They brought us the best of Japanese RPGs, and they did it with a passion for quality that is rare. Alundra, Lunar, Growlanser Generations, Arc the Lad, even the brutally tough Thunder Force V: Perfect System: all great titles we wouldn’t have seen otherwise. And they were one of the…
The Spike Video Game Awards
What a pile of tripe. Thank goodness I had it taped and the remote control handy – I managed to watch the two hour show in under an hour. It was even worse this year than last year. At least David Jaffe managed to inject a note of normality: God…
UK vs USA
Who Love Freedom More? writes Michael Kinsley in the Washington Post. The US has a constitution to limit the power of government and protect the individual. The UK has no written constitution and a system of government where on the face of it, the individual is at the mercy of…
Google spin
Newsweek reports Google's Ten Golden Rules. A marvellous advert for Google? But I am not swayed by the advertising. Let's pretend for a second that Google is not a public company and therefore not suffering a potential financial conflict of interest in following these rules. 1) Hire by committee. Well,…
that 12 days of Xmas meme
I don't have 12 LJ friends. So you only get to see 4 days' worth. But it's strangely apt even so. My True Love gave to me… 11 s a-waddling. 8 s a-glaring. 6 s a-laughing. 2 hamster s.
Microwaves
There is a (semi-)famous interview question of the Microsoft type that states “Design controls for a microwave oven.” Well, lately it crossed my mind and I came to a realisation. And therefore I have worked out my answer to this question (not that I will ever interview at MS) and…
cutting edge gaming
The latest gaming craze that seems to be sweeping (my corner of) the world is Geometry Wars Evolved. It’s an XBox 360 game you can download through XBox live. Everyone in our office is playing it since we discovered it last week… it’s a Robotron-alike with particle effects all over…
Audio memory
The other day I was watching Adam's Rib with Mrs Elbeno. One of the many old movies we enjoy via the Blockbuster-Netflix-alike service. (You only have time to watch a finite number of movies in your life; why watch modern rubbish just because it's recent when you could be watching…
Timeless
There are no clocks in this room. None that tell the right time. The clock on the desk shows 6.50 (stopped). My iPod shows 08:24 as does my PC. Both clearly wrong (but timestamping this post). Two more stopped clocks show 3.14 and 6.00 respectively. A stopped pocket watch shows…
IF Alert!
October is with us again, and that means the 11th Annual Interactive Fiction Competition is here. This year we have: 17 Z-code 7 TADS (including 1 TADS3) 2 Glulx 1 Hugo, 1 Alan, 5 Adrift And of course, 3 Windows native executables. Well I’m not holding out much hope for…