (I remember being awestruck by Carrier Command) right up to modern-day games such as Stalker, that are almost (but not quite) photorealistic.

Some games have terrified me (Aliens, Thief, Stalker...). Some have made me laugh myself silly (Leisure Suit Larry, Portal). Some have given me sleepless nights with their dreadful puzzles (Braid, Lemmings, Gyron). Deus Ex had me gripped with a complex, involving plot with many moral choices, and The Witcher is pulling the same trick with me today.

There was a bit of a hiatus between 1990 and 1993 where I parked my interest in games because I wanted a girlfriend. I started playing the guitar instead and turning my attention to art.

Anyone who knows me will know I have a wide range of interests (because I keep going on about them). Having a reasonable PC and internet access allows us to do a huge number of things. There's software on the cover disc of Computer Music that will allow you to try your hand at writing music, or you could buy Orion for £50 (it's far better than Fruityloops, but I have both anyway). You can cut and edit bits of film, or make weird artworks using Bryce and Photoshop as well.

If you want to make your own programs, the stuff to help you do it is usually free too. There are loads of free language compilers, and Microsoft will let you have Visual Basic and Visual C# for nothing too.

Seriously, I love games on the PC, and make no apologies for it. Some might think I should grow up and stop wasting my time on them, but hell... I already compose music, write software, create images, play chess, photograph things, create web pages etc, so I think I'm entitled to hack'n'slash my way through the odd dungeon, or sneak through radioactive wastelands in the dead of night from time to time!

The day after Leonard Cohen, I was afforded the opportunity to catch up with an old friend who lives in Weybridge.

He lives just round the corner from St George's Hill, a gated enclave of the wealthy, and within a champagne-glasses throw of one of my old drinking establishments.

Formerly known as 'The Hand and Spear', it's where I used to trundle off to of a weekend with a few friends, and neck Addlestone's Cider. It used to be this Neon-green, smokey-mirrored place full of students.

It was always quite nice in there. It was far from being one of those places with sticky floors, and was always fairly well-kept, however they decided to spend a few million on a refurbishment a while back, and now it's even more pleasant to imbibe in.

What tickled me was the way that the exclusive restaurant area had been built in the same part of the building as where the gent's loos used to be.

The wine was very reasonable, the same prices as in, say, Take 5 or the Wine Press, and the list was long enough to have a fairly comprehensive selection (and included some horrifically expensive specimens to boot).

Reasonable as the wine was, I was a bit out of practice, and when my brother turned up we really started glugging it back and I got a bit p1$$ed. Ended up back in Paul's flat watching Top Gear, and trying to explain to his brother why learning scales was so important in music production and trying to remember how to use Fruityloops.

Also discovered that one can drive Mercs around the race track at Mercedes Benz World without having a driving license, and so have decided to do that when I go back next time.

Mr Cohen has a reputation for being a dirge-meister and a half. There were jokes about people handing out razorblades at his concerts and so forth, however it was one of the most enjoyable concerts I've ever been to.

It was held at Mercedes Benz World in Weybridge, an outdoor venue.

Cohen was affable, likeable, very friendly towards the audience. He kept referring to us as 'friends', and many of his lyrics provoked outbreaks of mirth amongst the audience ("...now I ache in the parts where I used to play", Tower of Song,  being one of them). The backing musicians included a very talented spanish guitarist and some rather fit female backing singers.

He opened with The Future, followed by Suzanne and then I forget... First We Take Manhatten was part of an encore (one of many).

For some reason I didn't take any photographs. Not even with my mobile phone. I'm not sure why.

Having arrived and managed to get that *@#*@#!!! chess board through the *@#*@#!!! gates on the *@#*@#!!! underground with the *@#*@#!!! luggage in tow, we were in the leafy burbs of Surrey.

We went to the Royal Horticultural Gardens at Wisley.

Ms Rhapsody found a thing called a 'Pinus', which I found greatly amusing. It's a wonderful place, full of well-manicured lawns, wild gardens, greenhouses, shrubberies, ponds and lakes with fish in them and all sorts of other stuff.

It was also hot at times, but hey ho. That's what the four cafes are for. And the elderflower cordial.

I now have a decent-looking chess set, which I bought from the London Chess Centre.

It's the Tournament range of chessmen, with the  Whitened Erable (whatever that is) with Black Anegre (whatever that is) board. It's nice enough, the pieces are well-made, felted and weighted nicely.

Having felt and weight on chess pieces is important.

The board is matte rather than gloss (I find glossy boards lovely to look at but mildly annoying to play on), and I assumed that the Anegre was a sort of matte dye that had been bonded to the erable, however looking at it they may be dark blocks under the matte laquer.

The Erable looked white in the shop, however under natural light it's the colour of Pinot Grigio, a pale yellow hue. Under lightbulbs it looks parchment. It doesn't quite go with the pieces - the white chessmen are a little more 'goldy', so it's a bit of a mongrel set, but I rather like it.

Carrying it back through London was a royal pain and a half. I must have kneecapped a dozen people between Euston Road and Regent's Park...

Will update properly tomorrow, but ms rhapsody9  and I are back from Surrey.

Short version:

• Bought a Chess Set
• Attempted to take Chess Set round London and through underground, swore
• Went to Royal Horticultural Gardens at Wisley, took photos
• Went to Leonard Cohen concert, forgot to take photos, got soaked
• Got drunk in a pub in Weybridge
• Went to Guildford, saw Castle, took photos
• Attempted to return to Norwich, via underground with Chess Set, swore

Full report tomoz.

Bad, bad man!

www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/video/2009/jul/03/tim-hayward-land-snails

MMnnnergngfff...

A while back I was working in a place where my monitor was faced right into the centre of the office.

This isn't an issue now, but back then I was thinking about how handy it would be to have a small program (small in terms of both screen area and memory usage) that could take RSS feed-stuff from news websites and display them every once in a while.

These RSS readers are ten-a-penny, and are usually found as programming exercises in textbooks. Writing a good one will never make you rich.

Anyway, it occurred to me the other day that I actually know how to make one now, and so I opened a new project in Visual Studio and quickly cobbled something together. Half an hour later I had something that worked well enough.

I'd made an RSS reader, roughly 200 pixels by 300 pixels, with a 'vary opacity' control on it, that could sit discretely in the corner of my monitor and keep me appraised of stuff.

I've been fiddling with it for a while now, and it's black and shiny. It collapses into the system tray, you can set it to sit 'always on top', it stores a list of feeds and their addresses in a simple XML text file, and is generally pretty cool.

I accidentally made it a bit cooler by modifying the code so that if you plug in the address of a podcast, it renders the .mp3 locations as links in the window, and if you click on them it opens Media Player and plays them.

In other news that coding that I'm actually supposed to be doing is going very well thankew, even if it is in VB.

Coming Next*:

A very small chess program
A tiny web browser that's nearly invisible unless your mouse hovers over it
A web browser that styles all pages to look like an Excel spreadsheet so that from a distance it looks like you're working



*Probably not, actually, so don't hold your breath

So.

Farewelle then, Jacko.

Michael Jackson's death has broken the internets.

The death of Michael Jackson, lead singer of The Sisters of Mercy and also famous for a lesser solo career,  has led to a massive slowdown in the internets. As the world mourns, millions of fans have taken to showing their respect by surfing the web at a slower, more funereal pace.

Created by Walt Disney in 1848 to amuse his children, the famous singer garnered a huge popular following for albums such as 'Control', and his appearances in popular childrens films such as 'The Nightmare Before Christmas.

I think you can prbably imagine what would happen if the police were given too much power. The more power they have the less we have to effect changes in our society.

The video behind this link shows what happens nowadays if you video a police officer and ask them their ID number.

www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/jun/21/kingsnorth-protester-arrests-video-complaint

Legally the police are obliged to give you their numbers when requested, however it seems that nowadays us wee citizens are expected to know our places and not rock the boat: stifling dissent has been added to police duties, alongside filming people at demonstrations.

From Wikipedia, we find the Peelian Principles of policiing, the bedrock upon which an honest police force would operate:

Peelian Principles describes the philosophy that Robert Peel developed to define an ethical police force. The principles traditionally ascribed to Peel state that:

• Every police officer should be issued a badge number, to assure accountability for his actions.
• Whether the police are effective is not measured on the number of arrests, but on the lack of crime.
• Above all else, an effective authority figure knows trust and accountability are paramount. Hence, Peel's most often quoted principle: The police are the public and the public are the police.

...So that's number one crossed off there. I'm curious as to the effect of policing targets on number two. Number three goes out of the window with arbitrary arrest, detainment and taking DNA samples of kids who have done nothing wrong 'just in case'.

Do I feel safer? F*** no. I do feel though that should I wish to protest against something I'm liable to be arrested, cuffed or grabbed by a pressure point for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Free country? F*** no.

Years ago, someone who's views I respect warned me that Labour would turn the country into a police state (he was working for the police at the time). I scoffed and voted Red anyway, way back then, but add this on to the obsession with public surveillance, largely enabled by advances in technology (the mass production of small cheap cameras and other stuff) and I now feel that Nu Labour deserves to be utterly buried for good at the next general election after what it's done to this country.

As voters and constituents we need to send a powerful signal to other parties (Conservative, Lib Dem, Greens, BNP) that authoritarian politics and policing will not be tolerated in this country, regardless of their colour.

Ms rhapsody9  and I have been together for two years now. Well, we worked out that it was around now that we sort of got together, give or take a couple of weeks. Neither of us has a precise date, so this weekend seemed as good as any.

The duration isn't the strangest thing about this relationship by a long shot. What really struck me yesterday is the fact that we still really love each other. There's been no real diminishing of feeling anywhere.

And when I consider that we've been together through the stress of unemployment, exams, and whatnot whilst at the same time being pretty supportive of each other, I think we're doing pretty well.

OK, we have had a couple of moments (under stress I get snappy, whilst she goes quiet), but these have been very rare, and usually ended up with 'aw, what the f***, let's play Never Winter Nights and eat some cake' or something.

As a rule though, two years down the line I still rush home looking forward to seeing her...

Whenever I've stressed about work, she's always expressed the view that whatever it is I'm smart enough to deal with it. This has given me a lot of strength during difficult times, and her unwavering confidence in my abilities never ceases to amaze me.

She's also mega-cute and likes games. She's playing Morrowind at the moment with a mod attached that allows freed slaves to join you as companions. She loves cats, and so she's going round Vvardenfell resciung all the Khaajit cat-people from slavery, building a house for them and leading them to freedom. It's really quite impressive to watch: this tribe of well-dressed Cat People wandering around the place.

She's a talented artist, and loves animals (especially cats). She makes the most wonderful thing with Quorn, broccoli and mushroom sauce topped with crushed Ritz crackers (best served with Hashbrowns). Whenever we've played chess it's been a tough battle, and I've never beaten her at Risk. She understands Biology, a subject which is a complete mystery to me, and often explains stuff to me that I've often been curious about but never quite grasped.

All this stuff makes me feel incredibly proud and happy. If I was to sit down with a pencil and paper I couldn't possibly have designed a better relationship... I feel as if I've somehow received the relationship equivalent of a marvellous and mysterious magic box, one which seems to have new compartments, surprises and little drawers every time you open it.

Last night we went out to dinner to celebrate, at the Sakura Japanese restaurant. You get to grill your own food there on this in-table barbecue thing. Being vegetarian we had three different types of Tofu, and the EU Vegetable Food Mountain which had been brought in specially. Damned fine, and very friendly service.

*Sigh* Two years...

I've got a reasonably servicable database for storing bug reports on now, lovingly handcoded in Microsoft SQL Server 2008. It's got stored procedures in it that fish bits of info out. There's handcoded 'code-behind' in VB that accesses the procedures and puts them into datasets for manipulation by the thingy, and also a few classes which I've written to make sending notification emails easier and keep the code tidy... Sitting on this are the familiar ASP.NET controls and buttons for that reassuring (?)  Windows-look, some nicely coded XHTML to get it onto a page and some beautiful CSS to make it look nice.

Not bad for my first bit of work, there... I'll spend the rest of the week tweaking, testing and refining it. Nice.

Right...

With varying levels of skill I can do the following:

• build a relational database using tables, foreign keys etc.
• work with a data access layer and code stored procedures in SQL
• call the stored procedures from the code behind a web page in both VB and C#, passing information to and from them via the required parameters
• code in VB and C#
• handcode asp.Net controls without using drag'n'drop
• Code XHTML and HTML
• Make the XHTML or HTML look pretty using CSS
• Create shiny buttons and icons in Photoshop
• Create animated Flash banners and interactive animations
• Embed movies and music into a web page

It's not an exhaustive list of things I'd ideally like to be able to do. I've not, for example, coded my own user controls in C# or VB, but I feel in a pretty confident position now that I know a few basic things and have a well-rounded foundation of stuff that I can start developing further. There's always room for improvement, and knowing what one needs to know in order to move forward is a great place to be in.

A year or so ago I went for a job interview, where I was told that one could learn SQL in an afternoon. Whereas this isn't strictly true (the basics are very very useful, but the more you dig the more powerful it becomes) it's certainly one of the easier things I've had to get my head round.

This .Net framework is great stuff, and I've been very impressed by the amount of useful information and help that is available on the Microsoft websites.

I disagree with a lot of NuLabours policies (well, the ones involving blanket public surveillance), and was pretty p1ssed at the way they allowed the housing market to steamroller ahead of any reasonable salary multiplier. I was angry about Iraq and the lies that went with it.

I was also mildly miffed about MP's expenses, but not enough to get worked up about it or call for anyone's blood. I was saddened that Ian Gibson had to resign for example - I liked him, property dealing or no. I was pretty disgusted by the press' handling of it, and I believe it's actually a displacement fo unarticulated public anger about a number of other, more political issues.

That aside, I'm really worried about Gordon Brown. I stand by my criticisms of many of Labours policies, however I also believe that political debate should rest upon policies and reasoning, not debates about someone's personal qualities, age, sexual habits or lifestyle. When the press, our 'fourth estate', starts setting rabbits running about the mental state of the prime minister in an attempt to bring him down, there's something seriously wrong with our pseudodemocratic system.

The press was quick to point at the 'rot' inherent in the Westminster expenses system. Fine, it's their job to keep us informed as to what the guys in the Lords, the Commons and Whitehall are up to with our money. It is as well to remind the Governmnet of the UK that they are in office, emphatically not 'in power'. They are there to govern the country, not rule it as a detached elite.

I can't see them launching an examination of the effect that the media has on policy-making or political discourse.

But back to Gordon Brown. Policies aside, he has my sincere sympathies. I'd hate to see him at the wrong end of a breakdown over all this. I've always thought of him as somewhat akin to Barney the Dinosaur: a slightly slow, well-meaning type plodding doggedly forward with a job he was charged to do.

Politicians can often be remote. I'm sure, for example, that Kim Jong Il has a coterie of advisors who are telling him that everything's fine and dandy in North Korea. Likewise it's difficult to tell precisely what information Brown and co have been working on over the last year or so. Given his preoccupation with the economic crisis (which I believe was correctly placed) it's not surprising that public anger and resentment over expenses (the only evidence of which I've seen was in the press, btw) may have been put on the back burner for a bit.

Sure, the expenses thing was a bit annoying, but on a national scale even a few million is loose change. There will always be people better off than you or I, people with more privileged backgrounds or in receipt of perks, just as there are always those worse off or working under shitty conditions. If you think our MPs are getting too nice a deal, check out the lifestyle of the average MEP! And that's nothing compared to the lifestyles of the Rothschilds and Rockefellers fo the world. Or even the average Russian magnate.

There are far more serious issues to focus on regards policy and thye running of the country, and if Labour's going to be brought down for anything it should be for the right reasons, and reasons of policy, not for sensationalist tittle-tattle or because the press told us to do it.

Am exhausted, however was cheered to see that some of my work had made it on to the Next website.

No news really: brain dead.

Tomorrow: start working out content/structure for corporate website, and refine design pitches.

ZZZZzzzz...

I was reading a book earlier about the pre-Norman Kings and Queens of England - you know, the guys that ruled England before 1066.

We don't hear much about them, except perhaps some apocryphal stuff about Cnut waving at the waves, or something about Alfred letting some cakes burn. I certainly don't recall learning about them at school. We did some stuff from 1066 onwards, starting with Harald (but neglecting the bits about Edward the Confessor).

When I was young, and wandering around the leafy suburbs of Surrey, I used to love thinking about how the land I was standing on (usually a muddy field or bit of woodland at the time) had been there for time immemorial. There was a sense of connection and history there, which was reinforced by the coats of arms that seemed to be on pretty much every building or road sign in the area. In my then local borough of Runneymede we often heard about King John being prodded with sticks until he agreed to the stuff in the Magna Carta. I also had an old map of Mediaevel Surrey stuck in the cupboard, and a book containing maps of Roman Britain.

The House of Usher, the current Dogsolitude_uk HQ, is held together by an old reproduction map of Norfolk blu-tacked acriss a crack in the hall wall. Aside from maintaining the structural integrity of the building, it serves as a constant reminder of the fact that people lived in this old marsh many years ago too.

Quite nice really. I love old maps and other such things.

As I'm starting to get settled, I'll probably stop making 'job posts' as I get more accustomed to the work I'm doing.

I have a big project: redesign and build a corporate business-2-business website! Great stuff :) I've been given a free reign re: branding, design and whatnot, which is cool. The only real immutables are the logo, but that can be worked on.

Thing is, I'm not sure what to do. I spent this afternoon doodling around a few ideas. I know who the users will be, and the function of the site (both will completely influence the design decisions I make). I've also got a good feel for the types of style to use as well.

Whenever I've done anything creative before, some weird lightning bolt hits me and I get something that's so 'right' it just makes automatic sense.

Hang on, pizza, back in a mo...

I am now officially a 'Web Developer', having started my new job this morning.

This is what I was aiming for when I left NU nearly two years ago. To be honest, I'm not quite there yet: I have to ensure I'm taken on full time and permanently at the end of this month. I need to make sure I have a permanent job, basically.

Once done, a couple of years experience would be useful. After that: who knows?

Learning the .Net framework isn't difficult, there's just a lot of it. Currently I'm at the 'Conscious Incompetence' stage of the learning cycle, which means that I know enough to know what my shortcomings are, and where to find the stuff I need. Parts are moving on to the next stage of 'Conscious Competence', where I know what I'm doing I just have to think a bit about it first. The old HTML and CSS stuff moved into the 'Unconscious Competence' stage a while back, where I don't really have to think about it at all.

You have to know what you don't know in order to be able to fill the gaps in after all.

Looking at the company code earlier, I noted a number of 'foreign' classes and libraries in there which weren't .Net at all. I also noticed loads of code which was .Net, but with which I was unfamiliar. I've made a note of these for careful study.

I've also been designing banner ads. Nice, stylish, tasteful banner ads, properly colour coordinated and beautifully composed using the Golden Section...

Against my better judgement, I'm starting to like Visual Basic.

Somehow it just looks 'tidier' than that rascal C#, despite its anachronistic insistence on using the Dim keyword.

witz66  gave me some books to look at, and I've been creating objects out of classes and doing the inheritance and encapsulation thing. Standard stuff really, and no more difficult in VB than in anything else.

I'm also having a good look through the .Net framework class library too, so I know where to find stuff if I need it.

New Job

For the uninitiated, I start a new job tomorrow as a.Net web developer, which is why I've been learning this stuff. I'm very nervy, because I haven't done this sort of thing before. Unlike any other job I've done before, I actually find this stuff interesting.

The job's based in Thetford for the first month. I'll be temping during this period, and if all goes well and I don't mess up too much, I should be taken on full time at a slightly better salary. This arrangement actually made me a feel a lot more comfortable about the role. I hate the thought of being overpaid for something I'm not good at in case someone somewhere asks too many questions. That idea makes me nervous, and there's no way I'd've accepted a £30k+ position as a .Net developer in case people expected me to be good at it.

This way, I can have a go, and no harm done if it doesn't work out. It's exactly the kind of break I've been waiting for. Plus I'll (probably) be able to do some front-end design work as well. They seemed impressed with the fact that I can use Flash as well, and the fact that I'm really very keen on learning the tech thoroughly.

Singing Kittens

When under stress, I sometimes have a recurring dream about singing kittens. I'll invariably wake up laughing or giggling, and as far as I can work out this is some sort of defence mechanism invented by my subconscious to take the sting out of whatever I'm going through.

I received this from Ms rhapsody9 earlier today, and haven't stopped smiling since :



Anyway, better get on. Shirts to iron. Singing kittens to feed. And stuff.

Right, I've had some sleep now!

OK, VB isn't that difficult... I was worrying unnecessarily.

One learning curve I'm getting to grips with is the use of the .NET libraries. These are like little snippety bits of code that you can make use of in .NET programs and sites, a bit like clipart for programmers.

Other than that, my copy of X3: The Terran Conflict arrived. It's OK, but after playing EVE the X3 interface is a bit clunky. If, for example, you open a window to see what's in your ship's cargo hold, you can't move it anywhere or leave it open. It's stuck, it isn't resizable and that's annoying. Plus simple things like switching between ships seem to be buried beneath loads of layers of menus. And you can't fade out the controls to see what's underneath either.

You can't LAN it either, so I can't play it with Ms rhapsody9 . I'm sorry, sweetpea: I was hoping we could build a vast intergalactic empire together!