Author Archives: [maven]

Music for 2007

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While coding during the last month I’ve been listening to a lot of music via Pandora (a music recommendation service / internet radio station). I’m listing some of the stand-out tracks / artists I’ve enjoyed here

  • Röyksopp – The Understanding (Norwegian, kinda groovy, kinda poppy)
  • Amos Lee – Keep It Loose, Keep It Tight (relaxed)
  • UNKLE – Reign (electronic strings + big beats)
  • Crooked Fingers – Dignity and Shame (piano with slightly odd vocals)
  • Cat Power – I Found a Reason (via V for Vendetta)
  • The Prodigy – Voodoo People (Pendulum Remix) (more aggressive and faster than the original)
  • Kasabian – Club Foot (from Tony Hawk’s Project 8 trailer)
  • Frou Frou – Details (pop-rock with nice female vocals, now part of Imogen Heap)
  • M83 – Teen Angst (from the A Scanner Darkly trailer)
  • Alpinestars – Carbon Kid (from the Test Drive Unlimited soundtrack, sounds like guest vocals from Placebo)
  • Rosie Thomas – When We Were Small (Farewell, Wedding Day, Bicycle Tricycle)
  • Ryan Star – Songs from the Eye of an Elephant (piano ballads)
  • Beazley Phillips Band – Shooting Ghosts (see above)
  • Camera Obscura – Pen and Notebook (female vocals + piano)
  • Apparat – Komponent (supposedly intelligent dance music (IDM), reminded me a lot of The Notwist)
  • Apparat & Ellen Allien – Orchestra of Bubbles (this actually is IDM, song tip: Rotary)
  • Statistics – Leave Your Name & Often Lie (alternative rock with some electronica, try A Number, Not a Name or Nobody Knows Your Name)

Kompressor.app and Wavelet Image Compression Library 3.3.3

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Shortly before the year is out (and as result of my vacation), there is some fresh software to be had… 🙂
I’ve now written an Mac OS 10.4 application called Kompressor.app to compress, inspect and display WKO images. This release goes hand in hand with version 3.3.3 of the wavelet image compression library itself.
Because this is the first (semi-)proper Mac-application I’ve written, I would welcome any form of testing or feedback people can provide, especially on the user-interface side. The application is universal and thus should work on PPC and Intel Macs.
Here’s a bit (all of it actually) of the supplied online help to get started… Continue reading →

Phoenix Wright 2 – Justice for All

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I’ve imported the Japanese DS version of this – which is a budget release as it’s “only” a direct remake of the GBA version, which can also be played completely in English. The translation is very well done and the humour is as good as ever, although there are two or three spelling mistakes I’ve noticed so far.

The game itself is typical Phoenix Wright silliness (probably a bit more silly than its predecessor actually) with quite a lot of recycled content. Still, if you enjoyed the first Phoenix Wright, you’ll enjoy this too, although some of the music and certain coincidences are more hamstrung than before.

Low-Level Libraries and High-Level Languages

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If you want to write a library that could relatively easily be used in embedded systems (say Xbox 360 / PS3) as well as being generally portable (Windows, Linux, Mac OS), then you end up in a bit of a bind. You can use C and be on the safe side, but for some types of programming C is rather cumbersome (see for example the Io language). You can use C++ (or one of its subsets), but now any client of the library has to understand the C++ ABI (which AFAIK only C++ does). Another option is to use whichever language is best suited to solving the problem you’re addressing in the library, but that usually imposes constraints on what can use or bridge to the library (e.g. if I were to write a library in Python, how do I use that from an application written in C++?).

Now, if whatever you’re coding is a low-level component, then this restriction becomes even more imposing because many higher-level pieces are now depending on and interacting with the library itself.
If you restrict yourself to running on Windows only (as that is the only platform where you can realistically rely on the CLR run-time being available) and don’t mind its overhead, then using .NET and the CLR will solve this problem for you nicely. For running on anything else, you’re pretty much screwed… 🙁

What’s happening?

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Work is keeping me fairly busy (preparing for a conference in Toulouse), and not that much terribly exciting has happened. I (un-)am patiently waiting for my Mac Pro (having chosen a decent 3D card as well as 802.11 has moved the ETA to mid-September), Rhythm Tengoku (Rhythm Heaven) is great (I am still looking for the song from the festival-stage), and Chromehounds is regularly taking up my evenings.

This game has gotten very unfair reviews, founded on its mediocre single-player mode, but the squad-based persistent online war redeems it (although there still are a number of annoying bugs left to be ironed out by the upcoming patch). The way in which it encourages teamplay is cleverly designed, and it is the main reason I play. There is nothing else like it. If your are looking for a twitch-shooter, stick to Halo 2, but if you’re lusting for something more strategic and substantial (with endless options for building your own mech), this might be for you. Some comments from Penny Arcade might help explain what makes this game good. 🙂

Vernor Vinge – “Rainbows End”

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As you may have noticed, I really enjoy Vinge’s books. As an aside, I noticed his books via a mention of one of them by John Carmack during an interview…

Anyway, on to the book itself. It’s rather short, in particular for a Vernor Vinge “novel” at approximately 370 pages, which translates into about three enjoyable evenings. Considering only the hardcover version is currently out, this may be a bit steep for some.

The time it is set in feels very similar to Neal Stephenson’s “Snow Crash”, so it’s definitely near future extrapolation and often arrives at the same conclusions (or solutions to current problems) that Stephenson does. It does not involve as much action, though, although things speed up towards the end of the book.

As is common with Vinge, the distinction between who is good and who is bad is not clear cut. Nevertheless, there is (at least) one near enough villain (if only due to the measures he is willing to take to achieve his ultimate goal). At first, there don’t seem to be any genuinely likeable characters, although all of them are intriguing and you can see why they act the way the do.

The novel does use some sort of annoying semi-XML convention for showing silent messages between characters, which makes those a tad hard to parse, but in some ways can also be seen as elaborate set-up for jokes on cryptography conventions. Actually, the whole novel is full of humour (and cynicism) and some very nice word-play. It is intelligent, but neither forcedly so nor does it hit in the face with an attitude of “I’m proper literature”. Even the title has a funny twist…

Thankfully, the book is not all fun and some very real problems (just scan chapter titles for some obvious examples) are being looked at. Some in detail, some in passing, but usually without passing judgement – that is very much left to the reader, which IMO is a good thing. It is also fairly suspenseful, although not with as much of an overall feeling of dread as “A Deepness in the Sky” or “A Fire upon the Deep”.

It has a good beginning, it has a good middle part, and – most important of all – it has a good ending. Very recommended.

Black (Xbox)

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I’ve been playing (and finishing ;)) Black on my Xbox 360, as it is one (if not the only one) of the more recent Xbox games that are backwards-compatible. Technically, it is a very good showcase of what is possible on the Xbox / PS2 (as we are used to from Criterion), although there still are some glitches in the emulator (hanging, black overlay on the screen so can’t see anything (which goes away while you open the guide, incidentally)).

The game plays differently enough to other first person shooters (focus on headshots, nearly every enemy has some form of body armor, blowing stuff up, taking cover, big “Matrix Lobby” shoot-outs), but there is not too much variety; but then the game is rather short (which I didn’t mind). The “story” / video sequences are useless and going back to these indiviual missions (which are set in the same region) after the cohesive single-player campaign of something like GRAW feels jarring.
I found it was quite challenging on Normal, you really have to move fairly slowly, going in guns blazing usually ended with me being dead. No infinitely respawning enemies is a plus, a big minus for reinforcements being teleported in according to the scripted progression, though.

Not worth full-price IMO, but if you find it used / discounted (I bought it for 20 quid from Amazon) and like blowing stuff up, it’s well worth it.