Category: Uncategorized

I was going a bit square-eyed from all this coding so I took the morning off (I’m coding again now!). To get away from all the explosions and guns and weapons of GSB, I had a relaxing morning at THE IMPERIAL WAR MUSEUM. Which is in London, and not *that* much of a trip. I’ve been reading churchills war diaries and playing company of heroes, so what the hell eh?
I conclude from my trip that the V2 rocket is HUGE, and that those PAK anti-tank guns from company of heroes are actually quite small. I also conclude that evil though they were (The holocaust museum makes that perfectly clear), the Nazis had some cool tank designs. Here is me stood nonchalantly next to the jagdpanther at the museum:

I’m working on AI behavior code. Fortunately I think I may have solved a big of a horrid fighter+escort+engage enemy bug whilst I was on the train, so I’m coding it now. If it all works, I might release a 1.05 patch tonight, mroe likely tomorrow, after some proper testing.

Have you read Outliers? It’s a book by Malcolm Gladwell. Not his best book,  but it’s quite good. It’s basically a theory that assumes that really successful talented people get where they are because they just put the hours in. He looks at The Beatles, Bill Gates, Sports stars, all different areas of work and investigates peoples backgrounds.

The guess is that you need to do something for 10,000 hours to get good at it, which is roughly 10 years full time. The Beatles had performed for that length of time before they became an overnight success :D

I’m a strong believer in the idea that almost anyone can do anything if they just put the hours in and concentrate. I occasionally muck around playing a digital piano. I’m not very good. My limits are the intro to Fur Elise and the intro to Wait For Sleep by Dream Theater. That’s about it. But I *know* that if I spent 10 years full time really going for it in terms of practice I’d get bloody good at it.

They say that school isn’t about teaching you stuff ‘per-se’, but teaching you how to learn. That’s a valuable thing to know. If the thought of sitting down with a book and learning some new skill depresses you, it’s really worth beating that. It opens up so many possibilities.

I have absolutely zero natural aptitude for programming. my DNA is pretty similar to everyone else’s.  I went to a relatively good school (state-run) and my mother taught me to read very young. Everything else was hard work.

You can tell I have no actual talent, because I’ve probably done my 10,00 hours and I’m still not rich or famous. I started programming at age 11 on the ZX81. I’m 40 this year.

I’m still trying though :D

I don’t normally blog about other indie games, I find most of them to be a bit too casual and cuddly for my liking, but I just added a new game to the ones I sell through positech.co.uk and I think it might appeal to any of you who are following gratuitousspacebattles.

This is it:

When I tried the demo, I ended up playing it for much longer than I assumed I would. Give it a go.

Linky here:

Light Of Altair

In one of the embarrasing and frankly depressing ‘debates’ on copyright over at piracy-friendly slashdot, I spotted this gem (when discussing copyright on books):

Books: Anyone can write anything anywhere that everyone everywhere can read all instantly, why should anyone be paid for doing what anyone can do from the smallest child to the oldest altzheimers victim.

Which is just laughably insulting and stupid, but someone has already replied with this pithy remark:

The smallest child to the oldest Alzheimer’s victim could design a bridge, too. That doesn’t mean I’d want to drive over it. Are you really suggesting that author’s shouldn’t be paid?

I think gradually over the years more and more people are losing patience with the hardcore anti-copyright zealots. I’m all for campaigns against invasive DRM or sticking up for fair use rights, but its when people insist that the fact that the first mickey mouse cartoon is under copyright still, that we must live in a fascist state that it frustrates me.

I’m reading churchills war diaries (about a billion pages long), and am currently on the rise of Hitler. It puts into perspective all the modern rich western kids cries about freedom of speech and fascism that is apparently just preventing you downloading torrents of the latest Hollywood movies. Free speech is very vital, precious, and worth dying for. To use it in connection with torrenting movies and games is frankly insulting to everyone who fought and died to defend free speech.

Bah!

On Friday we noticed our youngest (3 years) cat had stopped eating and was subdued. Jack ALWAYS wants to eat, so this was very weird. He didn’t show any interest even in cat treats. Throughout Saturday and Sunday we got more and more worried because he had eaten almost nothing and didn’t seem to want to move. He also wanted to sit outside in the rain.

Monday morning he went straight to the vets. He had a high temperature and an eye infection, which they gave him injections and eye drops for. On Tuesday, he went back to the vets after nothing much had changed (eyes were better but he still wouldn’t eat). They admitted him to a proper Rolf-Harris style pet hospital. There was talk of x-rays and blood tests and more.

The vets couldn’t take a blood test,a s they encountered heavy resistance from jacks claws, so they put him out for an x ray and took it while his shields were down. The results were grim, because he had serious liver and kidney problems somehow. I still suspect he has eaten something out in the garden that was a mistake.

Anyway, they kept him in overnight and put him on a drip, and did some other technical things that I don’t understand, but which make for a long and expensive price list.

This morning he is all better, he is eating, and I just picked him up and bought him home. he meowed all the way home but jumped straight out of his box and landed right by his food bowl, so he is back to normal :D

It’s great to have Jack back. The only problem is the fact that his Vet bill is a collosal chunk of this months games revenue. We need a national health service for cats :D