It takes a bit to impress an old cynical fan of wrestling. Mascara Dorada does. These are amazing moves, possibly the best high-flyer in the world at the moment. The video is quite long, but do enjoy at least the first few minutes, well worth it.
Blog
-
Game Center for the iPhone is all very nice
and looks lovely and everything, but what would be really good would be if they had launched with at least one game ready for people to play. Maybe that’s just me though.
EDIT: Tell a lie, apparently Ms. Pac-Man works with it. Doesn’t point that out in Game Center itself though, which would have been nice.
-
Setting up a robust development environment for WordPress
For a while now I’ve been wanting to create a better development environment for myself for working on my WordPress blogs, and other php projects too. I thought that in itself, this would be a good project to blog about as I set it up, explain and justify what I’m doing, see what other people are doing in similar areas for comparison. Also it might be helpful to people wanting to set up such an environment for themselves, or who want to set up an element of it. I’m going to break it down into several posts, which I’ll gradually link to from this post.
I’ll be setting up a new blog at flotsky.com, which with the new WordPress 3.0 I’ll be able to make a multiple blog installation, able to run whole new blogs underneath this. I’m also hoping to use a plugin to help me set this up with different domains for some of these blogs, so for instance there will be a flotsky.org blog with a different look and feel, but only one install of WordPress and its plugins to upgrade and develop. Finally I’m hoping to then move this blog itself from WordPress to Drupal, as that’s a CMS I need to learn more about too.
So what am I looking for in this development environment?
Security
I want to be able to test changes to the site without affecting the live site. If something breaks on the live site, I’d like to be able to revert back to the previous version easily, get the site back up and running, and fix it in the test environment. So I need a test version of the site, and I need version control, allowing me to make releases of the site, and access previous version.
Mac-based
This is my own personal preference, I work on Macs for both my day job and my own stuff, so it makes sense. However all the tools I’ll use will either be available on Windows and Linux, or will have very close equivalents. Much of what I’m going to do will be within an IDE (Integrated Development Environment) available for all platforms, so my setup will be transferable should I need to (or should other wish to try it too).
Integrated
I like using only a few tools for developing. Where possible, I want to do all the work within the IDE, and then test in a browser. For instance I currently use Cyberduck for FTP, but I’d rather do this within the IDE (and I’ve got this figured out now).
So, in order that I can do all this, I’ve selected a few tools.
Netbeans
I’ve used Netbeans for a year or two now as my main IDE. It is at heart a Java IDE, but its support for other languages has improved quite a bit, and the bulk of what I’ll be working on, PHP, HTML and CSS are well supported, with code completion and syntax for all, and the promise of good testing support for PHP in particular (this is something I want to delve into more as I go along). As a downside it can be a bit memory hungry, but I’ve found it more stable than Eclipse which I used before.
Subversion
Subversion has been my version control system for a few years now at work, so this is a simple choice for me, as I know it best. I’ve not had much experience of CVS, and there are good guides and advice available for Subversion, so as something new to setting up their own versioning system for themselves, it makes sense to stick with what I know.
MAMP
MAMP is Mac Apache Mysql PHP server. This is what will allow me to run a whole site on my local machine and test it easily. It’s pretty easy to set up, and also allows me to configure a more complex testing environment later on. I could have chosen to have a “live” test site on my webhost, and this may be a more suitable option for some people, obviously where you might have more than one potential user of the site itself.
So this is the basic setup I want (and have set up already, but will explain it in more detail as I get it working better). I want to use this to have a process for development where I can:
- Work and test on my local machine.
- Make a release version.
- Save this in my versioning system.
- Send to my live server.
The next post will be about setting up Subversion on the Mac. I’d be interested to hear other people’s experiences of setting up similar environments, and suggestions for different approaches to what I’m planning.
-
WordPress 3.0 Custom Post Headers
WordPress 3.0 is out, and is rather nice. I’ve been using the release candidate for a little while on another blog with no hassles at all, and so I was happy to upgrade this site as soon as the full version was out. The easiest way to see what is in the new version is to watch this video:
For now, I’ve moved to the new default theme Twenty Ten. It is a nice clean them, and does have a couple of very handy features. You can add your own custom header for the blog as a whole, but the nice feature introduced is the ability to define a custom post header for each blog post you make. Within WordPress 3.0 this is referred to as Featured Image.
It’s nice and simple to do, it will try and convert any image to a header you choose, but for the most control over how it looks, you need an image that is 940 × 198 pixels. When you write a post, simply click on the Set featured image link at the bottom of the right hand column. After uploading the image, you get the option to insert it into the post. Instead of doing this, look to the bottom of the dialogue box:
Click on “Set as Featured Image”, save and you are done. You can see a custom image for this post’s header as an example.
-
Ellerbisms
I’ve already written about my trip to last month’s MCM Expo, and mentioned that I picked up a sizeable amount of comics. One of these was Marc Ellerby‘s Ellerbims.
It’s a sort of visual diary, lovely indie style to it, funny and charming. It isn’t a British Questionable Content, but there are certainly echoes there for me, in a good way. I think it would be hard to write personal stuff in the way Marc does, and indeed Jeph does, without reflecting one’s style and taste in music, and thus there is a bit of crossover there.
Marc sells his compilations on the site at a very reasonable price, hopefully one day he’ll have electronic versions available too (personal interest there). Go and have a look!
-
Attack – Bomb The Bass
I used to have the video single of Attack by Bomb The Bass on VHS years ago, and lost it in the mists of time. I was very sad about this, it was what got me into skate videos and the like. Finally a few days ago I found this on youtube (I will admit to an issue of middle age that meant I couldn’t remember what it was called, which didn’t help with my quest). Watch and enjoy.
-
Update to my Kurt Vonnegut page
Today I’ve updated my Kurt Vonnegut page, which now has on one page my whole dissertation on him from 1994. I’ve also added downloads of the essay in PDF and ePub format, which meant I could download it to my new iPad. Something very satisfying about being able to read my own work on there. I’m hoping in future to re-edit and add more to it.
-
Models of Communication
I had an interesting conversation this week with socialistgamer at oxtuttle about voice comms within games. It reminded me of my old communication studies A-level course many years ago, and of the classic formal models for communication. I promised to try and track them down, as they were very hazy memories, so here they are. These examples are all drawn from SHKaminski.com, who has made some useful notes on them, so I’m just providing links rather than using their diagrams.
The Shannon-Weaver Mathematical model from 1949 portrays a linear model of a single object of communication, showing the factors involved along the way. It nicely incorporates the concept of noise along the path of the message from sender to receiver, the factors that surround the message but are not part of what is intended to be sent.
Schramm’s Model of Communication from 1954 shows a more circular model of communication, with messages being sent between two sources at the same time. This is perhaps a more accurate model of the process, as in a conversation between two people, there often isn’t a clear back and forth, sometimes they will talk over each other, and throughout they will be sending messages via non-verbal communication, showing interest with their eyes for instance.
Both are basic classic models of the process, and indeed there are many more recent and complex models to explore. However I think they are both useful to remember when considering the process of communicating in areas such as gaming and social networks as a starting point. We were discussing the difficulties in playing multiplayer games when this thought came up, how in some cases playing at a LAN party was easier than playing online from your own home, and in some cases more difficult. The noise factors at a LAN party might be for one obviously more noise, more distractions from being in a room with several other people, playing in an unfamiliar place compared to your normal location. However also being able to see and speak in person to people, rather than through microphones and text chat, can make communication easier, reduce noise.
Similarly, noise can affect how a message may be received on say Twitter. How many people are each of your audience following, are you one of a few, very likely to be read, or are you one of many hundreds or thousands, part of a vast stream of information. Is the network solid, will your audience receive all your tweets, or is the network prone to going down, meaning they may miss it entirely even if they want to read it. Have you annoyed people with a lot of silly or spam messages, are they likely to ignore even a good useful message because of other things you’ve said previously? These and a multitude of other factors all can act as noise surrounding every single tweet you send.
Although both these models are over 50 years old now, they are still nice simple models to apply to communication to see how it works, and where the potential pitfalls lie.
-
Manga on the iPad
Whilst I may have a bit of a wait for a digital version of Pluto or 20th Century Boys (the Manga I am reading voraciously at the moment), there are options available already to access some Manga on the iPad. NTT Solmare have been publishing individual mangas as apps on the iPhone for some time, and have now brought out their first iPad HD release, Always By Your Side/Solaruru. Their books are translated into English for the UK/US market, and anglicised so that the books read left to right, rather than the traditional right to left.
I’ve tried out this first release (it was only 50p, their usual price seems to have been about £1.79), and having read it, it’s a very simple tale of a ghost appearing in a school, and befriending a girl. There isn’t much to the story, I wouldn’t recommend it. And the translation is a little clunky, the text seems to have been placed in rather large font onto the page with little care. However as they’ve published 120 iPhone mangas, there is the potential they could publish something interesting to the English-speaking market in future. So I would suggest having a look at the iPhone/iPad stores, and searching for “NTT Solmare” to see if anything takes your fancy there, if like me you’re looking out for digital manga.
-
MCM Expo May 2010
This past Saturday found me at the MCM Expo in London, a massive collection of Manga and Anime exhibitors, cosplayers, comic authors, game previews and more. It takes place at the Excel Centre in London’s Docklands, and your first experience of the day is being surrounded by cosplayers on the DLR.
I had been to last years show, but even so this in itself is a wonderfully bewildering experience. Perhaps even more fun watching the reactions of the other commuters on the train wondering quite why they are sitting next to a kid with foot-tall spiky hair and a four foot long sword.
Once inside the centre itself, you join the world’s longest queue to change your ticket for an wristband. It is fun being in the queue, seeing all the fantastic and not-so-fantastic costumes going by, but I could have had even more fun if they’d sent me an wristband instead of a ticket and let me go in straight away.
Inside the exhibition hall was a bewildering array of stalls full of everything Manga one could wish for. Being old and weary from my ultra queuing, I headed to the back of the hall for a nice sit down, which happily co-incided with the second half of the industry panel on anime.
It was very interesting to hear the British industry perspective on the state of the industry and their potential market for anime, which seemed to be a blend of slightly beleaguered mixed with a pleasing amount of optimism. An interesting question on their take on the Digital Economy bill brought a lot of responses, including the very memorable response on downloading from Manga UK: “People are used to doing it everywhere. today you’ve got people hanging around in costumes outside who won’t pay for a ticket, yet the organisers still have to pay to look out for them in case a fucking 10 foot carrot decides to top themselves”.
On a more serious note all of them seemed refreshingly up to date and knowledgeable about how the Internet relates to their world (which from a business point of view hasn’t always been the most up to date always), with one of them pointing out “we have to offer as good a digital service as the pirates to succeed”. This holds so true in most areas of digital business, if it is easy to steal your service, you have to compete by making your legitimate business at least as easy, comprehensive and enticing to use as your pirate competitors (see iTunes for how mainly to do this).
I then moved on to watch an exhibition match by the wrestlers of the FWA, which was a pleasant surprise for me to see, especially as I thought they had gone bust a few years ago. They had, but this was them back together again, and hopefully heading in the right direction.
The important business for me of the day was making the most of both the great stock of the main publishers, and wandering through the comic village. This is where many indie authors and artists sell their own comics. The latter is a great place to discover and browse comics you just might not find otherwise, and I picked up a good few new ones to try. I also picked up several volumes of Naoki Urasawa’s 20th Century Boys
and Pluto, my favourite mangas at the moment.
Along the way I met up with some friends and had a good time touring round, chatting and enjoying being pointed towards new anime to try.
A good fun day in London all round, may well nip along to the next one in October.
UPDATE: Posts on the expo from other people I met up with there, Tim Maughan and Andrew Proom. Also met socialistgamer and Sheentaku.