| We won a BAFTA!!! |
[Mar. 10th, 2009|04:30 pm] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| |  ecstatic | ] |
Seriously. BOOM BLOX just won the Video Game BAFTA for "Best Casual Game".
:D |
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| The instrument of the day is... |
[Mar. 6th, 2009|09:47 pm] |
The Xaphoon
I read about this on a Saxophone forum I was lurking on, and was amazed when I followed the link to the site and read about this little instrument. The sound they produce is amazingly sax-like, doubly impressive given the size.
These are definitely not toys, nor are they easy to play. Not difficult to pick up the basics if you know how to get sound out of a saxophone, but the fingering is a little awkward (as you would expect for a 2-octave chromatic scale out of a straight tube).
I'm going to have to practice a lot to get more than the bottom half of the first octave out of it. :) |
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| You could not make this stuff up.... |
[Oct. 8th, 2008|08:13 am] |
Seriously, this is not a Blackadder Goes Forth plotline
"In another mission, the sapper with the Royal Engineers Special Branch crawled to within a few yards of an enemy HQ and drew a tree so accurately that his comrades were able to create a hollow steel replica.
The real tree was then removed under cover of darkness and replaced by the replica - with a soldier stationed inside who was able to report back on German activity."
Also, count the puns: Sapper, in the RE Special Branch, sketches a tree.
Sorry. It's early, and I am easily amused. |
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| Private spaceflight is Go! |
[Sep. 28th, 2008|07:16 pm] |
After 3 failures, SpaceX finally managed to achieve orbit with their 4th flight. Designed and built in Hawthorne, CA (just a few miles from our house!).
Their plans are to grow from a single-engine two-stage rocket to a 9-engine heavy lifter. they will be hopefully supplying the ISS and be used as a replacement for manned flights there once the shuttle retires.
The company employs just 550 people, and has been around for 6 years. Successful orbital insertion of their 4th ever launch is pretty darn impressive.
In his post-launch celebratory speech, the CEO/CTO of SpaceX, Elon Musk, said that their long-term goals included missions to the moon and Mars. Now that would be cool! |
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| New Mouse |
[Sep. 13th, 2008|03:54 pm] |
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) asimovberlioz posted yesterday about discovering the Logitech MX610 left-handed mouse.
Being left-handed, and a gamer geek, I've always been envious of those right-handed mice with the extra buttons under the thumb. Useful for twitch-reaction gaming, and also very much more comfortable to use. I've always had to use "symmetrical" mice, as, of course, right-handed mice are incredibly uncomfortable to use in your left hand, and the extra buttons are on the wrong side anyway.
So off we went to Fry's, and now I have one!
First impressions: it's a little heavier than I'm used to, but that's not a bad thing. Out of the box it was in fact too left-handed for me - the left and right mouse buttons were swapped. I've always left-clicked with my middle finger and right-clicked with my index finger, so I had to swap that over. Strangely, I had to swap it in the Windows control panel as the Logitech software didn't have that option. The software did have options for programming what all the other buttons do - from standard UI messages through to specific keystrokes.
So of course I now have it programmed to assist me while playing World of Warcraft. :) |
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| Squeezed |
[Sep. 11th, 2008|12:16 am] |
I read a week or so ago that Glenn Tilbrook of Squeeze turned 51 on 31st August! The article linked to a youTube video of one of their hits, and amongst the usual dross of comments, there was one which said "I can't wait to see them live next week". I checked, and was amazed to find they are currently touring the US, and even more amazed to discover we hadn't actually missed their Los Angeles tour date.
That was this evening. We got back about 10 minutes ago.
They were amazing. The years haven't been kind to the waistlines of Tilbrook or Difford (but I can't claim to be exempt from that problem myself either); although their vocal work and guitar playing were as good as ever.
Sadly, no Jools Holland on this tour, but the keyboard player they are touring with was astoundingly good anyway. Drummer was brilliant too.
All in all, a very, very enjoyable evening. Now I just need to unwind enough to get to sleep. |
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| SpaceX flight 3 failed :( |
[Aug. 3rd, 2008|09:25 pm] |
I watched the countdown, launch and failure of the 3rd launch by SpaceX last night via web feed.
This one apparently failed because the first stage failed to detach prior to second stage ignition.
I amazed my self by exactly how much I enjoyed watching the hours of countdown, hold, reset, repeat...
They got to T-2 seconds at one point and the computers aborted the launch because of instrument readings, so they simply reset the clock to T-55 minutes, analysed the fault, corrected it and launched... Totally worth it for the 2m 30s of successful flight time, and of course totally worth it in the search for cheap (relatively), reusable spacecraft.
Astoundingly, The company headquarters, where they build these rockets is in Hawthorne, less than five miles from our house.
Sadly, the payload lost on this mission included amongst other things, the ashes of James Doohan and Gordon Cooper (or, more likely, samples thereof). |
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| Wheeee!! |
[Jul. 29th, 2008|12:16 pm] |
5.8 quake hit 30 miles due east of here.
That's the strongest I've experienced. A good 20 seconds of sideways motion (on the 3rd floor of a 4 storey building). No damage locally. Hopefully nothing significant at the epicentre either. |
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| 3 things meme |
[Jun. 26th, 2008|12:39 pm] |
This looks fun. Let's give it a go...
Rules: Post 3 things you've done that you believe nobody else on your F-list has done.
1) Vapourised a diamond using a low-density plasma generated in methane.
2) Sat becalmed in a dinghy on Loch Rannoch watching the wind blow snow of the peak of Mt Schiehallion.
3) Photographed Halley's comet using the largest telescope in the UK. |
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| Yay me! |
[Jun. 4th, 2008|02:11 pm] |
I just got promoted to "Senior Software Engineer".
A rare breed here at EA. Most Software Engineers with my level of experience seem to move onto become "Technical Directors", but that involves going to many more meetings and actually writing less code, which seems very strange to me. |
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| BOOM BLOX ships today. |
[May. 6th, 2008|12:55 pm] |
We've only seen 3 reviews so far, the first 2 are both 80/100, which is good.
Then this one popped up:
1up
It doesn't get much better than that! :) |
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| Vacation |
[Apr. 15th, 2008|05:41 pm] |
We shipped BOOM BLOX.
In celebration of this, and to prepare myself for doing it all over again with the next game, I'm taking 4 weeks' vacation. (Actually 8 days' paid vacation, the rest is known as "refresh time", and is designed to make up for the 12-hour days and 6-day weeks needed to ship a game).
I have grand plans, including gardening, decorating, walking and cycling around the local area, and catching up on some games which came out over the last 12 months and I didn't get time to play.
( So far, I have: ) |
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| Room temperature superconductivity |
[Mar. 19th, 2008|08:42 pm] |
I've seen this article referenced in a few places now, so I thought I'd add my comments to my journal.
This is a very quiet announcement of something potentially very significant. Possibly because of the embarrassment caused by the last announcement of cuprate-based superconductors (YBCO etc) which was falsely heralded as the direction of research for room-temperature superconductivity.
The article is somewhat vague however, which is always worrying. :)
Anything being based on high pressure is going to be difficult to convert from a neat experiment to a practical superconductor. According to the abstract in Science, the pressures used exceed 50 GPa, enough to first compress the silane to a metallic state. There probably isn't any way of reducing, or removing, or safely maintaining that level of pressure in a practical device.
Silane is not a nice substance to have around, either. It is a gas at room temperature and pressure, which spontaneously combusts on exposure to oxygen.
One interesting aspect is that the researchers chose silane for their experiments, but some of their theoretical work was done with hydrogen. We apparently can't generate the 400 GPa pressures needed to compress hydrogen to its metallic state for the experiments, but metallic hydrogen is abundant near the cores of gas giant planets. Sadly the temperatures inside gas giants is slightly above room temperature, so the likelihood of Jupiter being a huge superconductor is rather low.
So this is an interesting new area of research into superconductivity, but I won't get too excited until they find a way of achieving superconductivity at room temperature AND pressure. |
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| New iPhone update info... |
[Jan. 15th, 2008|01:21 pm] |
several new features for the iPhone in the January Update:
* Use cell towers to locate your position on the map
* Customise the home menu - move icons on/off the dock
* Add web links to the home menu
* Send SMS messages to multiple people at once (only a new feature for the iPhone!)
and other, less interesting stuff too (as far as I'm concerned anyway).
:) |
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| Just finished making mince pies |
[Dec. 24th, 2007|07:27 pm] |
I use a recipe I found on the BBC website a few years ago:
Ingredients
140g/5oz cold butter, diced
225g/8oz plain flour
50g/2oz ground almonds
50g/2oz golden caster sugar
1 orange, zest only
pinch of salt
1 egg yolk
1-2 tsp cold water
280g/10oz good quality mincemeat
1 egg white, beaten
icing sugar for dusting
Method
1. Preheat oven to 200C/400F/Gas 6.
2. Rub the butter into the flour and add the almonds, caster sugar,
orange rind and salt until the mixture is a bit crumbly.
3. Combine mixture with the egg yolk and 1-2 teaspoons of water
until it forms soft dough, then put it into a plastic bag and
chill for 20 - 30 minutes.
4. Roll out the pastry to a thickness of 2-3mm(0.1in) and
cut out about 18 rounds measuring 7.5cm(3in) with a pastry cutter.
5. Place in lightly greased patty tins and spoon the mincemeat evenly
into the pies.
6. Re-roll the leftover pastry and cut out round lids,
stars or other festive shapes to fit on top of the mincemeat.
7. Lightly brush the pastry tops with the beaten egg white and
bake in the oven for 12 - 15 minutes until golden.
8. Remove from oven and leave for a few minutes before
removing from tins and cooling on a wire rack.
9. Dust with icing sugar. |
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