Computer death

That blind panic you get when your PC suffers a dramatic and unidentified unrecoverable crash? I had that this weekend. A cold feeling in the pit of your stomach when you realise you won't be able to fix this with the tools to hand, and that simply reseating connectors and power cycling is not enough to revive your PC.

So I consoled myself with spending the entire weekend fixing my dad's laptop instead of facing the dread horror that is the prospect of an inoperable home machine.

Still on the bright side, dad now has a clean hard drive, XP Pro and a much happier lappie :/

Long dark winter

Well, we've just had the hottest October 27th in London since records began, but I get a distinct feeling that I'll be spending a long dark winter glued to the PC. Not only have I just bought Black and White 2, but I've also just shelled out for World of Warcraft which could potentially eat more time than GTA:SA did!

My capable guides into the WoW universe are to be Mark, Bill, Chris and Fiona. Gamers extraordinaire all 4. It's going to be an entertaining hibernation, I just hope I don't get too immersed in the fictional world.

What with this, F.E.A.R and Quake 4, I'm not sure how much time I'll have to eat, sleep, socialise or earn a crust. Oh dear.

Wired on Web 2.0

An interesting short Essay at wired.com has appeared, following the recent spate of media reports about the failure of Wikipedia.

Web 2.0 Cracks Start to Show

It does focus rather heavily on Wikipedia, and fails to draw any conclusive opinion other than "well it could all fall apart through scams and exploits" but it's a reasonable piece.

2 Puppets

Off to see the Wallace & Gromit movie tonight. I'm excited. Sooo excited. Almost unnaturally so. What is it about Aardman's claymation which sends me so west?

I guess it's just the sense memory of morph reverberating from my past and bringing my inner kid out. Yet it doesn't kick off The Gallery Theme in my head.

Rotten Tomatoes | IMDb | Guardian Unlimited | Slate

Cat 2.0 (O.K. just "2 Cats")

You were warned! Is it just me, or does this get funnier the longer you look at it?

"Web 2.0" you say?

My initial explanation of "What Web 2.0 is" might have missed the mark by being a little too concise, not containing enough buzz-words, or maybe not enough references to Soylent Green. Either way, The Register have a poll, to let you work out for yourself exactly what Web 2.0 might be.

Welcome to the perpetual Beta...

Endnote: Anyone reading this might opine that all I do is recycle Op-Ed from Vulture Central. They wouldn't be far from the truth, but there is a little more going on under my tinfoil hat, I assure you. Honest. No, really. Hold tight for some amusing animal Photographs.

Bubble 2.0

As fast as I leap on a bandwagon, someone points out that the wheels are made of cheese. Building web applications on the presentation layer was bound to be spotted as a house of cards sooner or later. Trust El Reg to do it so eloquently. And for me to mix my metaphors...

Spotting a bubble this early should permit us to treat it without the hype which came along with the digital tulipomania of the late 90s and might prevent some of the bizarre VC behaviour which occured then (although evidence suggests that the Vulture Capitalists are for ever hungry for a quick buck and will happily punt on the noughties' silicon snake of choice if they think there's money to be made).

It's more likely that consumers and webmonkeys remaining underwhelmed will ensure that the new tools provided by so-called Web 2.0 applications will be seen as just that, social tools and toys, and they should be used accordingly.

Don't bellieve the hype.

Black & White 2

So I've paddled in the shallows of the potentially quite deep pool of fun that is the new offering from Lionhead. I'll always be comparing this to the previous and original game which pretty much rewrote the book on god games.

The creature's thoughts are now more visible, thanks to a little thought bubble above it when it decides to do stuff autonomously. This makes rewarding and reprimanding for the right things easier, which is now also measured on a visible scale. I had him pooing on the fields and not the villagers in no time.

The addition of troops I am yet undecided about, having reached only the second island and therfore not really having seen them in full action. The original game's monumental sense of scale and detail is lovingly rendered in full DirectX 9 detail and it certainly does look and sound pretty amazing this time round.

When I've had the time to take a proper look at it I'll post again. In the mean time, back to the job and the house move. I hate it when real life gets in the way of computer games...

Here we go!

My first post from within the Flock browser. Huzzah. And The Nation Rejoices!

Welcome to the Bimbletron

It's a bit like the thunderdome, only with more tangents.

I've been steered into starting this blog thanks to my recent download of the Flock Developer Preview. Let's see what this Web 2.0 malarkey is all about then eh?

Well; I know what it's about... Social browsing & a reactive rather than passive browser.