Well, all this week I’ve been ripping my vinyls to MP3, and burning them to CDs. Why? I’m playing a set at the Beach Road Season Finale Party in Portsmouth this Saturday. Should be a pretty phat party - if anyone is in the area that weekend then let me know and I will get you an invite (there will be a guestlist :( ).

Hopefully it will all run smoothly, although there won’t be any record decks, and I’m not well experienced with CD decks… Will just have to practice all night Friday, I might pick it up by then!

Also: Since they will only have CD decks there, I bought a bunch of tunes from Drum & Bass Arena’s store, and I rate it pretty well :) Definitly worth a browse if you are looking for something more obscure.

Just found this while working on one of the older core product plug-ins…

Global Const THOUSAND_TWENTYFOUR = 1024 ' kb

While I applaud the original developer for using constants instead of just inserting magic numbers everywhere, it is important not to be overzealous in their use.

Ok, so WiiWare has been around for over a month now but I hadn’t really had a play with it. The other night I took the plunge and dropped £7 on a title - Star Soldier R. What did I think of it?

• It’s a little bit expensive. SSR was at least. Maybe LostWinds and Final Fantasy: My Life as a King are longer and even have more replay value. SSR was 800 points, most other titles seem to be 1000 (FFMLaaK is 1500).
• However, the concept is good - original content in addition to the Virtual Console, and some titles look promising, paticularly LostWinds and the Final Fantasy spin-off. In general, reviews look promising.
• I feel Nintendo would probably sell more than twice the volume of VC/WW titles if they cut the cost of Wii points by a third or even half. I’d imagine this is dictated more by the game publishers than Nintendo themselves, but wouldn’t it also attract more customers to the platform?
• There seems to be a mixed reaction from commentors at Wii Fanboy. A common opinion is that demos would be really nice. Currently you can only watch demo videos, which aren’t ideal.
• SSR itself is a fun game, if it were cheaper I’d recommend it. It would be nice to have a campaign mode in addition to the 2 & 5 minute modes, 2 player co-op would be epic. One thing that struck me is that it didn’t take much advantage of the Wiimote, although this is good as you can use a gamepad instead.

Anyway, heres a quick video of the 2-minute mode - an excuse to try out my sparkly new EasyCap USB2.0! (L@@k, only £12.99 including shipping!)

Awesome. I just found out from Wii Fanboy that one of my favorite Wii games - The Godfather Blackhand Edition - is definitely getting a sequel sometime in autumn.

Blackhand Edition
For anyone not familiar with the game, it is a GTA-esque franchise of the film. Unlike a few franchised games, it was actually quite good. It starts off in 1945 and you are free to roam a 40s/50s style New York. While the map itself isn’t a particularly convincing version of NYC, it works well with the game and lends itself quite well to drive bys, car chases and epic battles.

It took me about 3 weeks to finish it, playing pretty much solidly while I was between jobs.

The one feature that set it apart from other versions of the game (on the PS2, Xbox etc) was the control system. Now, you could say this about almost any Wii version of a multi-platform game, the The Godfather was sickening. Possible actions/gestures include: Girotting people by shaking the nunchuck/Wiimote like there was a wire between them, kicking people in the back of the knees and then shooting them in the back of the head with a pistol, holding people over a ledge to interrogate them then throwing them over the edge…

There is a reason why it was rated an 18.

Not only could you do this to enemies, but you could go all-out GTA style and do it to hookers too!

So why am I all excited about the sequel?
Okay, so if you haven’t already clocked on: I really like the first game. Yes, there is a lot of blood and gore, dangerous driving and interrogation - these are all good things. You also have to play the game quite strategically, as the ultimate aim of the game is to become the Don of NYC. Basically, this means remove or severely diminish the power of the other families in the game.

Each family had a set of businesses, warehouses, compounds and mansions that you have to take over to remove them. This was good fun, as the emphasis was on killin’ shit (remember the turf wars section in GTA: San Andreas? Sort of like that… But more 40s-ish). However, you had to carefully chose your next hit, your next property to take over if you were to get anywhere fast.

Sure, you could be at the point where you only need to take over a mansion to remove one family, but at the same time be getting heat from another family. Solution? Take out some of that other family. Yes, it’s faint, but there is an element of strategy, which set the game apart from all the other shooter/RPG type games around at the time.

So, this is why I’m excited about the sequel:

“It’s a game that I think we’ll be talking a lot about this fall,” Riccitiello told investors. “You can play this game both at the street level, much like a GTA-style game, but you can also play it top-down, almost like you’re in an RTS, controlling the strategy of the boroughs so you can see what’s going on…”

Source

Wow. So, the game play is going to be similar to the first version (hopefully with a few graphical improvements!), but with more emphasis on the strategic element! Well done EA! They’ve obviously recognized one aspect of the game that sets it aside somewhat from similar titles and are planning on capitalizing on that.

So, EA have realized that this game has a massive potential in a RTS-type sequel to this game. What would make it successful? Here is a list of a few features that I would like to see.

• Keep the original game’s basic game play.
  It was awesome. Don’t change that. It looks as it that is the current plan anyway - it would be upsetting if they took away any of the street level stuff because I think they’ve got it right, especially with the special move/gestures and aiming system.
• Other playable characters, à la Scarface
  An interesting feature of the recent Scarface game was that you could buy other characters to support Tony. You could also switch to these characters and play as them, gaining experience and such. Any money they made went straight to your main character, but in most other respects they were separate characters.The one thing I didn’t like about this was that there was a limited amount of missions to complete as a side character, so it got boring pretty quickly.

  I think that adding this element to Godfather could bring another dimension. They could couple this with the existing crew feature (i.e., you can hire other members of the family with varying skill levels to help you), so you could build and develop your crew through the course of the game.

• Autonomous crews
  One unique feature would be the ability to create a crew out of one of your side characters and some other family members, then assign them a task, like a unit in a more conventional RTS. Obviously you wouldn’t be able to assign them a complicated task like completing a full mission, but something more repetitive like taking over a shop or warehouse. As you develop the character, their crews get better and they can take over higher level properties, fight against stronger families, protect neighborhoods etc.
• An overhead/map view that allows you to control all this
  This feature will allow you to take an empirical view of the current state of the game and interact with crews as units on a map. You will be able to assign tasks to a crew, track their progress on their current assignment etc.
• Ability to expand the empire
  The only way to expand your empire in the original was to take over everyone elses property. This was good, but was also quite linear. I would really like to see the ability to build a new warehouse or racket. You should be able to buy real estate and develop it into some apartments, or a hotel, or a warehouse. Once it has been built, you will be able to develop a racket within it. Doing this early on in the game while you have little power would attract other families to take it over, whereas when you have more power the consequences would be worse, so they would be less likely to attack first. Other families should be able to develop properties as well, and in a similar fashion you can take them.

I’m guessing based on Riccitiello’s comment above, at least the overhead/map view will appear. The other stuff would be nice, but I guess we will just have to wait and see…

I’m finding different estimates from different sources, but according to Next-Gen, it may be around as early as this autumn. Whenever it come out, I’ll definitely get it based on how much I enjoyed the first game. I can’t wait :D

Other sources: TechShout, IGN, Next-Gen.

Lots of Arduino based projects seem to be appearing on my reading list recently, especially from Hackaday. I used to be quite interested in PIC Microcontrollers but I was put off a bit because you could only really program them with ASM, unless you payed for an expensive C compiler.

The Arduino is based on the Atmel ATmega microcontroller, and consists of a board containing the microcontroller as well as some basic auxiliary hardware for programming the chip. There is a simple development environment avaiable, which appears to use C.

Here are a few cool projects I’ve seen in the last couple of weeks.

• 3 Wire Interface for HD4470 LCD Displays
  A few years ago I made a clock using one of these displays, which was controlled by the parallel port of an old NetBSD machine I had lying around. I know it was possible to control them using 4 data lines and a couple of control lines, 3 is insane!
• RGB Combination Door Lock
  Imaginative variant on the common combination door lock, using colors instead of numbers.
• Nokia Color LCD Frame
  More LCD fun - this time using a color Nokia LCD to display items from a Flickr feed.
• Reading Wii Nunchuck Data
  A guide showing how to read data from a Wii Nunchuck into the Arduino - possible applications for this: Robot controllers, camera pan/tilt controllers, general awesomeness.

If I can find some spare time and money, I might buy one and have a go at a project of my own :)

I’m really pleased with my new Nokia N95. One of my favourite features has to be the GPS, but I got a bit bored with the Maps functionality after about a week, since I know my way around pretty well, and I’m pretty handy with an A-to-Z.

Today, however, I stumbled across the Nokia Sports Tracker. It is an application aimed at runners/cyclists/hikers, which captures GPS data for a session - or ‘work out’, and allows you to upload it to their website, where you can monitor your progress, view routes on a map, share routes with other people and comment/review your and your friend’s workouts.

What impresses me most about the Sports Tracker application is the social element. While Nokia could have just developed the application for the handset and been done with it, they went one step further and added the social element.

Even better, Nokia have also taken steps to ensure that non-Nokia user’s aren’t completly excluded:

For participating and uploading your own tracks you need Nokia Sports Tracker application installed on your Nokia phone (S60 3rd edition). If you don’t have a phone, you can manually upload your existing tracks in common “GPX” data format (import functionality has been tested using GPX files generated by Garmin(tm) devices).

While I can’t find any direct link to an API, there does appear to be an official Facebook application, although it doesn’t seem to work for a lot of people (me included). The application on the handset does allow you to export data in a variety of formats however: Google Earth (KML), GPX, XML and CSV.

This fits in quite well with my new fitness regime, and as of yesterday I’m playing football weekly with some guys from work. If I can keep that up and get out for a run a couple of times a week then hopefully I won’t be such a flabby tub of lard ;-)

For anyone who does sign up, check out my profile.

Well, I learned something new today. I needed to automate a weekly backup (i.e. tar & zip) a bunch of files and automatically send the backup file to another machine. After a brief reminder on how to set up keys for passwordless SSH logins I added this as a daily entry in my crontab:

bf_name=backup-`date +%s`.tar.gz; tar czf $bf_name /files 2&> /dev/null; scp $bf_name yyy@xx.xx.xx.xx:backup/daily/

This produces a file named ‘backup-<Unix timestamp>.tar.gz’ and transfers it over to the other machine via SCP.

I really enjoyed reading this interview with Simon Bassline Smith, one of the producers behind some massive drum and bass anthems such as Cold Turkey, Harder and Everybody Pump. He has to be one of my favorite producers at the moment, so I might have to mission up to Derby sometime and see him play out.

I loved this article about writing and communicating your ideas - it is The Next Programming Skill You Should Learn. Despite not being much of a writer myself, it is pretty important to be able to communicate with the outside world in something other than code (IRC doesn’t count). Writing skills can also help you contribute to your community by writing articles for journals, or blogging etc — I guess it is an essential skill for any profession, but I’d never really seen the connection with programming.

It got me thinking about other skills that you wouldn’t necessarily associate with being a good programmer.

Listening

If theres one thing I’ve learned in the past few months on placement, it is that being a good listener is essential. As I work in a solution development role (although these days less and less), I’m usually working on something very specific to a customer’s needs, and it is important to make sure you take on board what they want so you can actually get it right first time (2nd thing I’ve learned: you don’t).

Speaking

Suprise suprise, I think it helps to be a good speaker too. I don’t mean just for presentations, but for day to day meetings, telephone conversations, chatting with collegues, etc. One of my biggest problems is that a lot of the time I have an idea, I can’t get it out coherently/quickly enough/using the right vocabulary — more down to nerves than anything else — I find that getting it out on paper, then talking about it is easier. However a little confidence goes a long way, and provided you do some preparation (memorizing your points, making some notes etc) and keep a clear head (not letting nerves get the better of you), it gets a lot easier to cope with. I know, I know, easier said than done!

Can anyone think of some other non-technical skills that could make you a better programmer/developer?

Ok, so here is the first of what I hope to be a new weekly habit - my ‘Link Box’. Since I spare far too much time reading other people’s blogs than posting to my own, I thought I might share some of the more interesting posts.

The first thing to catch my eye this week was a post from Spiteful about Consistent Hashing. I’d never really thought about how load balancing works, thinking modulus hashing was a commonly used solution. What I like about the idea of consistent hashing is how you can have resources with different capabilities, and it seems to handle a resource dropping out pretty gracefully.

Tom also mentioned memcached - specifclly how Last.fm have modified it to support consistent hashing for their caching requirements. I think memcached is a brilliant piece of software, and I’m itching to apply it in my next project (when I think one up!).

I had a look at some more distributed hash tables, and stumbled across Cacheman, a distributed hashtable written for Windows - in .NET I believe (or the client library is at least). Being a bit of a .NET (s/.NET/M$/) skeptic, I was pretty impressed at how Cacheman appears to be. After talking to a fellow student at my university who is doing his final year project in .NET (and hearing about how versatile it is), I’m going to have to take some time to learn C# or Visual C++ 2008. I’m hoping Sriram will release the source soon so that I can take a peek.

After reading up a bit more on memcached and how it works, I saw that it uses libevent - which I don’t think I’ve ever encountered before. Let me put it like this: libevent is crazy cool. It is basiclly an event-based API for file descriptors. From it’s website:

“The libevent API provides a mechanism to execute a callback function when a specific event occurs on a file descriptor or after a timeout has been reached. Furthermore, libevent also support callbacks due to signals or regular timeouts. “

I’m going to have a play with this tonight and see if I can make some crazy event-driven server. Maybe something like Third Rail’s example of how to write a simple web server using libevent in only 40 lines of code!

So there you have it. A weeks worth of interesting links - one for everyday I’ve gone to work and pretended to be busy. I’ll try and prepare one for next week, if you are interested.