graeme.blog

Category: diary

  • Phantasy Star Offline

    So I’m now about 4.5 hours into Phantasy Star Universe. Having received my pre-order copy a couple of days early, I’ve been playing the offline mode, as the servers haven’t been turned on yet. The offline Story mode is a fully fledged RPG, in the mode of a Final Fantasy, right down to having far too many cutscenes in the first hour of play.

    I have been enjoying it immensely. At first the world is slightly bewildering, but once you take control of your character, it plays and feels like Phantasy Star Online of old, but with much better graphics, and a more organic feel that makes it feel less like you are playing in mainly square rooms. The fighting, whilst still based on the same system, does feel more fluid, and the trademark targeting mechanism of PSO has gone, replaced by, well, pointing at the creature you want to hit, and fighting them. Works fine.

    I think my main gripe so far has been the on-screen display. Even though the game isn’t optimised for HD, the menus are tiny. Whereas in PSO you had beautiful clear graphics that told you exactly what you had and were using, these you really have to squint at. I appreciate it may partly be my old age, but they are very small. I reckon they could have done with offering a large-print option for the older gamer. Reminds me, I probably should look into getting my eyes tested soon.

    Once the servers have gone live, I’ll be wanting to play there instead, but I will carry on with the offline as well, as it is where all the game achievements are apparently. Will probably report back on the online version soon.

    In other news, we’ve got tickets for Bond tomorrow, and hopefully mrsfb will be over her cold for that. Do a few chores and a bit of shopping this weekend, then Sunday afternoon I’m off to London for a couple of days for XP day (now two days).

  • Hurtling towards the weekend

    A quiet one coming up, probably a good thing as mrsfb isn’t too well today. Our options at the moment include going to see Casino Royale, or a long walk in the countryside. Given how cold it is, Bond is looking mighty appealling, but the long walk is the moral healthy choice. We could do both, but that would be insane, surely.

    In other news, my copy of Phantasy Star Universe is in the post to me as we speak, rushing towards me under the power of second class postage. If I knew they were going to dispatch it so early, I would have shelled out for first class. Can’t wait. It isn’t going to be a stunning 10/10 game, but it is the story, the world that I have played in so much retold in a different manner. There will be a lot to learn from the looks of it, I may have to read up a bit tonight. After I’ve done a couple more chapters of Head First Java that is, got to carry on racing through that as well.

    Pressing on with self-learning of Java, as I could do with knowing it all yesterday. Lot to get my head around, but had a breakthrough yesterday in that I almost added a new method to some code I am working with. It made sense, but didn’t quite work, however the fact that I understood about 90% of what I needed to do was a good start. Will figure out that remaining 10% in the next few days I hope. Will try and get through a big chunk of the aforementioned book this weekend I reckon. Once I’ve done that, I’m going to read up on using Eclipse in more depth, really get to grips with it, as it really is the way forwards on a lot of fronts. I’m perhaps a bit unusual in that I work in several different languages & technologies at once, as I look after several different projects. And the fact that Eclipse can handle the lot of them in one place and structure is a lifesaver for me. As I add in a new language like Java, most of the interface works in the same way I am used to. Oh, and I need to learn about Ant and builds as well I suspect. More reading then.

  • High above Oxford

    For some time I have been meaning to go up Carfax Tower in Oxford to take some photographs. It is an old clock tower right in the middle of Oxford, and is one of the key tourist attractions I have never got around to doing. So I thought I would take advantage of the visit of my brother-in-law Andy to do it. Now, I’m not great with heights, but I was under the impression it would be a little walk up some stairs, have a huge platform to stand on, take a few snaps, job done. Wrong.

    First of all you have to climb up three very narrow spiral staircases. A long way. That was pretty daunting to begin with. Then you actually go out there, and it is a small square with a tin roof in the middle, and a narrow walkway less than the width of a person around it. And it was windy. And very high up.

    I didn’t manage to take a single picture without letting go of the handrail. It was incredibly dizzying, and totally not my thing. I shall do it once more in my life when I get a new camera, and then never do it again. Even if it does have the following cheese-related message up there:

  • So what do I like about the 360?

    I was just considering that I’d had a moan about the 360, but hadn’t really talked about what I do like so far. A lot, basically.

    Wireless controllers are probably the biggest improvement. They are comfy, and you just are not restricted to where you sit anymore. Love that. Also with the headset attached (which is far more sturdy that the old one) I can even talk whilst wandering into the kitchen to make an inbetween round cup of tea.

    The interface is great, moving between live, the arcade, and playing full games is all pretty seamless and quick to navigate. And the games, well. I’ve only really been playing Project Gotham 3 and Arcade thus far. PGR3 is a wonderful update, hasn’t lost a single thing from the previous version that I miss. Looks better, plays just the same, more features, even a track editor hidden away. Lot of gameplay left there. Have Perfect Dark Zero to try soon as well, plus a visit to some game store on Monday.

  • First moan about 360 – No wireless drivers for the PC

    Only a little moan though, generally still happy with it. However, one of the things that appealled to me about the 360 was that you can use the controller with the PC as well. Well it turns out that is only if it is a wired controller. No worries I thought, I’ve bought the play and charge kit, which has an ordinary USB cable on it. If I plug it into the PC like that, it is a wired controller, surely? No dice. So if I want to do that, I have to buy the inferior controller instead. Great.

  • Ghost Bus and Ungrateful Cat

    A couple of incidents to report. Last night it was extremely foggy, so much so that even walking through the underpass, there was fog forming inside the tunnel. Very eerie walking to the bus. When it arrived, I almost missed it as it was so quiet. It was a really old bus for Oxford, single-decker, with really tall steps. What disturbed me was that it was so quiet, it barely made a sound as it moved. We were travelling fairly slowly due to the fog, but it was odd, something really wasn’t right. To clinch it, the bus driver was incredibly courteous and polite. I thus believe it was a ghost bus, manned by a driver sent back to earth to atone for his bus-driving sins.

    Then this morning, waiting for my bus to work, a cat shot out onto the main road, and was clipped by a car. I turned to the noise of a huge screech from the cat, and caught the sight of it somersaulting through the air. It landed in front of a van, the driver of which stopped to attend to said cat. Fair play to him, he ignored the shouts of the other drivers as he blocked the road so he could try and get it to safety. He made some encouraging motions and noises, but the cat circled round a bit limping, then sat down. He then decided to try and pick it up. Big mistake. I heard a screech as loud as the first one, and saw the helpful chap jumping back about 10 feet to get out of scratching distance. I think he learnt a valuable lesson there.

  • Welcome to graemehunter.co.uk

    So, this is my new site. Basically the plan is that here I will blog about technical issues here, including my career as a software developer, talk about things I am working on at work and for myself, talk about testing out various technologies and platforms, and generally have a more appropriate home for such issues than my personal blog. I’m also going to have my CV on here at some stage, so it will serve as a starting point to learn more about me and what I do. I have a few things to put up on here that I have developed in the past as well, mainly a few search plugins for Firefox that I wish to give a home to.

  • Getting More Done

    I’ve started using something approaching a Getting Things Done philosophy for organising myself. I read the book during our Isle of Wight holiday, and it is very useful. I’ve now got a calendar (Google Calendar in fact) in which I am organising all my tasks to do personally, In/Pending/Out trays for all our mail and filing, and some new things put in place at work that I hope are going to make me more productive as well.

    I’m going to try and keep them up for a few weeks before I start plugging it as the way forwards, but this weekend I seem to have got a lot of things done around the house, including some decorating, and still had time to relax.

  • Pacman Chart

    This amused me greatly.

  • Learn to Juggle

    All you need to know in 6 minutes, by one of the world’s best jugglers
    I’ve tried this method out late last night, and it does work. I’m a rubbish can juggle a few times 3 ball juggler, and would like to be a decent four ball juggler. I’m going to study this and see how I get on.