XSet is the personal website of Rob Dudley, a 29 year old software and web developer who lives in the Channel Islands...
// October 31st, 2006 // No Comments » // Personal
Ouch!
For some unknown reason my back has decided that it doesn’t like me very much.
I woke up this morning (dum dum de dum), sat up in bed, sneezed and fell over.
I made it into work by the grace of ibuprofen and discovered that 99% of all the islands’s roads need resurfacing.
If anybody wants me I’ll be sitting up very straight in the corner.
Ow!
// October 31st, 2006 // No Comments » // Tech
With the release of Ubuntu Edgy (6.10) and a successful install on the media box, I’ve been giving more and more thought to migrating the laptop (15“ Powerbook 1.67GHz) completely. I’ve so far managed to resolve the main show stopper issues (i.e. the trackpad response speed, the airport actually working) but still have a couple of problems that prevent me making the switch.
First off is the lack of multiple monitor support. This isn’t a massive problem at work but I use the laptop to play DVDs and movies through my little telly at home and really need S-Video working.
Second is a more basic issue with ‘nix as a whole. It seems that to do anything major you have to hit the Terminal. Now I’m quite happy mucking about at a prompt but the concept of Gui has been around for some time now and I’d really like to not have to wander into cli world for anything less than a major reconfiguration or upgrade.
The first issue is actually fixable by purchasing a Mac Mini to use as a dedicated media server / PVR thingy and the second I suppose will be resolved by simply using the OS until I’m confident enough at the prompt to not mind having to use it every day.
I’ll be running the big backup this week and probably sitting down to clean the drive and install on the weekend so expect more from me then.
// October 27th, 2006 // No Comments » // Personal
Admittedly I’m getting a bit bored of MAKE: and their constant stream of pumpkin mods but this one is just brilliant.
// October 25th, 2006 // No Comments » // Personal
There’s something about games that are utterly simple in concept and graphical implementation and yet capture the attention of the player far more completely than the whizzy graphics of the latest console movie tie in. Of course, under the hood, these simple games probably use as much processing power as any other but it’s the concept that makes us fall in love with them.
In celebration of intelligent game design I’m going to share two of my stalwart faves, both of which are cross platform and completely free!
First up is Grid Wars 2, a very cool concept shoot-em-up with vector stylings and bleepy noises. Simply put you control the movement of your ship with one set of controls and the direction of fire with the other. The play field (or grid) then spawns a host of enemies for you to blast asunder.
Grid Wars becomes really interesting when you start getting black holes (red circles) as these can suck in a number of enemies giving you massive points if you then destroy the hole itself. Don’t leave it too long though or the hole will implode and release hundreds of little enemies towards you!
You can grab Grid Wars for PC and Mac from the above link and I’d recommend reading the article and looking at the pictures just to get a feel for how beautiful the game is. I personally play using the Hybrid control method where the keyboard controls your movement and the mouse control the direction of your fire.
The other neuvou retro title is Oolite, a cross platform, Elite clone that uses Open GL to power its world. All the old Elite features are there from trading to pitched laser battles to tricky landings in spinning space ports. One thing I would say is it can be very time consuming to cross from the arrival point in the system to the station so grab yourself some fuel injectors as soon as you can afford them and check out the “First Flight Tutorial” on the homepage.
I’ve spent many an hour on these two and I hope you’ll enjoy them. Have you got a freebie retro fave thhat you’d like to share? Sound off in the comments.
// October 25th, 2006 // No Comments » // Personal
Oops! It seems that FF2 isn’t officially released yet. We’ll have to wait until later today I think but please only download from the Mozilla.com home-page.
One thing I will say though, even though I can appreciate the complexity of releasing a piece of software that has such a high level of anticipation as FF2 the Firefox team should be secretly smiling that the pre-release confusion has affected so many users. It just proves how desperate the user base is to get their hands on the app!
Go go go go go!
It’s not on the front pages yet but the final release is on the FTP servers.
Oh and the server is getting hammered right now so be prepared for a bit of a wait.
// October 24th, 2006 // No Comments » // Personal
In addition to their partnership with Flickr, mini card makers Moo have announced they are providing Moo Skype contact cards.
You can grab a free trial (10 card pack) by entering the promo code “freebie” at the above page.
I think these are likely to be more useful to me as my Flickr cards are limited by my own lack of photographic imagination.
// October 24th, 2006 // No Comments » // Personal
It’s really quiet at the moment.
I’m the only one in the little office at the moment and whilst I have a load of work to be getting on with I’m also enjoying the following:
Being alone in the office does present a couple of temptations though. I would be really easy to:
BUGGER!!!
// October 24th, 2006 // No Comments » // Personal
As I’m back in the world of the gainfully employed I’m now back on a daily commute. It’s not massive (it can’t be – 9 x 5 people) but it still takes me through a range of different bits of the island.
Of course, at this time of year I’m way to busy concentrating on a) not losing control due to the wet roads / detritus b) not getting run over by twats in 4×4s to pay much attention but this morning provided a couple of points that warrant a post.
First there was the guy in the Land Rover Defender (the only permissible 4×4 on the road in my opinion, and even then only if you live on Mt Everest or similar) who saw a juvenile rabbit loping across the road and didn’t just slow down to avoid it. He actually stopped, picked up the bunny and placed it in a nice safe field. The whole action took no more than a minute but proves that there are some nice people in this world … even if he did have a BFOB
Second was the wonderment that is the honorary police over here. The last quarter of my journey takes me down some pretty meandering lanes (which is to say they are both visually attractive and meander more the most) unfortunately one of the lanes had been closed. No diversion, nothing. Just closed. Fortunately I’m getting pretty good at Jersey navigation (which is an art form believe me!) and was able to work out the only way to get to work without having to back track. Unfortunately this took me straight onto the ring road (aka the 8:30am car park) and through Springfield, one of the busiest sections of the ring road which is also closed for road works.
One has to wonder whether the police who closed the lane actually thought about the consequences of routing all the traffic via a route, so congested that it added 20 minutes to my journey time. I can only think that they did it as a joke of some kind.
// October 24th, 2006 // No Comments » // Personal
I really like this new version of Pong. It allows you 2 player action and has some cracking particle physics to boot.
But easily the best feature is the ’spin’ you can now put on the puck. It makes it really easy to beat the computer and perfectly possible to score own goals 
The only downside is the music – it’s not optional so make sure you turn the speaker down or off before you start playing.
// October 23rd, 2006 // No Comments » // Personal
Last weekend was good.
This weekend was less good.
Saturday was completely wasted as it was spent watching Scrubs, BSG and Veronica Mars and generally lazing around in my dressing gown. I can’t really afford to do that for a whole day at the moment – there’s simply too much for me to be doing.
Petanque on Sunday didn’t go well either. Any illusions I may have had about my prowess on the terrain were left shattered after a terrible performance. I couldn’t point, fire and may as well have not bothered showing up for all the good I did.
Oh and the weather has settled in for the winter (probably the cause of my less than jovial mood) which means grey with scattered grey and the possibility of some grey throughout the afternoon.
I need something to cheer me up 
