the internet is leaking
February 7, 2009 @ 02:47
Sorry to post this but it was too amusing not to share.
In Obama’s autobiography he quotes a friend who used to swear a lot. Obama read’s the audiobook version of his own book.
(I’m not saying swearing is good/bad or that Obama is therefore good/bad because of this. However I’m still childish enough that this makes me giggle like an idiot…)
February 2, 2009 @ 19:05
Came across a really interesting blog on the web the other day called Naked Generations. It’s a company-run blog for a for-profit company, but I must say it’s definitely one of the most interesting blogs I read (out of over a hundred).
Apparently I’m a member of Generation Y as I was born in 1984. As I’ve been working in the last few years, especially in my time at BT, I’ve found myself having a very different attitude to my older coworkers. I’ve sometimes felt that maybe I’m just a “rebel” and need to learn to conform, but reading this blog has been a bit of a wake-up call in helping me to realise why I do some of the things I do and how I can be better motivated.
I’d say it’s a must-read if you are either in Generation Y yourself, or you are a manager who has staff from Generation Y working for you and want to understand how to keep them well motivated.
If you want to find out even more about this stuff, the company behind the blog Naked Generations does consultancy and have worked with some pretty big names already including the British government.
Check it out!
Posted in Random
December 16, 2008 @ 02:08
It’s been a frantic few months at work and with doing lots of different stuff outside of work (helping lead worship at church, helping lead an Alpha group and rock-climbing) but on my time at home, when I’ve shunned the invitation of a £4 pint (South-East London, you are awesome but you are expensive 
) I’ve found some time to unwind with some of this seasons great games.
My most recent addition was Far Cry 2. It’s available for PC, PS3 and Xbox 360.
The following video gives you a nice feeling for the combat and some gameplay without any real spoilers:
As you have seen Far Cry 2 is absolutely stunning, the video really doesn’t do it justice. When you see the shadows cast by the branches of the trees, the beams of light through mist or your first sunset you will truly be amazed. It’s definitely the most visually attractive game I’ve played and this level of polish is consistent throughout the game. The voice acting is pretty good, the weapons sound meaty, satisfying and realistic and the open “world” is spacious yet varied. The best thing about Far Cry 2 though that it actually plays well on reasonable hardware unlike some other beautiful games we could mention. My machine hasn’t been upgraded for a year and a half and it still was the best looking game I’ve ever played. Obviously it’s not going to run on your Pentium III but if you have a reasonably decent machine or a console be prepared for a treat.
Something that really adds to Far Cry 2′s immersion is that you are always kept in first person, regardless of what you character is doing. You can see this used to great effect with the healing animations video below:
If you’ll excuse the clichéd simile, computer games are much like women. When they are excessively attractive (like my better half) that may initially pique your interest. However, if they are boring or no fun then it’s game-over (unlike my better half). Far Cry 2 is a beautiful woman but not one that will appeal to all those who admire her on looks alone. As I keep saying, it really is gorgeous but it’s gameplay is perhaps not what you might expect from a very mainstream shooter (like COD4 or Half-Life 2). Although it is filled almost wholly with action (don’t expect any deep RPG-style interaction here or a dynamic “quest”) it allows the player a large degree of freedom in choosing what to do at any current time. Want to avoid the enemies? Take a boat down the river or go diamond hunting. Want to get around quickly without any interaction? Take a bus. Want to just blow stuff up? Take an assassination mission. Want to get a better selection of weapons? Take an arms dealer mission. True, most of the missions involve blowing stuff up, capturing things and then killing the guards before they kill you but this is countered by the to travel between missions and and exploration whilst diamond hunting.
This may sound like a repetitive game and, to an extent, it is. Despite this, I can’t personally recall ever being bored as I was free to just chose to stop doing anything I didn’t feel like at the time as almost nothing is time-critical. This isn’t a game for RPG/RTS types; it isn’t particularly cerebral, the story is decent enough but not as strongly driven as I’d perhaps have liked through the main missions. The buddy characters you’ll meet introduce some nice gameplay elements and add a bit of diversity through their random assignment (you’ll get different buddies on each playthrough). I would that even with the above downers this is the best straight-FPS game I’ve seen since Half-Life 2 and its Episodes.
If you are at all into FPS games or ever have been I strongly recommend picking up a copy and giving Far Cry 2 a shot. I bought it for <£30 and played it for 30 hours before completion and then immediately started another playthrough. It’s now available on Amazon for just £17
Let me know what you think!
Posted in Computer Games
September 27, 2008 @ 01:14
Blog from KOrganizer? What kind of madness is this? Apparently some crazy (but yet incredibly good looking) fool decided to give you the ability to post journals from KOrganizer to your blog. Let’s learn how to do it!
Firstly open KOrganizer.
When it has opened right-click anywhere in the “Calendars” area in the bottom-left (marked with the red ellipse) and select “Add…” from the drop-down menu that appears.
Select “Journal in a blog” (marked with a red ellipse) from the “Resource Configuration” dialog.
Fill in the “Resource Configuration” dialog.
You should now see your new blog resource displayed in the bottom-left corner (marked with the red ellipse). Let’s try making a new blog post. Activate the journal view by clicking the journal button (marked with the green ellipse).
We are now in the journal view and you can see on the left-hand pane that KOrganizer has successfully downloaded some of my blog posts. If we want to create a new one then click on the add journal button (marked with the red ellipse).
Fill in the “Edit Journal Entry” dialog.
When you click “OK” you may be prompted which resource you wish to save to. Select the resource we just created (marked with the red ellipse).
If you chose “on every change” for “Automatic Save” in the “Resource Configuration” dialog then your post has probably whizzed its way off to your blog already. If not, you can manually save it by right-clicking on your resource (marked with the red ellipse) and selecting “Save” from the drop-down menu that appears.
I hope this was and is useful to some people. If you find any bugs, have any problems or want any other features then please let me know either by email, my posting on this blog or by filing a bug in the KDE bugtracker.
Posted in Software Development