This is just an short update while I work on my main post (which should be out over the next couple of days), but there’s an article over on ZDNet which  essentially states that the 3D TV “revolution” is a waste of time!  I could have said that ages ago, but yeah… 3D TV is totally pointless.  I’m actually even wondering if the 3DS might be a bit giimmicky, but I’m gonna let it slide for now.  3D TV itself is rather pointless as a technology, but then the companies seem to expect (or rather hope) that we’ll spend money on a technology that at present is nothing more than a gimmick, especially when we’re barely taking advantage of HD at present!  Yes, I’m all for innovation and all that, but honestly, 3D TV is pretty much just a fad at present and I don’t see it becoming any more than that considering we’re still trying to get used to HD, which as of yet still isn’t a standard technology.  The ZDNet article implied that instead of adding a new gimmick to TVs, they should focus on making HD TVs more affordable and available to the masses.  And given in the UK there’s a Digital Switchover planned over the next couple years, I do think this is more important.  Admittedly though, where I live has no digital coverage at all, and only poor analogue coverage… I wish that were sorted out.  So, instead of fixing present tech, people seem more focused on “The Next Big Thing”, even though in this case, what’s being touted as such is just a gimmick.

Okay, maybe I should go back to the 3DS; I had a chance to play one for a little while, both at the airport before flying to the States and also in a local Walmart, so I am at least reasonably well informed about the 3DS.  I have also glanced at the 3DS Wikipedia article, and while I’m intrigued by the majority of the 3DS’s specs, I’m still not 100% sure about the 3D aspect.  Even more amusing is the fact that the cameras haven’t even been upgraded from the 0.3MP!  It’s not like I’m expecting something like 16MP with the cameras, but the least they could do is increase the sensors to 1 or 2MP; those are cheap enough to at least provide decent resolution on a larger monitor; consider the fact that the SD Card can be used elsewhere, like for printing pictures to paper… also consider that a picture resolution that is over 3-6 times larger than the camera of the DSi, which means sharper pictures.  There has already been comments (based on what has been said in the article) that 3D versions of movies look worse than their 2D counterparts, but then again that is to be expected given the way the films were initially filmed.  I suppose though, to give Nintendo its due, it did at least stick 2 camera sensors on the front so the 3D effect would probably look better than what you see in the movies.  Ironically, I was actually thinking Anaglyph 3D was cool (and still do to an extent), but I really don’t know how 3D adds to movies… sure, it looks good with a still image, but when it’s done with an entire movie, it starts to lose its appeal.

The reason why a still image in 3D is more appealing is because it’s just a still image and you can view it at multiple angles and it still can impress you.  Okay, maybe I’m easily amused, but that’s what I think; you’re free to disagree.  Ironically, I haven’t actually seen any 3D movies, but from the way it sounds, it’s probably best that I haven’t.  I’m also not entirely sure if it’s the sort of pop-out 3D (which is the more impressive kind) or the hologram type 3D where the background appears to have depth, although my point still remains that the tech is presently gimmicky.  However, what Jonny Chung Lee has done with 3D on the Wii strikes me as one of the most impressive uses of 3D.  Granted, this is moving into the realms of games (like I haven’t already gone there talking about the 3DS), but using 3D in games seems just a little less gimmicky than using it in movies, which just seems like an excuse to push 3DTV (and movies) in a world that’s still not fully gotten the hang of  HD yet.  At least in the case of games, there’s a better case for using 3D, although at the present stage of things it’s still not much above 3DTV.  That said however, if a game were made to properly take advantage of the 3D tech, instead of just it being an optional thing, then it may start to become worth it… but honestly, we’re looking at a few years down the line before a proper company goes down that route; you’ll find that it’s the indie and homebrew developers that embrace it first; again, look at Johnny Chung Lee’s efforts with the Wii, a system not even designed for 3D, and not only that, it’s a pretty cheap form of immersive 3D!

All that said though, Nintendo do have a better grip on 3D compared to most companies, when you consider the existence of the Virtual Boy, which was their first foray into 3D gaming.  Granted, it didn’t sell well, but Nintendo certainly learnt from their mistakes in releasing the 3DS (except for maybe still having really low resolution cameras!).  The technology is still in its infancy though, but at least the 3Ds isn’t entirely reliant on its 3D capabilities; it does have the vast DSi and DS library, in addition to the Virtual Console and other downloadable stuff to keep it going, in addition to the gradually increasing library of 3DS games.  The lesson Nintendo clearly learnt here is don’t solely rely on a gimmick to shift consoles.  The enhanced 3DS specs also mean that the system has a fair bit of untapped potential as well, so even if we don’t have games that use the 3D mode, we should at least have games that make use of the enhanced hardware of the 3DS, which will be a great prospect in itself… maybe we might finally see Final Fantasy 7 on on the DS?  That said though, I don’t quite know if the game could be fit onto a single 3DS cart, although after stealing a quick glance at some of the search results in Google (this is going to do wonders for my search results!), the cartridges apparently can store up to 8GB of data, which is more than enough for FF7, hell FF7 could fit on a UMD… though I amn’t confident to fully assert this, given I don’t know how many CDs FF7 takes up off the top of my head, so if anyone happens to know, I would appreciate being told.  Still though, even if it may just barely fit on a UMD, it should be able to fit on a 3DS cart at the very least, and even then the full 8GB capacity won”t even be needed!

I just hope they don’t make it 3D as it really doesn’t need it; what it could probably do with though is a graphical overhaul, but I’d be happy with being able to play the game as it was back in the day, or even similar to what it is like in FF3 or FF4; the fact both those games (which are pretty large, though maybe not as large as FF7) could be done in a similar style to FF7 shows that it should be possible to put FF7 on the 3DS at the very least… I wouldn’t go so far as to say that it could work on the DS with one cartridge though, especially because the DS carts hold 1 Gigabit of data, which roughly equates to about 128MB; I’ve seen the size of DS ROMs, so I know by default that it wouldn’t even store a CD’s worth of data!  Still though, FF7 appearing on the 3DS, or indeed any console is just a fanboy dream; I’m not expecting it to appear to be honest, but it’s nice to dream… it would be nice to see a remade version on the PS3 though.

Speaking of the PS3 and potential, I bet people are surprised to hear me not comment on the recent PSN outage.  Truth be told, that given I’m not home at present, there’s been less of a push for me to comment on issues that would normally affect me.  However, given that the PS3 is also related to the 3DTV gimmick, both through BluRay and also through 3D gaming (indeed, there was a patch released to help with it), it seems appropriate to talk about the PS3, or rather PSN.  A friend of mine showed me this article on IGN the other day, and I was not impressed with it.  I’m aware that it’s a joke, but all it really does is piss off those who use PSN, while giving the PS Haters and 360 Fanboys more ammunition to say how “crap”the PS3 is; the article comes across to me as somewhat immature and a slap in the face to those who use the PSN service.  I’m totally aware that the same thing would have happened if XBL is down, but that sort of article in any case seems immature and/or a tad petty.  Like one of the commenters said, if you’re a gamer, it shouldn’t matter what console you own.  My reasons for not having a 360 aren’t really anything to do with hating Microsoft (though I amn’t exactly a fan of theirs either); my reason is that I cannot justify yet another MS system in my house, given I already have 2 Windows desktops, as well as this Windows laptop and a broken Windows laptop.  There’s also the fact that I have a rake of PS1 games which I wouldn’t want to give away and also I wanted a Bluray drive, so my reasons for buying a PS3 were purely based upon practicality rather out of dislike.  Admittedly, I’d have loved a 60GB PS3 (a US version), and the restored option to install Linux (hint hint Sony), but the system itself (and PSN too) is pretty solid.

I would also say the same about the XBL service too, given there’s never been any problems that I have been made aware of.  I do quite enjoy playing on the 360, even if it’s only Rock Band 3 mostly, although I’m not a big fan of the controller, but that said, it’s not mind-bogglingly difficult to use; my dislike of the controller stems more from the fact that I prefer how a PS controller feels.  Anyway, I digress… PSN outage opinion, yes?  My major concern would lie with my account details,which may or may not have been compromised; as a result, as soon as I’m able to I am totally going to have change my accounts system around for websites I access, just to prevent my details from being compromised elsewhere.  My payment details are thankfully safe, because I’ve had 2-3 new cards issued since then, but even so, others wouldn’t necessarily be so lucky (though perhaps the payment details are safe if they’re separate from account details).  Given PSN has 60 million users around the world, even some of those account details being compromised is still dangerous; we’re still looking at a figure in the millions at least, which makes me think if I ever want to buy something on PSN (or anywhere else like that in the future), I’m gonna stick to the pre-paid cards instead… it’s certainly safer!  That’s enough about me though… what about Sony’s way of handling things?

Well, from what I hear, Sony is handling things poorly, although given what they’ve done in the past, that’s kind of par for course with them anyway; that’s not a stab at all, just look at what they’ve done in the past and you’ll see what I mean.  I can’t help but wonder if this “attack” is related to what happened with the “GeoHot Incident”, as well as the removal of Linux, amongst other things it could be.  I know Sony isn’t exactly in people’s good books at the moment.  I know another company in the games industry who also isn’t in people’s good books either… you could say that some people are “barking mad” about one of their releases, but I won’t be discussing them here; this is merely a hint of what I’ll be tackling next.  In fact, I do actually have a lot of the post done, but it still needs working on.  Anyway, enough about that, let’s get back to Sony/PSN.  Sony being tight-lipped about the entire incident isn’t really going to do it any favours either… nor is the lack of compensation due to the outage.  The fact that MS actually gives every (Gold & Silver) XBL Member a free XBLA game for any outages is something that Sony should really take note of.

It’s ironic that a company like MS that is disliked by so many people actually knows how to properly treat its customers… then we have Sony, who caused a lot of controversey with their rootkit installer in 2005, and more recently removed the option to install Linux, after promising months before that it wasn’t going to be removed, and then subsequently locking people out of PSN if people refused to update.  When you consider the most recent incident, along with the Geohot thing that was recently settled, it’s no surprise Sony got attacked.  I’m not saying it’s right or anything (why would I, given my personal details are on there too?), but it’s easy to see why Sony were attacked, and the way they’re acting now just goes to show how much the consumer is getting screwed over by them.  On a random note, if this did happen to XBL, I realised I’d get a free game out of it, simply for being an XBL Member, which is nice, but yeah… that was just a random thought.  I understand that a company is out to make money, but at the same time, it’s not exactly morally right to essentially take a customer’s money, then screw them over by denying them advertised features… I don’t think even MS were that bad, and even if they were, they have at least learnt from their mistakes.

Someone I spoke to (though don’t like) on a chat room I frequent said that he hoped Apple would be next, although I’m not quite sure that Apple have generated quite the backlash against people that Sony have.  Granted, I’m not exactly happy with Apple, given how they have screwed developers over, the fact you need a Mac to develop for their systems, the fact they want to clamp down on open standards and that their iStore is subject to extremely draconian rules, but even then they haven’t quite generated the amount of shall we say “fury” that Sony has.  I certainly won’t be buying another iPod ever again in any case, and in fact, I’m quite happy with my Sansa Clip Plus, although I need to pick up a 32GB SDHC Card for it so it can store up to 40GB of songs; for what is roughly a matchbox-sized device, it is really impressive with what it can do… I certainly can’t wait to properly put it through its paces from next week.  I especially like that the playback time for MP3s is in the double digits… I think 16  hours was the advertised battery life, which will be great for when I fly home, although the plane I was on when flying between Canada and the UK did have a USB port, so I can recharge it, plus listen to their music and watch movies, so I won’t rely on it too much till after I touch down in Heathrow.

All that aside though, it’ll be interesting to see how long before PSN is back up, and what Sony will say happened, and also what the damage is.  I am expecting an email about that either by the end of this month or early into next.  Suffice it to say, I think I need to start beefing my security methods up a bit, especially where it comes to my money or access to it.  I’d be recommending that others do the same as well, in case an attack of this magnitude happens again… that first attack may have been just to prove a point as I’m not sure if anyone claimed responsibility for the attack yet.  What I do know is that the downtime has cost Sony allegedly between $20 Million to $24 Billion, although I think the latter figure’s a bit extreme.  And my bad, it appears (according to this article) that Sony may actually compensate users after all.  It’s kind of hard nailing details down when this post is being written on the fly, though I’m expecting more additions and edits to be made when the proper story comes forward, because there’s a lot of rumours flying around too about this story.  Rest assured that while I don’t know the full extent of the details now, I will eventually find out, between reading subsequent news articles and also reading the comments below.

I should end this post now as I’m nearly at 3000 words for this post, but suffice it to say, I will be watching the PSN outage with more interest and will be sure to update this post (and future related) with more factual details on this as and when I can.  I still think $24 Billion is a a it much though, but then I realise there are 60 million PSN users, so the maths do add up.  I really can’t wait to get the Gamed Up site up and running though, so I can finally do some proper reporting with stuff like this.  Anyway, that’s it for now… I’ll be back soon with another post.

Oh, actually… one last thing… I’ll end up doing less DiggerCast and DiggerFeast episodes than I originally planned, due to financial and hardware issues, but some will be done… also expect that the Stormhaven Media website will be up soon as well.  Also, Stormhaven Networks is essentially being downsized; it instead will merge everything (Stormhaven IT, Stormhaven IP, Storm Servers and Stormhaven Networks) into a single company called Stormhaven Developments, which will focus solely on software development, be it games, business software or web-based software.  I also have to develop a 5 year plan for the company soon as well.  Rest assured that nothing will really be hugely affected, though you may notice minor changes involved with Stormhaven Networks, and perhaps FSIRC, but that will be discussed at a later date.

Edit: It appears that customers’ credit card details are secure, according to an article here; it also links to the official Sony thread.  The payment data is encrypted, but that doesn’t mean it’s not 100% secure, so be warned.  It also appears the amount of PSN users is 77 million, which is a lot.  I read that the average cost of identity theft is about $319 which is where the 24 billion comes from. Admittedly, while it is nice to finally get some answers, they should have said something sooner, even if it was just to say that they are assessing the damage and to please bear with them, but I guess someone would complain about it.  There is a lot of stuff out there at the moment about this story, so I may need to revise a few things later…

Edit 2: Anonymous have stated that the PSN network outage has nothing to do with them, although they were responsible for a previous network outage at the start of the month.  Sony seems to be getting attacked a lot this month!  I did wonder if Anonymous had something to do with the attack, but given they had orchestrated an attack before, I don’t think they felt the need to proceed with another.  The hacking therefore is a concern, because as far as I’m aware, it’s not known who actually performed the attack, meaning there is an increased danger that the payment details could be compromised, even if it is encrypted.

I also paid Maplins a visit as well and got some books on robotics, soldering and electronics, as well as a book on oscilloscopes, which sparked my interest since I studied at Greenwich.  I also got another set of LED Safety Glasses (which are gonna be modded, leaving the first ones I bought intact) and also an Audiophile 2496 audio card, which I was hoping to use for helping me with music composition at a later date, although it would be more nice just to have something professional to use with MIDI.  The problem is however that it needs audio cables, and while I do have them, I don’t have the space for them, so I’m either going to have to locate an external version of the card or make the space.  It’s occurred to me that I have also lost my reciept so I need to goo looking for it, damn.  That aside, I may have to just accept that this may be the best card for my price range (I don’t want to pay a lot more to be honest) and get a Game Port to USB adaptor, which to be honest may not be a bad idea, seeing as they’re cheap enough at 8 quid each!  I really only wanted that expensive card for the built-in MIDI port, and considering I can have a decent audio card with a cheaper separate bit, it may be best off just going down this route.  I have too many game controllers that require Game Ports to just drop the idea; I didn’t realise till much later that I had no MIDI port on my soundcard!  Another bonus as well is that it has some composing software with it, as well as some loops, so that’ll help me some more.

I think I could do with regorganising my PC both inside and outside, as there’s cables everywhere!  I have also been considering moving my router downstairs as well, so I can free up some space on my storage cabinet.  On that note as well, I should consider getting myself a printer server so I can use the printer with the network.  It might also be in my best interests to get an Ethernet-over-Power adaptor as well as although my desktop will have a wireless card in it, I will most likely want to wire it up too!  And if I don’t use it on the PC, it was going to be used on the PS3 as the wireless is notoriously unreliable on it, although that may be due to the fact that it doesn’t like AES encryption for some reason.  Perhaps this will be rectified in another update, but for now it’s damn annoying!  I phased out 802.11b and WEP in my network, due to both security and practicality issues… the majority of my devices are G compatible, and use WPA/WPA2 although my laptop is N, but I dunno if it’s been standardised yet, not that it’ll be beneficial to me, to be honest as most of my devices are G.  I was going to use a USB stick as an AP (access point) for my older DS games as it seems that the DS games only support B and WEP which I think is rather silly, but I can’t do a lot about it to be honest… oh well.  Moving my router downstairs would allow me to wire up my PS2 and PS3, thus bypassing the need for wireless.  Although I don’t know why I’d put my PS2 online as I’ve got no games that support the feature!  I prefer wireless (despite the insecurity of it), seeing as it means that I don’t have as many wires about and it keeps the place tidier.

Something tells me though that when I do decide to move the router, I’m going to have immense fun rearranging the place, seeing as I want to make the wires look as inconspicious as possible.  I already have a wire untangled from when I wired up my laptop (in my bedroom) to the router in the study although that just barely reached and I had to move the router as it was a foot short!  It was 3 foot short for if I wanted it on my lap in bed so I had to switch to the wireless again, after I worked out why it ouldn’t connect!  It is nice to know that I’ve learnt more about networking and computer hardware over the past few years so I know more or less what I’m doing now!  I’m best off doing all this when I return home though as the PC will be off, though I’m thinking it’ll be worth the extra hassle of moving stuff around.  The only problem is though that the router has a tendancy to reboot itself every now and again.  The other problem is that I’d have to remember to install the network card or use my laptop till I do install it in my desktop!  And while I think about it, I want another bookcase in my living room for additional storage of things although I’d only need a half-height one this time around.  That said though, the more I think about it, the more I think I might need to do some  interior redesign to be able to store stuff better.  Moving the router and my NAS drive certainly would be a few steps in the right direction, although I’m not 100% sure of where to keep them.  Either way, I think all my wires definitely need tidying up;  I could put 2 of my PC speakers on the wall behind my screen to make a tiny bit of space as well.  It does look like this will require quite a bit of thought.

The ultimate aim is to make a bit more space than I have now, or rather additional space.  It’s times like these make me wish I owned my own place as opposed to renting as it’ll be a pain having to restore everything in the future.  But enough about my living space (I do want to eventually show off some pics of the place later when I’ve organised it more), I’m going to talk more about my DC3 idea.  For those of you new to the DC concept, and also what happened to the first two, I need to talk about it some more…

The DiggerCast (DC) was a podcast that had kind of random beginnings.  Back in 2005 or 2006, my friend Sean and I were on Skype, where he was testing his audio equipment and we were testing the recording function.  I suggested we try out a podcast, and the DiggerCast was born.  I registered the domain diggercast.com and Sean hosted the site on his space.  He also produced the first podcast as well, though unfortunately we never did any more after that.  Also the original, undedited content is no longer existant. , which is a shame but it was too large to keep.  Phase II, as I referred to it as was to be revival with a new member of the team, Mark (from thelongmile.net) joining us.  We managed to record some semi-rough drafts for the series, but again it didn’t take off, despite all the hype I was giving about the releaunch.

It was between the first and second phases that I renamed the DiggerCast to the NotCast, as the domain was unable to be registered, as I let it lapse by accident.  Anyway, I subsequently re-aquired and renamed the NotCast back to the DiggerCast and I’ll be keeping the domain for the forseeable future.   Anyway, those Phase 2 attempts will be uploaded on the new site when I get that up after I return from Ireland and after the next blog entry meaning anytime between the 15th and the 28th.  The 3rd attempt is perhaps the most ambitious version of the project, and maybe the final one if it doesn’t work out.  This means I’m being both ambitious and cautious at the same time, and making sure the concept and premise are both rock solid.  This means that the official recording won’t be starting till sometime in the next year.  There’s also the fact that there’s going to be some content that needs to be put on the site first and this is where many people will be needed to help.  Essentially, the concept of this phase of the DiggerCast is thatthere will be a few blogs, he first one being the main site itself, which will have a forum plugin and also a social bookmarking plugin.

This will mean then that as opposed to getting stuff to talk about from the likes of Slashdot, Digg.com and similar sites (as was the case with the 2nd phase), we get stuff from the site proper and talk about the top 5 or 10 links posted by the users.  The format of the podcast will most likely be a 30 minute podcast about the top content for the past two weeks, though the podcast will always be two weeks behind the site content.  I’m still trying to work out the nitty grity of it all, but what will happen is the following:

Let’s say that each month has 28 days for simplicity…. not that I’m sure if this is going to be simple to explain or not!  Anyway, say we have to talk about content from the 1st-14th of the month in the podcast.  The podcast wouldn’t be released till the 28th of the month, though thinking about it maybe I can shift it to the 21st.  The idea essentially being that we get 1-2 weeks to read up on the content and associated comments, discuss it amongst ourselves a little, write it all down, then also do recording and production on the podcast.  This could possibly be done over a single week, although I’m still trying to sort out the finer points, especially in the interests of being consistant with having a podcast at a regular frequency.  Another alternative is that once a month, the podcast gets posted, at the end of the first week of each month, which summarises last month’s content and about 5 weeks of comments.  The only problem there is that we’d possibly have to do it for an hour, or just focus on the top 5 or 6 posts for the month so it can be fir into half an hour.  Bleh, so much to think about and decide!

Anyway, why I need people’s help is that I would ask you to sign up to this site when it’s released to the world officially, but only if the idea interests you.  I’m not forcing you to sign up if it doesn’t interest you, especially as the content of the podcast is based upon what users contribute to the site and it’s all well and good having lots of users, but if hardly any of them post it won’t work too well.  In this case it’s quality over quantity.  If you have any friends that may be interested as well, you can point them to the site to see what they think of it.  Perhaps the idea has been done before, but I’d like to try it out for myself.  Even if you don’t want to sign up to the site, I’d appriciate suggestions as to what I could do with the format or recommended software for using this with.  At the moment, I plan to use WPMU with a forum plugin, a social bookmarking plugin and also a podcasting plugin.  For the podcast itself, I’d be using Prettymay Call Recorder, Skype and Audacity.  The idea is still in flux atm, and I haven’t worked out some of the finer details, or how to summarise the concept, so I’m just doing a brain dump in here.  Again, I’d appriciate any suggestions or comments on the idea and if you have any questions, ask away as it might help me to focus better.

I’ll stop talking about this idea for now, as I think I’ve said enough about it for now.  I’ll reveal the name for the site in a follow-up entry, but seeing as I was supposed to post this yesterday, I’m gonna pick up the pace.  I want to mention as well that I got a good deal at Game for Lord Of The Rings Online Vols. 1 & 2, along with a 60 day game time card.  I got them both for 25 quid, which is cool.  I’ve been wanting to play LOTRO for quite a while, so this is a great time for me to try it.  I might actually report on it at a later stage as well when I get to grips with it.  I’m also reordering my blog a bit too, as there’s some blogs that I list that haven’t been updated in a while and also a few things that are redundant which I’ve not even fully looked into.  I’m also aware that this blog is a bit of a melting pot of my ideas and thoughts and everything else put into the one place, which isn;t necessarily a bad thing, but I feel I could do with some better segregation in the new future.  Something tells me that I won’t get it till at least the next year, when my games blog is up and running.  There will certainly be a reduction of categories and tags when I’ve finished with revamping the blog, as well as also checking out the links.  I’m also going to work out how to use the trackbacks properly as well and start linking people’s blog entries.  I’m relatively new to proper blogging, so I’m bound to have a few rough patches here and there.  One thing I do need to look at though is moving stuff from my Blogger blog to here, and stuff from my GameTrailers blog to my games blog.  I also intend to have a paranormal-type blog as well where I’ll muse about paranormal stuff and anything I’ve done in relation to rhat field.  Keep in mind that the frequency will be semi-regular, much like what I plan my Project and Experiment blog to be.  Still, it might be worth a look if you’re into things that go bump in the night.

It’s funny that with a lot of these things I’m doing, I’m seemingly spreading myself thin, when the actual fact of the matter, I’m essentially just streamlining and regulating my posts so there’s consistancy behind them.  I do admit I have a lot of free time at the moment, but I am gonna start occupying myself more over the next year.  I’m also, finally going to the gym, although I will miss out on about a week of it due to going to Ireland, but when I return it’ll be a bit easier to do, apart from at Christmas.  I’ll be glad when I streamline this blog a bit better though, as it means that I won’t have as many huge posts to worry about as my average post seems to run up to about 3-4000 words!  I seem to have a lot to say, that said.  If I could focus this tendancy to write 2000+ words into my academic work, I’d be doing well!  I may have to consider the 1 post a week method in the new year, so I can average out the words making sure there’s less to read, and slowing down my rambling.  It is just as well that I separate stuff with paragraphs as I write as reading this without paragraphs would be a nightmare!

I’m gonna finish off here, and continue the once every two weeks posting until February next year, where I’ll reevaluate things.  It’s going to take me some time to settle into the patterns of writing, to be honest.  I will also try to keep things a little less verbose in the future, as well as starting to include links and publishing on time!  I am thinking that once a week may become a more viable option though, especially given my short memory!  Well, thinks can only improve, especially when I’ve nailed this blog down.  In the grand scheme of things though, a blog is one of the easier sites to manage; I kept this blog simple as all I needed it for was writing mainly, although my Twitter and Flickr are linked into them for practical purposes.  Rome wasn’t built in a day though, so I can’t expect to see instant improvement.  In the future, I’ll try to make the blog more about my opinions on stuff, with some links to read, as opposed to what I’m working on.  I may actually make a blog for that on my secondary site, so I can talk about stuff there in a bit more detail, as it seems that I talk about what I’m working on more than anything else when that’s not what this blog is supposed to be about mainly… I think I’ll need to think about things a lot, to be honest.

Anyway, that’s it for now.  I’d appriciate your comments on the DiggerCast 3 project, as well as suggestions for it (how many times have I asked that now?) as I want to start seeing what I could do to make the site as good as it could be, although requirements do change given it’s a dynamic project.  Keep in mind that I may not be able to implement the suggestion right away, or even for the DC, though it may fit in elsewhere.  I’ll inform you of this though.

Anyway, simplicity is why the Wii is popular (I imagine this has its own take on Tetris too), as the games are easy to understand and get into.  I’d even go far as to say that Tetris is perhaps one of the main reasons why some people became gamers.  Of course, you can still see the influence of Tetris in other puzzle games, even if it’s not obvious.  I’m pretty sure that Tetris was in the back of the developer’s heads for games like Peggle and Zuma, to name a couple of games I’ve played recently.  The major influence of Tetris in games like that is simplicity and accessibility, which is at the core of casual games.  Addictiveness is another factor too… how many of you can honestly say you haven’t looked at the clock and thought “just one more game/level and I’ll stop, and it turns into 3 hours?  I know I have had that many a time.  Granted, it may not be towards our birthday game, but it has been towards a game.  Another aspect of Tetris that is also recognisable is the music.  How many of you reading this remember the Tetris music, the A one?  I bet anyone who has played the game remembers it quite well.  It’s like the original Super Mario Brothers song; it’s catchy and hard to get out of your head, although admittedly, there’s not a lot of music in SMB, so it’s all most likely remembered.  For me, anyway the A Song is my most remembered song of tetris, apart from the main theme.  The B Song, while I heard it and know it’s there, I don’t remember quite as much.  I just read up about Tetris and there was a C song too… I don’t remember that at all!

Anyway, although Tetris for the most part is simple, there have been some spinnoffs, clones and sequels, some of which I’m aware of, and others not.  Some of these have brought something new to the table, like for instance Welltris, which was developed by Tetris’ creator Alexey Pajitnov.  This was a sequel to Tetris, albeit with a twist; it was set in a well with a 3D prespective.  I had the C64 version, although I wasn’t able to understand it as I was much younger than I am now.  Either way, this game hasn’t really been mentioned a lot, as the original Tetris and its any clones, on many systems have pretty much taken over.  Also, if you look at the Wikipedia article for Alexey Pajitnov, you’ll notice that 2 years ago, he recieved an award for “pioneering the casual games market”.  This is pretty impressive, given casual gaming ony took off over the past few years or so.   Nearly all games were considered to be for “hardcore gamers”, which explains why there was such a low penetrations of female gamers and also people who don’t usually play games.

These days, this has changed slightly, with the introduction of the Nintendo Wii.  As I have mentioned before, games on the Wii are usually quite accessible to anyone, so the Wii generally has the perception by many gamers as a non-gamers console.  Nintendo systems in general had the perception of being aimed at kids, due to the lack of violent games for the systems, which was in line with Nintendo’s family-friendly image.  If you wanted to play “real games”, you generally had to go for the alternatives, which at the time of the SNES, was the Megadrive; N64 had the PS1 and Dreamcast and the Game Cube had the XBox and PS2 to contend with.  These days though, Nintendo has relaxed those rules in order to appeal to a larger demographic.  However Microsoft’s and Sony’s console offerings have a larger market share.  I can’t say who is currently at the top, as I haven’t checked recently, although I did expect that over the Xmas periods of 2007 and 2008, the Wii would experience a surge of ownership.  I still expect that in 2009, the Wii should again see an increase of ownership, along with perhaps the PS2, as they tend to be cheaper systems.  That said however, the XBox 360 has also come down in price, and also has an arcade model, so now it’s competing with the Wii.  I seriously doubt the PS3 price will be able to go low enough to compete, so the PS2 will be Sony’s offering there, especially as it’s still being supported.

The mobile gaming market, despite being a great place for casual gaming development due to the limited resources on the mobile phones compared to the consoles, is still somewhat of a niche market, although this market has being steadily growing as everyone nowadays has a mobile phone, nearly all of which are Java enabled.  Java-enabled phones are pretty much the major reason why the mobile gaming market is taking off at all, due to Java being a universal language, meaning developers no longer have to develop games for each individual system, which saves them money.  However, despite the mobile gaming market’s growth, it still won’t be as big as the console market in certain ways.  The only competition within the mobile games market would be similar games, whereas within the console market, it’s a bettle between the consoles themselves as well as the games.  There is a battle within the mobile market however, as mobile phone manufacturers try to outdo themselves with developing features for phones.  Even the mobile networks are in on it too, trying to make sure that a particular, new device is exclusive to them, such as the iPhone woth O2, the G1 with T-Mobile and the HTC Magic with Vodafone, to name 3 recent examples off the top of my head.

One thing about the mobile market however is that mobile phones themselves aren’t games systems, they’re tools.  And despite the intense competition between Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo, it’s practically nothing compared to mobile phone manufacturers and network providers.  For starters, in the UK, there’s at least 2-3 times as many network providers as there are console manufacturers.  Andf there’s a hell of a lot of phones out there too.  It’s very much a cut-throat industry, very much like the video games industry; if you make a mistake with your product, you’re screwed.  The PC market has its own battle, on scale with the console wars almost, though there’s one less competitor, but there’s a duplicity at play; for processors it’s Intel vs AMD and for graphics cards, it’s AMD/ATI vs Nvidia.  Seems that whereever you go, it’s competition, but that’s the nature of the technology markets; one company wants to develop better technology to the others.  I guess it’s inevitable though.  Either way, despite such intense competition, there will always be those gems that stand out, be it gaming or technology and Tetris is one of those.   It’s remained in the public consciousness and the mainstream for 25 years and may it remain there for another 25 at least.

Happy 25th Birthday Tetris.

The past half hour or so, I’ve been looking at many things… things mostly to do with how the human mind works and percieves things. I have to say, there’s quite an interesting amount of stuff there, and I haven’t even scratched the surface. First of all, we come across this article, which talks about the fact that schitzophrenics are not fooled by the “hollow face illusion”, with an included video. Essentially, the “hollow face illusion” involves — as you may have guessed — a hollow face. The article describes it as:

In the hollow mask illusion, viewers perceive a concave face (like the back side of a hollow mask) as a normal convex face. The illusion exploits our brain’s strategy for making sense of the visual world: uniting what it actually sees — known as bottom-up processing — with what it expects to see based on prior experience — known as top-down processing.

Anyway, it has been shown that those with schitzophrenia are not fooled by this illusion and see the concave face as what it actually is. The rest of us (including myself, which is interesting) see the conclave as a convex face, to the extent the nose sticks out! And even if you know this already, it doesn’t matter; your brain will still percieve the back side as a normal face. I found it interesting that I saw it like most “normal” people do, because I have a type of Autism known as Asperger Syndrome (AS). Now granted, I have been taught to act somewhat normal, but I do wonder if anyone else on the Autistic Spectrum will see things like normal people, or schitzophrenics.

Why I say this is because AS was once considered to be a form of schitzophrenia… see where I’m going with this yet? Good.  Anyway, if those on the Autistic Spectrum see things like a normal person, it would mean that Autism Spectrum Disorders affect different parts of the brain to schitzophrenics. That said of course, those who are drunk and under the influence of drugs see through it too, which makes you wonder what parts of the brain intoxicating substances hit, doesn’t it?

Moving onto the magic part of the title now, but still focusing on the mind (this is the underlying theme here, everything in this entry has to do with the way the mind percieves things), we move onto magic! This article talks about magic tricks revealing the inner workings of the brain. And while the face video was interesting, the magic tricks had me enthralled. Yes, I know they’re sleights of hand and optical illusions, but still while they’re happening, you can’t help but be amazed. I’ve always wished I could perform stage magic, but as of yet I haven’t gotten around to learning so for the the time being I’ll watch everyone else do it instead. I can’t get to detailed with the videos, or I’ll ruin the suspension of disbelief involved, so do have a look yourself and comment. One interesting video is here… see if you can work out the trick and also marvel at the new YouTube interactive video feature.

Also be sure to check out Quirkology on YouTube if you have the time. It’s an amazing look at “alternative psychology”, which interests me. Dr. Richard Wiseman, who came up with Quirkology also wrote an article on luck, which featured in a men’s health magazine somewhere. I may actually upload the scans I took of the pages, if there’s enough demand for it, especially as it’s a fascinating article, and also one that got me interested in Dr. Wiseman’s research. It’d be a shame to leave it on my hard drive where no one can view it as it really is a fascinating article. There’s even a quiz at the end too, so I’ll expect people to put their results up (be honest!).

While I could go on about the science of Quirkology, I now want to move onto the gaming part of this entry. While some people may wonder what games have to do with the workings of and on the mind, others have undoubtedly worked out where I’m headed with this.   Simply put, games are an immersive experience where suspension of disbelief is required, much like what is needed in magic. However, as this entry is not about games design and playing (which I’ll write about another time), I won’t go too much into the subject of immersion in games. Anyway, the point here that I’m making is that when you get into a game (the more realistic and believeable the game is, the easier it it is to get into), you start to view the main character as an extension of your own. For instance, my mum cannot play Doom, or watch me play it when I’m running around because it gives her motion sickness! Additionally, a lot of people complained about similar while playing Descent, which is more of an… ah… “headfuck”, given the 360 degrees of movement offered to the player. This phenomena is known as Simulation Sickness, and affects people while they play games, usually of the first person variety.

Wikipedia describes Simulation Sickness as this:

Simulation sickness, or simulator sickness, is a condition where a person exhibits symptoms similar to motion sickness caused by playing computer/simulation/video games.

The most common theory for the cause of simulation sickness is that the illusion of motion created by the virtual world, combined with the absence of motion detected by the inner ear, causes the area postrema in the brain to infer that one is hallucinating and further conclude that the hallucination is due to poison ingestion. The brain responds by inducing nausea and mass vomiting, to clear the supposed toxin. According to this theory, simulation sickness is just another form of motion sickness.

The symptoms are often described as quite similar to that of motion sickness. Some can range from headache, drowsiness, nausea, dizziness, vomiting and sweating. A research done at the University of Minnesota had students play Halo for less than an hour, and found that up to 50 percent felt sick afterwards.

In a study conducted by U.S. Army Research Institute for the Behavioral and Social Sciences in a report published May 1995 titled “Technical Report 1027 – Simulator Sickness in Virtual Environments”, out of 742 pilot exposures from 11 military flight simulators, “approximately half of the pilots (334) reported post-effects of some kind: 250 (34%) reported that symptoms dissipated in less than 1 hour, 44 (6%) reported that symptoms lasted longer than 4 hours, and 28 (4%) reported that symptoms lasted longer than 6 hours. There were also 4 (1%) reported cases of spontaneously occurring flashbacks”.

I haven’t ever suffered from this myself, but I certainly have been too immersed in a game before! For instance, whenever I play Doom, Quake or any other FPS and get shot at… my immediate reaction is to physically dodge the projectiles, while at the same time doing the same within the game. It’s at this point I have become totally immersed. The reason for this is the realism the game has which is also the reason why people get motion sickness when their character moves fast. Admittedly though, I did feel quite dizzy and a little ill after seeing a video for Mirror’s edge, which is by far the most realistic game to date that I’ve seen. It actually made me want the game, but again that’s another blog entry. Here’s a video of Mirror’s Edge in action, which shows you why I got a bit dizzy, given the way the prespective and character movement is. I’d have looked for more but after twice being stung by a Rickroll when looking for more detailed videos, I’m kind of wary of looking for anything else at the moment… once bitten, twice shy!

Lastly, we go onto something more grounded in reality, and yet still kind of Scifi. A study by the journal Cognative, mentioned in this article showed something rather interesting:

Washington University researchers asked people to identify letters onscreen, and the test subjects fared better with their hands beside the monitor than with their hands in their laps. The presence of their hands apparently improved their vision — and this held true even when when their hands were hidden behind cardboard.

This may partly explain why games actually increase hand-eye coordination. Games also seem to sharpen eyesight, according to an article on Yahoo! Games. This fact doesn’t surprise me however, as I attribute my improved hand-eye coordination to playing masses of games in my youth. Whether or not that turns out to be wasted time overall is yet to be seen, but it certainly helps me write this megapost! Something that strangely enough is related to Mirror’s Edge is this article, which talks about experiencing someone else’s (or even a mannequin’s or other artifical body) body as their own, through the use of cameras. This stuff is both interesting and scary, especially as it talks about humans inhaviting artifical bodies, although this is something that may happen in the future, perhaps after my lifetime. That said, in some instances, it could be useful in some medical applications, at least where this article is concerned as it shows the link between the brain and the body.

As far as the artifical hand experiment goes, this will eventually enable people to eventually have working prosthetic limbs. The other experiment could be used to make more realistic virtual reality games, perhaps also assisting with fine remote control for machines. We certainly seem to be getting closer to the sort of future where you’ll be able to fly around cyberspace and feel it, ala TekWar. Max Headroom and Johnny Mneumonic also come to mind in terms of what could happen.It’s all getting rather cyberpunky now, isn’t it?

Granted, we may not have flying cars less than 6 years to 2015 ala Back to The Future (BTTF), but we’re certainly getting closer to some of the other futures predicted by science fiction movies, books and TV. This is both an amazing and scary thing, depending on what direction this could take. Thinking about BTTF though, I don’t think a lot really changed overall, despite the cars flying and not looking like they do in the film. But, a lot can happen in 5-6 years. I certainly would love to hear Christopher Lloyd’s thoughts when 2015 arrives in reality.

We still have a while to go before we reach that stage though.

Oh, by the way, does it show that I used to do academic writing?

Anyway, expect videos from my assembling the stuff when I get an SD Card.