Sunday, January 30, 2005

Another month down, and it went fairly well I think. I did not really enjoy the Physics class, but it has been a good reminder of my old Maths and Mechanics and how to implement it in code for games.
Unfortunately I didn't get to see Louise while she stopped over in Miami tonight, sorry honey. That's what accelerated school does to you.
I did a quick update to the site, making the most changes to my CV, (or resume for any Americans reading) :) I think my portfolio could do with a spruce up, but I doubt that will happen for a while! I hope tomorrow to take a look at the Half-Life 2 source code and see what the chances of making a mod are.

Wednesday, January 19, 2005

I have been getting a lot more mail about my Blogger/Atom/RSS/MagpieRSS tutorial recently. Most are to say thanks, but some with questions. To that end I've updated the guide to add a little more detail since it seems to be helping quite a few people out there.
Full Sail is still going well. It has been harder this month I think, but I'm doing pretty well with my grades, and that's what matters.
I went to Disney Quest at the weekend, which for those that don't know is essentially a big arcade with some virtual reality rides. It is billed as an indoor theme park, and while that may be a little over the top, it is still a good way to kill a few hours. I haven't been there for ages, so it was good to see they had updated some of the games, but it would be nice to see a greater number with a bit more variety. I haven't seen a decent new arcade machine in a long time. Rocky's Arcade doesn't do badly with their games like the full size F-Zero cabinet, but I have been dying to play a game I once played in a GameWorks. It was a Virtua Cop style affair, but with firemen. You had to hold a fire hose as your controller and put out the fires to advance through the building, like House of the Dead. I remember it being a Sega game (hence all the Sega references in describing it!) but haven't had a chance to play it since.
While driving back from Disney Quest I managed to have a car accident with a Lexus RX300 which was less than fun, but that's what a long session of racing games in an arcade must do to me!

Tuesday, January 11, 2005

I received an email this morning from the people at jenniferavalon.net who said they had used my Blogger / MagpieRSS tutorial as the basis to develop their own technique for publishing posts on a set date. They were good enough to then write this up in their own tutorial: Autopublish-on-date, using Blogger and Magpie/PHP which you might want to check out.
On a completely unrelated note, I have come up with an idea for a Half-Life 2 mod (or maybe mods,) but don't want to reveal too much just yet until I get things going, either on my own or in a group. I got the SDK from Steam yesterday and had a brief look. Map making doesn't seem too bad for what I want to do, but I'll have to start taking a look at the code and see how to edit it to make the game.

Sunday, January 09, 2005

The first week back is over and it has been tough going. It doesn't help that we had a two week break to forget everything, but the work seems to have ramped up a bit in terms of how challenging it is. I'm still doing ok though and my tests have been turning out alright.
I have finally fixed my XBox and after posting this I'm going to do the last bit of tweaking to get it running the way I want it, then I can sign up for an XBox Live trial.
Season four of 24 starts here tonight with two episodes today and two tomorrow before getting back to a normal once-per-week schedual. I love that show!

Tuesday, January 04, 2005

First post of a new year. I'm back in the USA and I have an exam today, my first day back.
New Year was good. I spent it in Norwich with the boys and we had a laugh. Cheers Doc for letting us stay.
I have just updated a file on this site that fixes a bug in MagPie RSS, but I don't think it was a bug that affected this site, so you may or may not notice a difference. I need to update loads of stuff I have realised, like my CV. But for now, I should really get back to my notes.