Archive for January, 2007

Where I live, we are currently renovating the four lifts that bring the tenants to one of the 30 floors. The new lifts are bright and shiny with one little gadget included at the last minute in the price negociation by the lowest bidder: An LCD display in the wall of each lift cabin to show news of the owners syndicate.

All is well, but there is one little odd behaviour I observed these days. Many people (and I mean MANY) while looking at the display, currently showing the desktop of a Windows XP computer, have a common reflex: They lift a finger to touch the screen and check if the screen has tactile input.

Isn’t it interesting to note that so many people of all ages would think it the most easily conceivable behaviour for a Windows LCD screen? I assumed that the vast majority of them do not own a touch-sensitive display, but I am now reconsidering this position. Probably, touch screens are really becoming part of our lives. And if you see some computer output on a flat screen embedded somewhere it is a safe assumption that there will be some interaction with the user and it will go through some kind of touch screen input.

We did live a real social revolution through technology in the last 20 years, didn’t we?

Great news for the WordPress community of bloggers and web site designers: WordPress 2.1 is available for download. This is really a significant upgrade to one of the most successful blog-and-CMS software applications (the one I use for Roumazeilles.net). New features include (my own selection of the good things):

• A new tabbed editor allows you to switch between WYSIWYG and code editing instantly while writing a post.
• The lossless XML import and export makes it easy for you to move your content between WordPress blogs.
• You can set any “page” to be the front page of your site, and put the latest posts somewhere else, making it much easier to use WordPress as a content management system.
• The upload manager lets you easily manage all your uploads pictures, video, and audio.
• Comment feeds now include all the comments, not just the last 10.
• A new version of the Akismet plugin is bundled.
• Redesigned login screen from the Shuttle project.
• More AJAX to make custom fields, moderation, deletions, and more all faster.
• Our admin has been refreshed to load faster and be more visually consistent.
• Much more efficient database code, faster than previous versions. Domas Mituzas from MySQL went over all our queries with a fine-toothed comb.
• Better internationalization and support for right-to-left languages.

It seems all great (and it is). However, I want to stress that existing WordPress 1.x blogs should not jump immediately into the new version. The main reason for being cautious is the unavailability of new versions of some of the plug-ins your site may be using. In my case, I will need a little more time for the transition.

Full details.

Everybody told you that 2007 will be the year to upgrade your PC configuration. But usually, this is supposedly because of the arrival of Windows Vista. I beg to differ. You can forget about Vista, but the upcoming games of 2007 will be a very good reason to shoot your old hardware down. 2007 will be shock-full with good new games.

Left 4 Dead

Zombie? You said Zombie! As a matter of fact, you will have to fight against zombies (dead corpses still willing to hunt you down til you drop… dead). You are 4 survivors (hence the name ;-)) in a post-apocalyptic world that is turned into a hunting ground for… zombies (and you are the ones running). If it was only that we could forget about it until it comes to cheap packages later in 2008, but Valve (of Half-Life fame) also participated. It could well be a fever-paced game. But let’s not forget that the recipe for a game like Left 4 Dead can easily turn to hardly interesting or plain boring, and the characters could become too caricatural to believe into them. Ah yes! One last detail: There is no chance of seeing any ‘no-violence’ option button here. You come here to fight and fight dirty.

Announced for… I’m not sure.

Bioshock

Who could really say what this video game will be in the end? Basically, this is a classical FPS game but the developers inserted so much flexibility in the player actions and the non-player intelligence that you will not risk facing a rectilinear scenario. There should also be some part of role-playing. Weirdly, the first comparisons that pop to my mind when thinking about Bioshock are: the old DeusEx, SystemShock or even Oblivion. In any case, be ready for a Science-Fiction setup. The adversaries will be varied (very). The environements, too (Do you know how to fight under water?)

There is a risk left with the decision to launch simultaneously the game for PC and XBox360. On the one hand, it may create an impossible technical task; On the other, it may lead to a very simplified game with a poor gaming experience from trying to meet all specifications at the same time.

Project Offset

At best for the end of 2007: (it seems that Offset Software, its creator, did not yet secure a worldwide producer/distributor for the project), this game made me think about good-old Daikatana. It is a game where you won’t get fire arms but, in this medieval-fantasy setup, you will be loaded with cutting/slashing/butchering swords and knives. Images look simply stunning. But who knows what kind of hardware will be needed?

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Shadow of Chernobyl

Here is my sweet spot: A game on the drawing board for more time than a female elephant gestation, promising to render an extraordinary atmosphere out of the usual scope of gamers like us (The player is sent to the no-mans-land of post-Chernobyl-accident, ready to experiment a real paranoia in the supposedly empty zone). Probably no risk on the hardware side: The developers kept pace with the news in graphics hardware but do not intend to blow the current PC out of the water. It would be -at last- a really innovating setup for FPS, but will it appear in 2007? Latest news say 22 March…

Crysis

Everybody speaks about this sequel to FarCry. Everybody is waiting impatiently. Crysis: Action, exotic setup, graphic orgy, artificial intelligence. Don’t run short of the expectations, guys! (The aim is set high by Crytek which wants to better itself after the already excellent FarCry). We already understand that the hardware requirements will be between high and very-high in today’s terms. Since the game is no longer expected for the first half of 2007, the required level will probably be more acceptable then.

Conclusion

More than one of these titles will appear late, for sure. Some may even miss 2007 and be pushed into 2008 (missing completely the Christmas marketing window) even though they have been anticipated for months and sometimes years. But you can predict that your violent thirst for the blood of the zombies or the alien mutants will only be fully quenched by th euse of up-to-date hardware (even if the editors/publishers still try to adapt to the current hardware when they launch a new product). We’ll keep informing you precisely here about this.

We already talked about it here at length: Devices willing to handle High Definition (HD) video have to (or will have to) be all HDCP-compatible in order to be able to display anything. Recent Christmas holiday season sales will probably soon appear as somewhat lacking in this section (most of the HD-Ready TV sets don’t even include an HDMI connecteor that is a needed but definitely not sufficient pre-requirement).

Today, we start to hear about incidents for users of the PlayStation 3 (PS3) game console from Sony. When connected to TV-HD sets, some consoles see their display cut by some blacks and their sound dropping, etc. It is now confirmed that this is caused by a bug in the communication between the TV set and the console. Since the TV does not respond fast enough to the HDCP challenge from the console, this one decides that it is connected to a non-HDCP display peripheral and unilaterally cuts the outputs (sound and image).

(more…)

This web site offers to compare two images. You click on the one that seems fairest to you. It allows to build a small top-10 list of the fairest images. Curiously, the majority of the fair images are colorful landscapes.

It’s your turn to judge which image is the fairest!

You can also propose images that you really believe should be in the list.

It is often difficult to make nude photography and to stay in the realm of arts and good taste. Todd Essick certainly succeded in finding his own ways in this direction. He directs young beautiful scarcely clothed women without letting them become just… nude. And it happens in a surprising location: Under water. Even better, it is not only a matter of inviting young divers to exhibit their lovely bodies, but to really build a dream-like universe that happens to be using sub-marine elements to create a very personal work.

Nevertheless, it is not automatically recommended that you follow the link to his site if you are either minor or at your work/job location.

Image Copyright (C) 2000-2003 Todd Essick.

The AquaGallery is a little graphic experiment about aquatic forms and how to draw them in video.

Enjoy!

In the spotlight: Sony Alpha 900 Canon EOS 5D Mk II Nikon D700 FX Download Nero for free

After posting previously about 25 top quality fonts, I also got a link to an interesting web site providing a LOT of free fonts. It does not mean that they are all useful, interesting or good-looking, but you have some impressive choice: 13,000+ fonts in one search engine.

SearchFreeFonts

I have been writing about OpenSuse previously here. So, it is time to tell you about a nice little review made on the grand-daddy of all techno-computer information web sites (not that it was the first, but because it is following in the foot steps of the exceptionnaly successful Byte Magazine). Byte.com just published an OpenSuse 10.2 review by Eric A. Hall.

Good reading.

There are plenty of cases where people copy part or all of the pages of a web site. It you use Google it may be more or less easy to find the copies. Copy Scape is the solution: You give the a web page address and Copy Scape will find copies on the web for you.

If you have a web site, you’ll love this.

It seems that the previous news about HD-DVD copy protection being broken are true since, this week, BitTorrent users started to see an unprotected copy of Serenity (a 2006 Science Fiction movie) flowing on the P2P network.

We always love to receive those phone calls from a telemarketer ready to sell car insurance, phone subscriptions or financial services, don’t we? I previously advised to keep them hanging, but here are two web sites providing other ideas:

• How to prank a telemarketer to fight back.
• When you absolutely want to go to provide good excuses to leave.