Category:Developer Feeds
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[edit] Matt Mihaly Feed
- âBarack Obama Is Ready To Be President of the United Statesâ - Bill Clinton
I lost most of my respect for Bill Clinton quite awhile ago, but the speech he gave tonight at the Democratic National Convention, following on Hillary’s excellent speech last night, was awesome and he earned some of it back very quickly. By nature, I’m not really a “joiner.” I dislike political parties, and have major reservations [...]
- Star Wars, Burgers, and MMOs
Star Wars has a long history in the MMO genre. I’m not actually sure what the first Star Wars MMO was, but there were/are multiple Star Wars-themed text-based MMOs (also called MUDs for those of you just tuning in) going back to the early 90s. In 2003, of course, Star Wars: Galaxies was released and [...]
- Senile or Hypocritical - You make the call
“In the 21st century, nations don’t invade other nations.” - John McCain. Just the kind of guy this country needs as its next President: Someone either so senile he forgets that his own nation has already invaded two countries in the 21st century, or someone so hypocritically arrogant as to believe that such statements shouldn’t apply [...]
- World of Philosophyquestscape: Clash of the Paradigms
Massively posted a question asking what IP and what developers people would love to see team up together. Scanning the initial answers in the thread, most are what you’d expect: stuff like Mechwarrior (awesome), GI Joe (lame), Dragonriders of Pern (probably awesome, but I’m not a personal fan). My favorite suggestion is definitely that Raph [...]
- I Want A Lightsaber, Damn It
Not happening anytime soon, of course, but this is surely the next best thing. In brief: It’s an add-on to the Wiimote that will allow for nearly 1:1 motion. Sword/lightsaber fighting ahoy! Despite my general lack of excitement over the Wii, this announcement has definitely perked me up regarding the little white box.
- Howard Stringer Makes Funny
“I’ve played a Nintendo Wii. I don’t see it as a competitor. It’s more of an expensive niche game device.” - Howard Stringer, CEO of Sony I don’t actually like the Wii from the perspective of myself as a games player, but that’s not because I’m too mainstream for it or whatnot. I’m more of a [...]
- Runescape Gets Huge Update
Runescape, arguably the most popular MMORPG in the Western world, launched probably the largest single update in its venerable existence today, overhauling the website and launching a new high-detail visual mode that shows off the fact that Jagex has updated effectively every asset in the game. They’ve also added a much-desired full-screen mode and chosen [...]
- The Ongoing Influence of MUDs
Great post here by Raph, countering some claims by some newer developers that MMOs don’t owe as much to text MUDs as most of us might suggest. Raph says it, but I’ll repeat: Graphical MMOs are generally a step (or multiple steps) backwards in terms of features when compared to the best text MUDs. That’s [...]
- Proud to be a Californian
Today, as California enters into the modern age by recognizing marriage between a man and a man or a woman and a woman, I find myself quite proud of it. Go California.
- Achaea ranked #1 text MUD/MMO
I know I haven’t posted at all lately and shame on me for popping my head out of a rock to post a self-congratulatory message about an Iron Realms game, but I’m going to do it anyway. It’s fairly rare for gaming magazines/sites to pay any attention to the continued existence of text MUDs so [...]
[edit] Raph Koster Feed
- Where are Asimovâs children?
I just finished reading Saturn’s Children, and enjoyed it quite a lot — Charlie Stross manages to nail the late Heinlein voice quite thoroughly, and although some of the late Heinlein books are vilified in some quarters, I liked quite a lot of them. Here Stross is clearly going after Friday. There’s quite a lot of [...]- Settlers of the Virtual World: new book
Gosh, i am behind on reporting stuff. Anyway.Settlers of the New Virtual Worlds is out. It’ssort of my book, because I have a chapter in it. But it isn’t really mine. it’s more Erik Bethke’s and Erin Hoffman’s. And really, my chapter is just another reprinting of the Avatar Rights piece, which at this point [...]- Red 5âs chasing the persistence dream
Once upon a time, there was an acronym we used for certain sorts of virtual worlds. We called them PSW’s, for “persistent state world.” Most virtual worlds today don’t actually have persistent state. Oh, your characters do, but not the world. In fact, the ability to affect the world has fallen dramatically since the days of [...]- Quick dragon sketch
Was noodling around with a dragon to add to a Metaplace world I was fiddling with, and sketched this. Then I ran it thru a few Photoshop filters. Been a long time since I put a doodle up on the blog, so here it is. This was done first with Adobe Sketchbook Pro on my tablet, [...]- Todayâs evidence that games are mainstream: McCain campaign apology
If my comments caused any harm or hurt to the hard working Americans who play Dungeons & Dragons, I apologize. This campaign is committed to increasing the strength, constitution, dexterity, intelligence, wisdom, and charisma scores of every American. Ben Smith’s Blog: Goldfarb keeps experience points - Politico.com.- Just Leap In: new browser-embedded 3d world
Just Leap In is yet another browser-embedded 3d environment using a plugin. This space is certainly getting crowded. Part of the reason we are seeing so many of these, I suppose, is that getting the basics of a virtual world client running inside a browser plugin is really trivial (though it’s hard to get it working [...]- The Sunday Video: November
I actually did this a while ago, but finally posted it up somewhere. November from Raph Koster on Vimeo.- Putting the World in WWW: Sandbox/Web3d video
Thanks to Ben Medler, who supplied an audio recording, I was able to concoct a video that shows the slides and videos I showed in synch with the audio. It’s a little over an hour long. As usual, there were some places I misspoke (that is what happens when you don’t use notes at all!) so [...]- New Star Wars MMO!
No, not KOTOR. McDonald’s, the world I predicted at Sandbox would be bigger than WoW. Today McDonald’s announced that the movie would be featured in its physical Happy Meals, which feature special codes to unlock content in the virtual world. It seemed inevitable that the physical Happy Meal promotions would get virtual tie-ins, and, [...]- IndieCadeâs take on my Sandbox/Web3d talk
“In the Sandbox with Raph Koster” is IndieCade’s take on the talk. It’s interesting to see it getting a different slant from Ben Medler’s — part of what happens when you deliberately give a diffuse talk, I suppose!
[edit] Richard Bartle Feed
- Hum Drum
You know that noise you get when you blow over the top of a bottle? It's like a humming?
Well, I keep hearing that in my left ear. It's some kind of mechanical problem, which I know because I found that I can induce it by pressing the right part of my head (the bit where the jawbone meets the cheek). If I just tap on this part, it sounds like a drum.
The cause is almost certainly the cold I had last week, bunging up some tubes in my head. It's a little worrying, though, because although I'm used to getting stuffy hearing or high pitched whines from getting bunged up, I'm not used to getting hums. I'm guessing that this is because normally I get bunged up on the side of my eardrum that leads to the outside world, but today it's on the side that leads to my nose. That doesn't inspire confidence that I'm going to escape an ear infection.
Oh well, at least my balance isn't affected...- Wash Your Mouth Out
What have the following in common?
blonde
accuse
suicide
nuts
follower
They're all words that my daughter has used in the course of normal conversation in The Lord of the Rings Online which have fallen foul of its profanity filter.- Badly Parked
Here is a badly-parked car:
It's actually illegally parked, because it's within 10 metres of a road junction (you can see the road junction in front of it). However, that's not why it's badly-parked. It's badly-parked, because it's RIGHT IN FRONT OF OUR DRIVE so it's REALLY AWKWARD to get out or in.
Today, when my father-in-law visited, he had a hard time turning into our drive without hitting this car. Luckily, he managed to avoid it. Unluckily, he didn't manage to avoid our wall:
There ought to be a law against parking like this — say, point 243 of the Highway Code...- The Box
My daughters had a clear out of their rooms, and found piles of school work that they didn't want to throw out but didn't want clogging up valuable clothes space. Fortunately, I have a bag of holding into which I can deposit such things, which I call "the attic".
Unfortunately, I only had one box big enough for one daughter's stuff.
So, I ventured into the attic looking for something I no longer needed that was in the right size of box. This is how I found the portable Sanyo black & white TV set that I took with me when I went to university 30 years ago.
What with the digital switchover, and the fact that I have colour vision, I reluctantly concluded that I no longer needed a B&W TV. Besides, I really wanted its box. So, the TV is now in the garage awaiting a trip to the tip (or to the Antiques Road Show, whichever is closest) and the box is back in the attic full of my elder daughter's schoolwork.
The TV was not the only thing in the box when I brought it down from the attic, however. I had also kept the instruction manual. Here are some of its instructions:
Ah, those were the days. I'd like to believe that hairstyles like this woman's went out in the 1950s, but I suspect I may be wrong...
Here's another page of instructions:
I particularly like the advice that you shouldn't tip alcohol into the back of your TV. My current TV doesn't say that in its instructions, so I guess it's OK. I've no idea what that black thing is between the alcohol and the aerosol, though (not the cross, the other thing).
And finally, just in case you think everything was bad in the old days, here's something you don't see with today's TVs:
It was too big all to fit in my scanner, but I think you get the idea. The TV came with a handy circuit diagram, so you could track down any burned-out transistors and replace them.
Where are the circuit diagrams for today's TVs, eh?- Two Pages
I've mentioned before that I collect maps of Europe from 1869.
Usually, I just have maps of Europe, but occasionally I see an interesting one of a country that I like the look of and will get that as well. There was a very cheap one of England available on eBay recently — £3 buyout for a two-page map. I have a two-page map of Europe frame and hanging on my office wall, so I thought this might complement it. Here's what my Europe map looks like:
You can see the join between the pages down the middle if you look carfully.
When my England map arrived, it was indeed printed across two pages. However, the seller used a slightly different definition of what constituted a "page":
I don't think I'll be getting that one framed, to be honest.- Wreak
My elder daughter has finished another of her famous Mog and Tilly cartoons for your edification and delight.
Mmm, sprinkles!- Want Not, Waste Not
Unpersuaded by the advertisements for genuine fake watches while we were in Kusadasi a couple of weeks ago, we instead bought something that would last marginally longer: Turkish Delight. Unfortunately, the ones we had earmarked for our own consumption were covered in coconut shavings, so I couldn't eat them (I don't like coconut). However, my wife took some pistachio ones to work, and yesterday returned with three cubes of it that no-one had eaten. These, I got to eat.
OK, so aside from the fact that the pistachio tasted suspiciously like peanut, it was OK. After I ate my three cubes, I set about taking the box apart for recycling.
This is when I discovered that the box had actually already been recycled:
Those are Turkish Cigarette packs printed on the back of the card. The Middle East seems good at this kind of thing.
Oh well, if it works..!- The Way the World Changes
This morning on GMTV, we were told: "find out where the top 10 most unique places in Britain are". Sure enough, later in the programme they had an interview with the Mayor of Bradford, in whose dominion the "most unique" place — Saltaire — is located.
They do this on GMTV the whole time: treat the word "unique" as if it described a continuous variable instead of a binary variable. Look, GMTV, there are not different degrees of uniqueness: either something is unique, or it's not unique — you can't have one thing be "more unique" than another, it's not a gradable quality. If you're use a comparative or a superlative, it's to make a telling or comical point ("all animals are created equal, but some are more equal than others" — in other words, they're not equal at all).
Unless you're making such a point, don't try to grade binary adjectives. You can say that something is almost legal, but not that one thing is more legal than another; you can say that something was perfect, but not that it is now less perfect than it was; you can say that a die produces random numbers, but not that another die produces extremely random numbers.
None of this makes any difference to GMTV. They're just going to carry on the same as they ever did. People who watch it who don't know any better will follow suit, and before we know it, there won't be such a thing as a binary adjective any more.
Ways to change the world: Science, Faith, Education and ... Ignorance.
(And don't even get me started on those signs that say "use both lanes when queueing"...).- On My Mind
I was on holiday when military engagement between Russia and Georgian occurred, so I missed all opening news on the subject except for the fact that it had occurred. Thus, I wasn't subject to the full BBC News treatment of the subject.
I think I must be missing something.
The way I understand it, Russia had troops stationed in a breakaway part of Georgia as part of a peace-keeping agreement. Georgia attacked it in force. Russia leapt to its defence, and smashed the Georgian army to smithereens. The West complained that Russia had been too heavy-handed.
Uh? What was Russia supposed to do? Give the Georgians a sporting chance?
The history of this part of the world is long and complex, having as it does a Balkans-like mix of multiple peoples living in overlapping territories. It was a governate of the Czars, and although it became independent for about 3 years following the Russian revolution, it was reabsorbed when the Communist armies arrived and turned it into a Soviet Republic . This would be bad enough, but Stalin (whose father was Ossetian and mother Georgian) took to moving large populations from one part of the USSR to another (eg. Siberia), and redrawing administrative boundaries. As a consequence, when the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991, half of Ossetia was within Russia's borders and half was within Georgia's. Also, the people living in Ossetia were a mixture of Ossetians, Russians, Georgians and other Transcaucasions,
The people of South Ossetia appear to want to be reunited with those of North Ossetia as part of the Russian Federation. Georgia doesn't want this to happen, although I'm not entirely sure why not; it may be for reasons of resources, or the country's structural integrity, or concerns about letting Russia get a foothold the other side of the Causasus mountain. I only have a hazy idea of the politics of the area, so am probably wildly wrong. Nevertheless, modulo all the issues about borders and multiple claims to the same land, it does seem to be fairly natural justice to allow the South Ossetians union with North Ossetia if that's what the people of both areas want. This is the kind of thing you'd expect liberal Western democracies to support, not to oppose.
If NATO countries had gone along with Russia's defence of South Ossetia, they wouldn't be in the pickle they're in at the moment: trying to pressure Russia into leaving the place, but having no leverage on them whatsoever. Russia wasn't even the aggressor! I'm sure that if the Dominican Republic decided to invade Puerto Rica, there wouldn't be much left of the Dominican Republic after America had hit it with a big stick. Compared with what Russia could have done to Georgia, the actual invasion seems almost measured.
As I said, I think I must have missed something here...- Some Type
From today's Guardian:
Hmm. Looks as if someone knocked off work early yesterday...- Jingling Treasure
Take the word jingle It's two syllables in length, with the g splitting into two sounds across them. The first syllable rhymes with "sing" and the second, depending on your accent, is something approximatied by "gull". It's the first syllable I'm mainly interested in, though, jing.
Now take the word treasure. Unless you have a particularly fussy way of speaking, the s in the middle there is pronounced like the French word "je". This sound is usually rendered in English as zh, because it bears a similar relationship to z as sh does to s.
In English, j and zh are quite different sounds. Think of a word with j in it and it's almost always going to be pronounced the same way: like it is in jingle. Jacket, jaunt, adjust, join, reject, Jupiter, jelly, injure, projection, jaw — that's the way a j is sounded.
J isn't the only letter that can give a j sound, of course: so can g. The g in rage is pronounced like the j in Raj. However, if you were going to transcribe that sound using the English alphabet, you'd go for j rather than g; this is because g also makes the sound it does in gull (as well as turning in into ing).
This is why the Chinese word Romanisation system, pinyin, converts the Mandarin j sound into the letter j: that's the sound it makes. Unlike the case with g, this is pretty well the only sound a j makes. If you see jingle, you know it's not zhingle. If you see jing, you know it's not zhing.
So why is it, then, that most commentators at the Olympics seem to want to pronounce Beijing as "Bay zhing"? It's "Bay jing"! This is Mandarin, not French!
The BBC Pronunciation Unit is generally excellent, but why have it when apparently no-one pays attention to its very clear instructions?
I wonder if it's just the UK that has this problem? At least thedatabase of the Voice of America pronunciation unit is online — and also gets it right.- A Question Answered
Colchester has a dearth of out-of-town fast food joints. Basically, you have a choice of McDonald's, Pizza Hut or another McDonald's.
However, one of the McDonald's, near Sainsbury's, decided that rather than bring its old building up to current restaurant standards it would simply demolish it, sell the site to someone else, and build a new McDonald's next door. This meant we had the very real possibility of having a new fast food company setting up home on the old site. Maybe a KFC or a Burger King, or one of the smaller outfits looking for retail space? Maybe (gasp!) a Harry Ramsden's?
Well, when I went to PC World today I got my answer. It's a drive-in Boots prescription service.- Overtones
As it happened, PC World didn't have a type 92274A HP LaserJet 4L toner cartridge, but Staples next door did. It cost £80.
Maybe it's time for me to consider upgrading my heavy duty B&W printer to a model that doesn't use museum quality components...- Weekend Chore
We went to Newmarket today.
We go to Newmarket every other Sunday, unless something crops up to stop us (eg. our holiday). The reason we go to Newmarket is because that's where my mother-in-law is in a care home (her savings have now run out but there's a move by the authorities to charge her care to my father-in-law now).
I detest these trips to Newmarket. It's the grinding, inescapable regularity of them that does it. It takes us 75 minutes to get there, we spend an hour at the care home, then it's an hour to get back. They mean Sunday is pretty well a write-off in terms of doing anything. Want to see a movie or mow the lawn or visit the computer shop to pick up some HP 92274A toner for your ancient but still solid Laserjet 4L? You can forget it. You're in the car to Newmarket, like it or not.
The reason we take 75 minutes to get to Newmarket and only 60 to return is because my wife drives there and I drive back. She goes up the A134 and I take the A12 (20 miles further but you don't get stuck behind lorries, buses, agricultural vehicles, caravans, cyclists and people who haven't discovered their car has more than 3 gears). Given that it's my wife's mother we're going to see, and that I never say a word when we get there, you might wonder why I have to go along at all. So do I. All I know is that if I make any hint that there's no need for me to be there my wife goes into a glaring defensive mode. If I press it, she makes up excuses on the fly (she stuck with "it's too dark" for several months, but that doesn't work any more). So, I do it for her.
Because we've been away for two weekends, today we had to visit. Nothing short of a meteor strike would have provided an acceptable excuse. So it was, laid low by this ghastly cold, I got into the passenger seat and slept to Newmarket, then stayed in the car and slept for an hour while my wife visited her mother, then woke up and drove home. I went through 6 paper tissues on the way back, which was actually quite good all things considered. I don't know why my wife thinks being driven home by someone who woke up this morning with eyes so gunked up that he couldn't open them is more preferable than if she drove home herself, but for some reason she does.
And two weeks from today, we'll be off to Newmarket again...- Foiled Again
What do they make the wrappers for 8-biscuit packs of Tunnock's Caramel Wafers out of?
I'm guessing plastic. That's the recycling bag I'm putting it in, anyway...
[edit] Wes Platt Feed
- A shout out to The Farthest Star...
- Tropical Storm Fay screws with mi familia.
- Short Attention Span Review: "Tropic Thunder"
- JTS: Google Analytics Update
- Badges undergoing refit!
- Join the Saga: Special RP Events!
- JTS: New OtherVerse Wiki badges!
- Short Attention Span Review: "X-Files: I Want to Believe"
- Web Game Friends
- Short Attention Span Review: "The Dark Knight"
- OtherSpace Anniversary Goodies!
- New T-shirts!
- OS:M: Odin now Chief of Staff
- Short Attention Span Review: "Hellboy II"
- Games don't just make kids violent...
- Lively embassy!
- Comics controversy!
- Join the new online gaming literacy cause!
- JTS Survey: The results are in!
- OS: Facebook Fan Club!
- JTS: New survey!
- Join the saga, win a gift certificate!
- Short Attention Span Review: "Hancock"
- Short Attention Span Review: "WALL-E"
- Huh.
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