Author: iandick

What a Result!

Great result tonight for Rangers. Nobody could say they were lucky over the two legs this time. So many accuse Rangers this season of being the luckiest team out there. I didn’t know playing to your strengths and actually having some tactical nous meant that you were lucky! Certainly they have rode their luck at times as all teams on a good run have to, but I do believe that you make your own luck.

So still competing in three competitions and a packed end of season. What can they achieve? What will they sacrifice if anything? Will the players have the energy to keep competing? I believe they will. Surely it’s nights like this that will spur them on over the coming weeks? Surely they would take the volume of games over sitting out a competition? Can’t wait for the next couple of weeks – big games and not just domestically. Come on!!

I Need Data

So with Google App Engine announced, iPhone SDK’s and me hacking more and more at work my thoughts have been turning to projects in my own time. Totally daft as I have little time, but that seems to be the way. The more I need to do, the more I want to take on. Flawed.

Anyway, a lot of these projects need data which can be difficult to find. Thinking back to Forza Leagues last year, finding stock icons, flags of the world and some other bits and pieces wasn’t always easy. So when I read this post on why we need a Wikipedia for Data it just struck a chord. How great it would be if there was a general site for free to use data. ReadWriteWeb also have a great resource for Open Data sources. I know someone who would love to get hands on easy to use TV listings and movie times.

Rumble

So only a day after picking up GT5 Prologue I decided that the PS3 pad really had to go…and that meant ordering an import Dual Shock 3 from Hong Kong. A couple of days later and the pad was delivered. It certainly doesn’t address many of the flaws of the PS3 pad but it did do at least two vital things – add weight and provide rumble support.

Dual Shock 3

The rumble feedback makes all the difference and add’s to the realism in GT5 (thoughts on this soon). It also makes gaming on the PS3 feel more familiar. When rumble was first added to the PS1 pad’s it all felt a bit odd at first but it then became default for all consoles and it’s taken as a given. Gaming on the initial PS3 pad just felt…empty. This has now been resolved and it’s also good to get back to a pad with weight which also feels more rebust than the creaky original.

It’s a real shame though that Sony didn’t think to redesign the appalling triggers, fix the dead zones on the sticks and tweak the design so that they are less cramp inducing. Many can debate on which console is the best. Little will argue that the 360 pad is one of the best ever which smacks the PS3 pad silly.

Giveth with one…taketh with the other

More Virgin Media news and this time you really do wonder what’s going on! The one that grabs most headlines is that they are to pilot a scheme working with the BPI to send letters to users downloading music illegally via P2P. The pilot is not up and running but according to the Telegraph is starting soon. In some ways it’s no big surprise as there’s been lot’s of talk about a proposed three strikes and your out system. Indeed some ISP’s have already sent letters to users warning them about the content or bandwidth they are using. As long as there are no false positives and the action they are taking is clear, transparent and applied to all users can anyone really complain? Not really, although I’m still surprised that they will act in cases of ‘suspected’ piracy. I would damn well hope they act when they have concrete evidence and it’s not just a way of targeting heavy downloaders and their Linux iso’s.

What makes this all a bit more odd is that Virgin Media are beta testing a new Usenet service. In conjuntion with Highwinds they are looking to improve their newsgroup offering. What are newsgroups – well according to Virgin they are:

…discussion forums (usually on a specific topic) but can also be used to download and upload files such as photos and videos.

No shit Sherlock. Their binary retention will be at least 7 days and text retention over 90 days. Not bad for a free service although nothing like the service you get from providers like Giganews. Notice also that newsgroups are great for photo’s and videos. No music to be found though. Or applications, games, books etc. Just photo’s and video’s.

This doesn’t bother me as much as it used to. What happens with one provider will eventually happen to all. What I want is a reliable fast connection at a reasonable price. On reflection this isn’t what Virgin are offering although I must admit to it being prety bullet proof compared to ADSL. Time to switch?

PS3 – PC In Disguise

The whole point of a console is to provide great looking games that are guaranteed to work without the hassle of installing the game, patching it, opening up firewall ports and configuring server and friend lists on a per game basis. It’s what I’ve become used to with the original Xbox and then the 360. So why is the PS3 so fucked up?

Before I rant on I should say this isn’t a Microsoft fanboy love in post. The PS3 is a great media player and there’s lot’s of things I really like about it compared to the 360. However the amount of firmware updates it’s now had are bordering on the ridiculous. Even worse, I still can’t access my friends list, chat to friends, playback music or easily swap to another game while in a current game. I need to quit and go back to the XMB and then I can chat etc. It feels so backwards when compared to the 360. Sony are promising in game XMB this year but I’ll believe it when I see it.

Another growing trend on the PS3 is installation of games. If you download anything from PSN then you then have to install it. This applies to all games, from the small 40Meg games up to gigabyte installs for Warhawk and GT5:Prologue. However more and more games insist on an install before you can even play the game. Most Capcom games and now GT5:Prologue want to install content on the hard drive. While this allegedly improves performance this step is taking up to 20 mins – hardly a console experience. Makes me chuckle when I think back to MS launching the original Xbox and how Sony sneered that it used a hard disk and was really just a PC. How times have changed.

Further annoyance with GT5 was an update you had to download before you could play the game. This took about an hour for me to download but I was lucky. I know a couple of people that had to try many times before the download actually worked. Grrrr. Once in the game GT5 lists ports that should be opened as well for online play. I’ve not had to do that for a game in years. How many people would know what to do?

I think that’s my major annoyance on the PS3. It feels bitty compared to the unified experience on the 360. It feels like PC gaming. Simple tasks on the 360 are made difficult or impossible on the PS3. Headset’s are a given on the 360 yet on the PS3, because they aren’t standard, you get issues. Quiet games or worse, compatibility issues within games. It’s for all those reasons, plus the fact that the majority of friends are using the 360, that non platform exclusives are always purchased for the 360 and there is nothing that Sony are doing that look like changing my mind. Shame.

WordPress 2.5

WordPress has just updated to 2.5 and despite having reservations the test blog worked fine so I upgraded this site just a few minute ago. Functionality wise there isn’t a tremendous amount changed on first inspection. However digging deeper reveals some major changes that make running a blog easier and have also meant a reduction on plugin dependency which is always a good thing.

Wordpress DashboardYou’ll first notice the changed admin and dashboard screens. I still feel pretty mixed about the changes. I think the dashboard is a lot better and now allows you to control what feeds to display without hacking the back end. Plugins, options and management screen layouts are also improved. One nice little add-on is that the dahsboard can now be skinned too and no doubt we’ll see some great colour scheme’s over the coming weeks.

Write Page

I’m not sold on the write page though. Previously you could drag and drop panes to show/hide the options you needed. This meant I could have tags and categories where I couldn’t miss them. Now they are pushed down the page and I know I will miss setting them from time to time. I guess in the grand scheme it’s not a major issue but it feels like a backward step. Another nice add-on is better tag management so I’ve disabled the plugin I was using to help with tags. Feeds should also no longer break at the more tag, reversing an unpopular change…and again removing a plugin I was using.

Another step in making things easier is plugin installs. Instead of just informing you when a new plugin is available you can now install the updated plugin from the dashboard. This only works for WordPress hosted plugins but is a really nice feature. Gravatar support is also built in so no need for separate plugins although some changes to themes are required to support this.

Although there are many more changes the final ones that may affect you are to the visual post editor. It now doesn’t break your HTML code anymore and it also has a declutter mode which allows you to focus on the writing.

Overall there are more +ve’s than -ve’s and I’m sure plugins will help to tidy up the write screen so I can get it just the way I like it. Get 2.5 here. Note the WordPress site has also had a lick of paint too. Nice.

Shady Virgin

Virgin have been running STM (Subscriber Traffic Management) for a while now. To be honest I haven’t felt much impact although it certainly hasn’t increased my speeds any by affecting ‘the top 3%’ of users downloading or uploading at peak times. I’ve got no real problems with the rules but I do have problems when Virgin apply them when they like at times of their choosing.

Now Virgin have confirmed to a user that STM applies at different times at bank holidays and weekends. That would explain why I was throttled when grabbing some Oracle iso’s a few weekends ago. I put it down to general slowness in the area but it picked up quickly a few hours later. I guess it shows how bad the service can be if I people are throttled without really realising it. Of course there’s nothing on Virgins official page about this. This all smacks of Plusnet when they had to deal with the increased pressures of downloads against cost to user. While the STM is sensible in principle at least tell us how and when it will be applied. Honesty makes a big difference.

Some of the other posts in the link above got me thinking though. Is it really a slippery step to a pay as you go broadband service? Great speeds both down and up but you pay per GB? Is that the most fair way of moving forward with broadband in the future? I’ve no clue but it will be interesting to see how the next 12-18 months change the landscape (if at all) with the increased usage of video and the move to HD by more and more people. 25GB download for just one film? No thanks, not at today’s speeds. I’m sure the music and film industry would love a move to that kind of model. I’d just like to see more consistency for my money…current speed is 3MB which certainly isn’t what I’m paying for.

Easter Eggs

As it was quite a nice day yesterday I took a walk down to Maplins for a couple of bit’s and pieces which also meant I got to see the annual Easter Egg Run to Yorkhill Hospital. There were thousands of bikes!

Endless

The noise was superb and even 30 mins after it had started there were still bikes passing by. I can remember when this event started. I was living in Argyle Street and over 3 or 4 years it grew from a few hundred to a few thousand bikes. Estimates yesterday were of over 10,000 bikes from across the UK. Impressive.

Great Trike

Full set of blurry pic’s can be found here.