I just got paid for my last book :)  It's sparked off that creativity I've been missing for the past month and I'm ready and raring to throw myself at some more mag articles and the two next books I'm working on.

Not impressed with the Lockdown demo.

I can't connect to a decent multiplayer server because there's no way of running one.  In their infinite wisdom, UBI require the game to be running on a machine that meets their graphics spec in order to host a game - theres no dedicated server exe or command-line flags. It's not THAT difficult to code an option to bypass the GUI and launch a dedicated server, trust me. First thing I do in writing any app is make sure I've added command lines so I can do things from scripts (and in my latest MMORPG efforts, the server even has a COM+ interface for scripting, wheeeee).

The graphics are good, but the game just doesnt feel right.  Movement seems too arcade-ey.  I can lean to the side and the view doesnt tilt with me. Worst of all, the game feels just like the PS/2 version, while we were promised the PC version would be completely different. 

Still, lets see how it all works out in the final release.  At least if I can get into a multiplayer game theres a good chance something can be salvaged.

In the meantime its back to BF2 - clan match on Sunday so I need the practice!

So I quit the day job today...

Working notice until the end of March (I need to give 2 months and they asked me to do a bit more, I guess its easier than working out a partial months pay or something), and then its onto a simpler life of running my online store, doing the odd bit of writing here and there, and painting miniatures to pay the bills. Time to put some effort into things I want to be doing, rather than what other people want me to do.

In other news, the 2nd hard drive in the PC I run as a multipurpose server at home just got fried, ordering a new one from www.play.com - luckily I don't think there was anything irreplacable on there... of course, its impossible to go look so I guess in a few months when I remember what I cant find any more and remember it was on there I'll start screaming. Oh well :)

Happy New Year, btw.

So I'm mid-trawl of some websites, and I hit this comment on a message board:

The average worker today works more hours than an agrarian worker four hundred years ago. Who or what are we serving with our increased productivity and labor?

And it really, really struck home.  Especially with my current thoughts re: the day job.  Maybe it's time to seriously consider a more relaxing work schedule, and stop blowing the huge amounts of cash I end up spending on luxuries in order to de-stress myself...

Heh heh, Tycho over at Penny Arcade is dissing Wikipedia...

Thats two Brent Sienna moments in as many years for me.

I bought my iBook last year, and just the other day I was in Tescos of all places when I saw the iPod display and had to have one, right there and then.

My new iPod Video (aka G5 iPod) has 30GB of storage capacity, currently running at 5GB used while I fill it with assorted eclectic music tracks, the entire extended Lord of the Rings trilogy, and Season 1 of Battlestar Galactica (the new one).

Having some problems getting to grips with iTunes on a multi-computer system - I use a PC, a Server, a PC Laptop, and the iBook interchangably and there doesnt seem to be any easy way to maintain a single iTunes library between the four of them.  However, some manual intervention here has got me an acceptable solution until I can find the ideal one.

Now excuse me while I away and find more things to rip.

For the first time I can remember, Play.com are late with a new game release.

My copy of Smackdown vs Raw for the PSP only dispatched on Friday, the very day it got released.  Usually they get it out Monday or Tuesday and it gets delivered Thursday or Friday...

Ah well :(

So I'm learning Macromedia Flash in order to do a new comic strip.  I have ideas, but not going to disclose anything at this time.  What I dont have is a name for the strip...  Anyway, hoping to launch it in the new year if everything works out :D

I've been running a website on and off at www.warpedcore.net for years, back and forth between ideas for a portal site and a personal homepage.  We're back to a portal setup, folks :)

Seeing as Gamespot's hardware section seems to be broken in respect to user reviews, I'll post this here:

It does so much, and tries to do so much more...

There's not much point in me sitting and raving about how great the PSP is, theres plenty of other reviews that do that, so I'm going to ignore the games side of it totally and concentrate on everything else it does, and the things it tries to do.

One of the recent firmware updates added a web browser to the PSP, which for it's size works pretty darned well.  The joystick works as a mouse to move around the page, and you can scroll around the hyperlinks using the D-Pad.  If only it added streaming media too, it'd be perfect!  Sony have hyped "streaming media" support, but so far that only works from their own LocationFree(tm) base station - it'd be perfect if I could hook this thing up to a PC running Windows Media Services...

UMD movie playback is great, and theres applications out now that convert your .AVIs to MP4 format allowing you to run them from the memory stick.  This works out approximately 500MB for a 1hr 45m movie, so depending on compression and whatever else you might want to store on that stick, you may be getting that 1GB stick sooner than you'd thought you wanted to.

MP3 playback has been around on the PSP for a while, but another recent update has added .WMA files to the supported list (although you need a connection to the net *directly* from the PSP to enable this for the first time - you cant do it via a USB connection), so all of those CDs you ripped in Windows Media Player can now be downloaded for playback on the PSP.

At this rate, pretty soon the PSP will be intruding on the PDA market... if only they'd added a stylus...

Overall: 9.0