Barry John Williams' Blog

You can now pre-order Mac OS X Leopard on Amazon UK. It's been on the US Amazon site for a few days now and now number 2 and 4 in the Amazon UK top software sellers. I've preordered and look forward to it's arrival next Friday.

This will be the third Mac OS X operating system I have purchased; Panther; Tiger and now Leopard. Each of which have been worth every penny!

I debated whether I should buy it at Glasgow's new Apple Store or online; I decided to take advantage of Amazon's discounted price instead.

Link to Apple's Leopard site
Pre-order Leopard on Amazon

Labels: amazon, apple, coolstuff, software

Following on with the Doom theme (believe me this is completely unintentional), I just discovered the phone I use (a Palm Treo 680) runs Doom. Let's be honest here, what doesn't?

Well, since my contract is coming to an end I've been scoping out possible alternatives. Possibly a Nokia N series on Three; or maybe the iPhone on O2 - unlikely, I've tried the "My iPod needs replacing" already!

Then via the palminfocenter.com I discovered ZDoomZ which is a port of the Doom engine to the Palm. It will run any Wad files - which I happen to have both Doom and Doom2 wads lying about!

It was a bit tricky to install since I had to install the Timidity MIDI engine by hand since the instructions didn't work. Doom went on fine and after configuring some keys I started Doom to be prompted by familiar music and a surprisingly smooth Doom experience - with authentic sound!!

I may just be keeping hold of my Palm after all!!

ZDoomZ at MetaViewSoft
Wikipedia Article about Versions and Ports to Doom

Labels: coolstuff, games, software

Recently I thought I'd dive into the 'Grapher' program provided free with Mac OS X Tiger in the Application/Utilities folder to simulate an equation I'd been given.

Writing it into the equation bar was surprising because it displays it all very nicely converting a * to a nice dot and bracketing and dividing nicely as you type! Further, I discovered an item in the context menu to export the equation as an image or... A LaTeX equation!!

Labels: apple, computers, coolstuff, software, tricks

The computer game Manhunt 2 has been rejected classification by the BBFC (British Board of Film Classification) - an unelected group of people who decide what is acceptable for the British public to watch.

This game's predecessor was given an 18 rating which apparently was at the "top end of the scale". Manhunt 2 clearly surpasses that, no doubt due to it's probable increased graphics realism and something which I read separately; the Wii version's ability to control stabbing and mutilation by performing the motion with the wiimote...

Whilst I'm not one for buying this particular genre of games I would have like to have seen the wiimote stabbing action purely out of curiousity, not out of some hidden wanton desire which the BBFC rejection now makes this appear.

a range of unjustifiable harm risks to both adults and minors

Let's quickly skim over the adult part. If a person starts to commit these acts based on a computer game, then that person has a problem. It's not the games fault!

They should perhaps do a lab test - pull a few hundred people of the streets, let them play the game for a few hours a day for a full month and release them into the wild and see what they do. I doubt very much they will all turn into killing machines*. Although, you may find that a fraction of those that do have tendencies for violence may be catalysed by the computer game - but since (I presume) that number is quite small, why stop the rest of us. It's a bit like banning peanuts because some of the population is allergic to them.

Now to the minors, sorry, that's why it should be an 18. 18 means, don't let people who's ages are less than 18 watch or play... Let's assume it did get an 18 classification. I'm not ignorant enough to realise that kids would get hold of it because "it's cool". Some of their parents would have even bought it for them, their friends would play it, etc. This is a decision the parents should be making based on the age rating and it really should become an offense just like (unsupervised) underage drinking is. Perhaps there is a useful application of DRM here.

Furthermore, rejecting the game now makes it even more 'cool' in the average kid's eyes because they'll have to import it from the US and play it on their chipped PS2s...

Come on, where there is a will there is a way. Why bother banning games - you'll still be able to get hold of them. It's not going to stop it, is it?

*If someone makes a movie out of this then I had the idea first!

Labels: computers, games, grumble, software, wii

Quite by surprise yesterday afternoon a delivery truck came to deliver a package in Louise's name. What could it be?

Later that evening I had built up a sweat, pulled a muscle in my leg and had a sore arm. It was a Wii with Wii Sports ordered early December 2006!

My favourites so far are definitely the Tennis (despite the fact I don't like it in real life), Bowling and Baseball!

My PS2 has GTA: Vice City Stories in it - I'm about 30% through that game and I'm not sure I can go back to sitting on a chair stabbing my fingers at a controller! The Wii is just different and a lot more fun. Louise and I competed last night for about 4 hours before having to give up! Even the dog was trying to join in...

The Wii has WiFi on it, which was a breeze to setup and you get News and Weather through the first menu. The weather is quite swish - it gives you a google earth type map to play with and displays the weather and temperatures for major cities across the globe. You spin the globe using the wireless Wii controller! The news is extremely readable and looks like a newspaper. Cool stuff!

It also plays my old Gamecube games so I may just have a go at finally completing Metroid Prime!!!

You can create your own Avatar or 'Mii' which you can use playing your games - Good Fun!

Labels: coolstuff, nintendo, review, software, wii

Steven Murdoch left an interesting comment on my previous posting about the Scottish Election Chaos. Namely that the electoral commission recommends that in the event of crosses and numbers being placed in the wrong columns a system where the ballot can still be counted and not simply discarded as 'spoiled'. Steven simply hoped that the software does follow this recommendation.

As a recent convert to Apple Mac OS X from Linux over 2 years ago, I'm not quite the Open Source Advocate as I once was. However, if ever there was a case for OSS, this must be it. I really would like the ability for the public to audit the software DRS has written to ensure it follows the guidelines. Even though it has been 'independently reviewed', I simply don't trust the programmers who wrote it unless I can see test suite results and/or the code. They don't have to reveal the company secrets that actually interpret the glyphs written on the paper - but they can open the algorithm used to produce the final results.

Labels: computers, election 2007, open source, software

I was trying a new piece of software for my mac called 'CoverSutra' which is quite nice application. It offers a little icon of the current track being played on the desktop and has Growl support.

One of the features I didn't know much about was submission to a site called last.fm which is a music recommendation site. Coversutra will automatically upload the music you play (names of tracks only) and compare it with other people with similar listening tastes. Eventually it'll recommend local concerts and music based purely on your listening history! Sounds good to me - and it's free.

If you visit my actual website (rather than reading my newsfeed) you'll notice a little icon on the right hand side which displays my most popularly listened artists over the last week! Pretty cool - this updates live too!

Check out CoverSutra - it's only 10 euros!
Link to last.fm

Labels: coolstuff, music, software, web