Dear World hyphen Science dot Net -
November 30th, 2005
I love your website, there’s allways lots of interesting stories on it like this one about dolphins playing games, I expect I like it as it combines dolphins and games, two things which I care for very much. The thing is though, I only found out about the dolphins’ cute antics because it was linked to on a site I read regularly, you see I don’t visit your site that much because it looks so eye gougingly awfull. You have RSS feeds so your site can’t be that old, but it looks like it was designed in 1995, by a bloke you know from down the pub. Seriously, frames? buggy javascript menus? That rippling Java app at the bottom? Fantasy art backgrounds? That colour scheme? What were you thinking?
Lots of Love
-T
PS Does anyone else have any examples of needlessly horrible webdesign?
Just one more question… -
November 28th, 2005
The bits of programing I hate the most are ultimately the bits that make it so rewarding. It’s just so unbelievably sweet when you manage to hunt down a particularly egregious bug. The satisfaction of picking apart a problem using only simple deductive logic and a few moments of inspired guesswork make the general drudgery of the job seem worthwhile.
I think it’s how Columbo must feel after solving a particuarly tough case.
Incidentally, this is my favourite Columbo episode.
Video Gaiden -
November 26th, 2005
If you like video games and strong Scottish accents you should watch this. My favourite bit is the character designer who keeps on designing Otis Reading on a tractor.
Costa Coffee Double Chocolate Chip Muffin Review -
November 25th, 2005
At £1.60 they’re a bit pricy but they really are a must for discerning muffin and/or chocolate fans. In the middle they have this gooey chocolate sauce stuff which is a great idea as it mitigates the normal muffin problem i.e. the top is really nice but the stem/trunk(?) is too dry and uninteresting c.f. that Seinfeld episode.
The only downside is I’ve made a bit of a mess of my shirt which I wore today to look smart for a meeting with this afternoon.
Pattern Recognition -
November 22nd, 2005
Meteos Review
Similar to Tetris Attack though not quite as good + 80%
Combining physics with a block puzzle game is interesting and works well +10%
Eats vast swathes of your time if you let it -3%
Mentally rearranging items whenever you see them arranged in grids (eg. eurostar menus, telephone buttons, windows on tower blocks), essentially hallucinating, is not a great feeling -5%
Very hard to play on London’s less than smooth public transport network. -2%
Summary : 80%. Tetris Attack > Meteos > Zoo Keeper DS.
Still, it’s probably my favourite DS game apart from Ouendan, though I hope that Mario Kart DS* and Advance Wars DS will change that.
*Please mr Nintendo, don’t make it too powerup based, and too much moving scenery is just gimicky.
Pure Terror -
November 17th, 2005
Suddenly the music cuts out, a fanfare then it’s back, faster and slightly discordant. Shit! The exit is still a good 10 seconds away as the clock carrying devil sweeps in to attack.
What am I talking about? Why New Zealand story of course! When you’ve been playing it for half an hour and your knuckles are aching from gripping the control and you have only one more level ’till you finish it and you’re nearly there, the onset of the hurry up music, herald of the hurry up devil, is the closest I ever come to blind panic, it really is heart stopping*. No modern games seem to be able to elicit this kind of gut reaction from me, perhaps it’s pavlovian, a remembered response from the Amiga’s hey day, before I was so hardend to the way games work, maybe…
Is there a point to this post?
Yes! Taito Legends has lots of dross in it but for New Zealand Story, Bubble Bobble and a savagely butchered Rainbow Islands** it’s great, obviously I can play more faithful versions of all these games on MAME, but I’ve not been able to find a working NZ Story ROM so I had to get it.
*Though not litterally obviously.
**Really, who thought changing the music on this was a good idea? I suspect it was the lawyers thinking that someone was going to sue them for using
Somewhere Over The Rainbow, the tune they’ve replaced it with sounds almost right but that just makes it grate more.
More Helpful Advice -
November 16th, 2005
If you get on the bus in the moring it’s only polite to shower beforehand, smothering your stench in choking aftershave fumes just isn’t the same.
Helpful Advice -
November 15th, 2005
If you’re only going up one floor you should probably take the stairs.
If you’re only going down one floor you should definitely take the stairs.
Attention Manufacturing Companies! -
November 14th, 2005
What you should be making is this*:
A holder for Nintendo DS cartridges. You see the thing is they’re too small and fiddly (about 1.5cm2 and wafer thin), I spend a long time worrying that I’m going to lose them in my bag or my pocket. So here’s what I suggest: The form factor would be similar to a business card holder or a cigarette case of the type seen in Humphrey Bogart’s pocket, maybe it would need to be a bit thicker but not much. Just like the afforementioned cigarette case it would flip open and inside, on both surfaces, there would be an array of raised holders (like the ones in the boxes the games come in) where your games could reside. You could probably fit about 16 games in such a device, enough for even the most commited gamer on the go. This is such an obvious idea that I’m sure it will be available sooner or later, I’d prefer it to be sooner as I just ordered Advance Wars DS and Meteos as my self birthday present so I’m going to need some kind of decent storage device pretty soon.
Thankyou.
*If you do make this then please give me some money or at least a free one.
