Simple is Beautiful

The first episode of versus, a brand new ongoing segment from gametrailers.com .. which will pit two games against one another whereas users can select which is best in various categories in order for the 'best' game to come forward. The first episode deals with Xbox 360's masterpiece 'Gears of War' VS 'Resistance: fall of man', PS3's launch title marvel.

Its been a whole long while since I last had the {time, will, chance} to blog, for various reasons - mostly because time didn't permit so neither the mood was aligned properly for scribing words here. The past two weeks ( I keep using this 'the past two weeks' sentence, its a recurring theme.. ) were - still are - crazy. We are suffering from multiple networking failures, whereas the actual source of the problem is still untraced for all three ISPs we utilize cannot get to the bottom of this. In addition to that, we are having some other problems ( of a similar nature ) of our own to battle with. All in all, its a binary chaos where the packets get routed to oblivion and bytes get morphed out of the blue. It can't get any worse than that ( actually, it can - but lets keep it sane ).

As if it wasn't enough to drive us crazy to the Nth degree, we are having various other issues related to software failures. However, software is usually something we can handle efficiently, and this is also the case. Those problems are almost gone.

Which brings us to the reason why I felt the need to blog in the first place. I HATE dealing with 3d party software or hardware. Be it routers, switches, web servers, database servers, you name it. Its about combinations of {lousy support, crappy implementation, bugs, lack of documentation, scalability limitations}. This is why I really dislike open source ( there are a few exceptions to the rule, Linux coming to mind ) and why I prefer building everything myself rather than relying on others. It may seem like a crazy idea, but doing everything in house has worked really well for us. Hopefully, someday soon I 'll be able to throw away Apache and sendmail, and even mySQL - dare I say - for our own solutions and be happy.

I picked up the Wii and my brother got my Zelda : the Twilight princess and the classic controller. The Wii is a bit of a unique system. Its really small, somewhat cool looking, can be used and set up in a snap, and feels very friendly, in a way. The new 'revolutionary' control scheme doesn't appeal to me that much - however my brother is crazy about it, given that he loves playing tennis and golf on Wii Sports, every chance he gets - however it seems at least interesting. The channels concept is pretty neat - I can't wait for the 'Internet channel' to become available so that I can browse the web on my TV with the Wiimote, and the shop has some lovely retro games to download/purchase.

Zelda is a magical, wonderful, beautiful, complete game. I 'd prefer using a classic controller for handling Link, but other than that this game is amazing. That game alone is worth buying the wii just to play it. EXTREMELY highly recommended.

Having said that, the 360 still seems like the ultimate game console to me. The future will tell how the PS3 and the Wii will fare against it.

On unrelated note, our team kicks ass. I am so proud to work with them. Go phaistonians!

PS3 Loses two exclusives, snagged by 360 : After losing GT IV and Assasin's Creed, two more titles slipped from Sony's hands. Fatal Inertia ( gorgeous game ) and Blade Storm : The Hundred Year's War. Also discussed at joystiq.com, which also offers an insight of how this came to be.

Trillian Astra preview : My brother loves this application. I never liked it much, then again I never got to use Windows for long, before switching to Linux and back again -- until I was lucky enough to jump ship to the one true OS.

Metal Gear Solid : Portal Ops Preview : I turned on my PSP yesterday, only to upgrade the firmware to 3.0 and, while I was at it, played Wipeout Pure for a few minutes. It was great fun, however Wipeout pure is the only game that I actually like on the system. I am looking forward to The Legend of Zelda : Plantom Hourglass's for the Nintendo DS - this is going to be the second Nintendo DS game I am going to buy, after New Super Mario Bros. Who can resist Link and his green tunic charm?

Small Arms is now available for download on Xbox Live. A lovely game which I see myself spending quite some time with. Also, the Xbox Live Video Marketplace is open for business. HD-Movies cost $6, SD-Movies $4. HD-TV shows 3$, SD-TV shows $2. Sweet!

Last night, after fighting against my addiction to Gears of War -- because I wanted the batteries on the wireless controller to last just a bit longer, before I get my hands on the play'n'charge adaptor, I thought I 'd try playing GOW online with some folks (team match). Last time I played online was when I got Guild Wars, and even that was for a few minutes. Before that, I played some WoW ( like, 10 minutes in total ) and before that, Diablo on battle.net ( was an amazing experience at the time ). What I got out of the GOW multiplayer match was an incredible experience, AMAZING experience.Coupled with the wireless headset which allows you to voice-chat, being thrown in a city which resembled Rome in a dark, distant future, me and three other guys were fighting against four other folks and it felt so real and so perfect I had to turn off the 360 in order to be able to get back to the world. It is that good. I haven't even scratched the surface of multiplayer (co-op in either split/screen or online (Live), various gaming modes.. etc ). Buy this game. Now.

Gears of War at Pathfinder Tech : ( in greek ). Just read it. By the way, news of a Gears Trilogy slipped.

If you don't have Gears of War, buy it, now. If you don't have an Xbox 360 to play Gears of War, buy a 360, now. If you can't afford it, sell any other consoles you may have, and get them. If you have no consoles left to sell, sell your PC. If you don't have a PC, how on earth are you reading this blog?:)

I have been checking out just about every PS3 and Wii game review, coming out from all major gaming sites for the past week. Except from Zelda, the Twilight Princess, all Wii games have scored really, really bad. The same goes for the PS3. Save for Resistance, fall of man and a golf game the reviewers gave them a verdict similar to the ones given for the Wii games. Granted, those are just the launch titles and things will probably get better, but still, it doesn't look good. The PS3, being a powerhouse and all, will no doubt catch up with the 360, at least in terms of interesting games, sooner or later. As for the Wii, if it wasn't for the ability to download classic games via the Virtual Console, I would have called it a flop. The controller is supposed to be the reason Wii exists after all. If the controller turns out to be a bad concept, Nintendo is going to have huge trouble ahead. In addition to that, graphics do matter. As more and more PS3 and 360 games hit the market, price drops for both of those consoles, developers learn how to take advantage of the functionality of those systems, Nintendo is going to be having an even harder time co-existing in the market. Time will tell. Personally, I am very very happy with my 360 purchase. ( 10 / 10 if I was to review it ). Chances are I may get the Wii but only because (1) its cheap (2) Zelda (3) virtual console. The PS3 is too expensive ( but way worth the money ) and won't be coming out until spring in the EU, so perhaps I 'll get it around summer.

Games for Windows Magazine hits newsstands : The only gaming magazine (offline) I read ( and love) is 'The Edge', but this seems interesting. Hopefully, the news agency I get my goodies from will begin importing it.

The Nintendo Wii launch event came and went smoothly in the US. I can't wait to get my hands on it, and the beloved Zelda when it becomes available in the US, at Dec 8th.

End all arguments: PS3 vs 360 : This is a fairly interesting 11 'pages' long report on the differences of those beasts. The bottom line is that they are both pretty darn amazing. The cell processor is, in theory, more capable than 360's, however there are various caveats to consider there - one being the difficulty to getting stuff done with it. The Xenos GPU of 360 is, apparently, a marvel of engineering far outperforming PS3's RSX GPU ( which is basically an nVidia 7800 GTX ), even actually being the most powerful GPU in the market, along with the newly released nVidia 880. The format wars outcome between Blue Ray and HD-DVD is going to be extremely important for both Sony and Microsoft, as one of those will actually prevail with the other backing down, as it was the case with Betmax and VHS. I personally think HD-DVD is going to make it, even if doesn't offer the capacity (50Gs) of BR. Time will tell. As always, competition drives evolution and lowers prices -- which is what is is all about.

Me and my other half went shopping today, an exhilarating experience, mind you, for I hate shopping. Nevertheless, I got the goodies I wanted, a new TV set (Samsung HD 32" and an Xbox 360). They are shipping the TV in two days and I decided to wait until then to get into the 360..being patience to increase the reward, kind of thing. For the record, I won't be watching TV, its basically going to be used for gaming and iTV (once its shipped). The 360 looks so freaking sweet btw. Here's a picture of the TV I purchased showing off the Xbox 360 dashboard (flickr picture).

Clips: XNA Racer Preview : This was built by a german fellow in no more than 4 weeks, using an alpha version of the XNA tools set, which allows developers to build games for Windows + Xbox 360, using the all too familiar ( and wonderful ) Visual Studio, using .NET components that expose a wide range of facilities to the developers, making it possible to build any kind of games with C# and some free time. I love the whole XNA initiative ; I event downloaded the whole thing and played with it for a while. Great stuff. Microsoft is unbeatable on the game front, with the 360 being just too 'perfect', its live components being dozens of years ahead of the competition and all that. If only they were half as good at the rest of their projects ( Windows, online services.. ) the world would have definitely been a better place.

Yahoo! is fighting a good fight against Google and Microsoft, unwilling to accept that either of those giants will eventually render Yahoo! obsolete ( which will be a bad thing, for competition is such a wonderful concept ). They are getting better by the day, adding new services, improving old ones.. they seem to lack the technology and coolness Google has, the might and financial strength of Microsoft, yet they are putting all their effort in deploying new content sections and improving the services for their users -- which is I guess they only thing left for them to do. Their latest service, Yahoo! foods is quite great. I love the content, the UI, the ideas. Very tasty.

Speaking of Google, they are going to surpass UK's Channel Four advertising revenue as far as their operations in the UK are concerned. Lots of quid for the Google boys.

Filling the Lik-Sang Void : Now that Lik Sang is no more, thanks to the efforts of Sony ( may they burn flames ), gamers will have to look for another company to provide them with important gaming goodies.

I am currently reading Linux Kernel Development, by Robert Love. This book serves as a great introduction ( it actual aims to become the canonical reference for intrepid kernel hackers ) to some fundamental operating system concepts (or, rather, kernel concepts ) and goes into great length describing how the Kernel ( version 2.6 ) is structured and how the various subsystems work.

For instance, the 2.6 process scheduler is a marvel of engineering. Extremely simple and extremely efficient. It reminds me of a similar solution I had to come up with, for one of our services, but mine wasn't near as elegant, really.
I have only read a couple of pages thus far, but everything makes sense. The linux kernel hackers are aiming for simple(=clean), elegant and efficient solutions, the kind of solutions that yield the best possible performance because they are kept simple and are extremely optimized. Its just sad that the quality of the majority of the surrounding applications running in user-space ( desktop managers, open source applications.. ) do not follow this route. If there was a desktop manager ( say, Gnome ) that would have been as well thought of and well build as the underlying OS kernel, Linux would have been a champion that would drive fear to Microsoft and friends.

The Microsoft engineers should do the 'right' ( which is essence is wrong, of course) thing. Study the Linux Kernel source code and rebuild the Vista kernel by following the algorithms and design decisions found in the Linux Kernel. While they are at it, they should make sure to stay away from the concept of microkernels - even if the microkernel servers exist in kernel space ( which invalidates the whole idea behind microkernls anyway ), as it is the case with Windows, its a BAD thing to do. Performance matters. Perhaps, then, Windows would be at least an order of magnitude faster and wouldn't require so much iron ( pumped up hardware requirements ) to run.

I have been trying to get Vista to work on my beefed up PC laptop for over 2 hours now. All this effort went into trying to get Vista to work with my nVidia Go 6800 (256MB Ram ) card. Through the Windows Update system it found it online, downloaded it ( the Vista driver, that is), but no go. Tried a gazillion other from various sites ( including nVidia's ), still no go. Vista doesn't suport its own drivers. Go figure. In addition to that, everytime Vista reboots ( which is every 30 minutes, for one reason or another ), the audio driver 'crashes' and Vista supposedly is pulling some magic to figure out why. It fails every single time.

I hated when Windows had to reboot for whatever reason, I hate it even more now that Vista, apparently, needs to reboot more often than Windows freaking three dot one. This is Vista RC 1 RTM, latest build there is. This is the build that's going to end up in the final cds/dvds, it seems. I am seriously not amused. I am not going to write about the weird UI issues, the stupid warnings whenever I try to execute any app whatsoever, the incosistencies and, especially, the feeling that nothing changed, it just got a facelift.

Vista is going bye bye tomorrow. Leopard, I am so looking forward to hear you roar..

Windows Vista will sport a couple of great feature and technologies, at least on paper, which could be adopted by other vendors / for other projects. One of those features is Transactional NTFS, which, if it is as good as it seems and if utilized by the developers properly. should help eradicate a whole class of problems. I suppose this advanced in the NTFS technology came while designing the ill-fated WinFS. If you check the list of new features on Windows Vista you will come across some more great ideas, such as the automatic resize of TCP receive windows ( for boosting network I/O performance ), thread pools provided by the kernel etc. "We all stand on the shoulders of giants". Microsoft copies/adopts successful ideas from other companies. Other companies do the same with Microsoft. Everyone (tries to )enhance and improve those ideas. Evolution by natural selection :-)

Xbox 360 adds 1080p, HD DVD drive is $170 US for November 17th in Japan : The really low price of the HD DVD device, the support for 1080p resolution ( one of the major features of PS3 ), the new ultra cool games that are coming for it ( Gears of War, Mass Effect, Fabble II, to name a few ).. Microsoft's Xbox 360 is steadfastly becoming the most important game console of this generation. Problem is, once Microsoft dominates a field, it just won't let go. So, unless Sony can come up with something ( doubtful ) Microsoft is going to own the consoles market from now on. Sad, but true.

Sony just can't get a break. If they indeed manage to make it out of this situation alive ( perhaps they could pull themselves out of the moving sand by grabbing themselves from their hair, just like Baron Munchaousendid ), its going to make one great business story.

Codename Max, Beautiful RSS for All : It seems Microsoft is all over the place, with their newfound addiction to building cute and 'impressive' GUIs that usually do little to conceal the lack of substance. As a computer programmer, I certainly can see how one or more engineers can get excited about a bunch of cool new technologies and are driven by the desire to build things them it. Yet, under all those hardware accelerated widgets, the visual effects, the bells'n'whistles and the apparent luck of any HIG that would dictate how those are are laid out ( wow, long sentence ! ), there is little to be found. Having said that, I believe Microsoft will start coming out with some good products sooner or later. Once its engineers and managers satisfy their excitement ( look! check out this cool new widget type that I created !) , borrow a few more ideas from Apple and others and release Vista, good things may come out of Redmond.

This reminds me of the frames crazy ( when Netscape added support for frames, everyone was into frames ), the applets craze ( look! bouncing balls ! ).. ditto for flash movies etc. However, once the initial excitement wears off, good things usually happen. All in all, Aero seems nice, but there is only so many flying thingie, transparent windows and multi-colored boxes one can take within a single screen..

Microsoft To Enable User-Created Xbox 360 Games: I would LOVE it if I was able to create games that would somehow end up on the Xbox Live Marketplace. Who wouldn't? This would shift the development effort/focus of so many indie ( noy only ) game developers to the platform and would make Xbox 360 a MUST have console for all gamers. However, it is reasonable to assume that Microsoft cannot let every single game built to make it to the Live Market place, for various obvious reasons, one of them being the quality threshold that has to be set quite high. I think I will go for it as well. I used to build games for our Amiga by the bucket back in the 'good old days', I think I could give it a go now, too. As long as I could get someone to deal with the graphics and all that, for I suck royally when it comes to that.

The Xbox 360 is the game console of choice for me ( though I do not, currently, own one) along with the forthcoming Nintendo Wii, mainly due to its Xbox Live and Xbox Live Arcade features/initiatives, the software catalogue and its 'Live Anywhere' system which was announced by Billy G. himself at E3. I was happy to find out that Microsoft is planning an Xbox Live Arcade alike service for Vista, called 'Panorama'. I won't be using Windows at all ( there is only one true desktop OS out there.. ), however I will resort to them for satisfying my gaming needs, which they are really good at. So, I am looking forward to it.

The good folks over at OmniGroup unveiled the name / nature of their new product in the works. OmniPlan, labeled 'Project management made painless' is to debut as a beta in just a few days. Looking forward to it.

Microsoft confirms the 'Zune' iPod killer : This is going to be fun. For one thing, competition drives evolution. Second thing, the name is sort of silly [Zune?], and third Steve won't let some silly-named media player by arch-rival Microsoft mess with the iPod dominance. Here is what seems to be one of the new additions Apple is working on on bringing to the iPod. .. Zune?:)