Life In The Rain

Well that’s the title of my new job of this last six months. I’ve stayed in Trinity but moved into the GV2 (Graphics and Visualisation) lab, working under Michael Manzke and Rozenn Dahyot. So what does the title actually refer to. I’m sort of figuring it out myself, but it mostly comes under assisting at a programming, research (reading lots of white papers, books on obscure maths and ideas – learning and taking notes), experimentation etc level for any projects or research happening. Specifically I’m working on an exciting project in relation to the STI Cell processor (the same one found in a Sony Playstation 3). While the work isn’t entirely secret I’m not exactly sure which bits are and aren’t so I’ll report very little to be on the safe side. It would bore the reader silly I’m sure; not exactly girls, games, travelling and football. If I do feel the urge to get technical in future (as it is sometimes nice to do, and there is a big audience for that sort of thing), I’ll make it clear that the post is of a technical nature first.

In other news I took a trip to London with some friends, Brian, Daitaigh, Derek, James and Oige as well as meeting my sister, her boyfriend and friends for my 30′th birthday. Thanks guys for showing me a good time, hope you enjoyed it, definitely a big weekend! This isn’t my first time to London, but apart from a brief day trip when coming back via Hong Kong and a few trips to ECTs (and old games trade show) I’ve not really been there for entertainment. It’s a big town with plenty of culture but you would need to be bankrolled by the treasury and have a year or two to really get a handle on things. Maybe that’s why it works so well, it’s big enough to give all the sub-cultures the critical mass they need to survive. E.g. One of the nights we ended up in a Rock-a-Billy and northen soul nightclub. Extreme tiredness aside that was a cool spot to end up in, even if Rock-a-Billy music doesn’t really get my blood going.

So what does turning 30 mean to me? It’s cool, although it does mean in my mind that there’s no room for feeling too irresponsible or frightened for trying things out. This is the height of manhood apparently, many of my cousins are married and as parents and lots of younger people are happily getting on with things like running companies, events and the like. I don’t think the man-child phenomenen exactly what I am, but I am aware I’m half my life expectancy and things won’t happen without a bit of conscious effort. Plus it’s never easier than around about now, young enough to have time, old enough to be taken seriously. I reckon if I’d not gone travelling I’d feel pretty pissed off about things right now; so I’m really glad I took to that challenge and enjoyed it. I have a lifetimes worth of memories in that year alone.

The future. Hopefully get a few more posts in this blog. There’s a games developer event I’m helping to run and organise happening soon, I’ll probably post more on that when the details are out. I will also hopefully have the nice decision of whether to do a phd or not, but this will depend on the funding bodies. And finally and most importantly I have to get the tomato sauce I’m cooking off the gas, I think it’s starting to burn.

I haven’t had much of a chance to check out the songs on St. Elsewhere, although Crazy is really nice and the album is getting good reviews. I thought I’d mention Gnarls Barkley because it links in with the Danger Doom post from before. This would also be a good opportunity to point out I incorrectly suggested Danger Doom was a person and not a collaboration between MF Doom and Danger Mouse. In my head MF Doom, the rapper was “Danger Doom” and the link between groups/albums but instead it is Brian Burton aka Danger Mouse. “The Mouse and the Mask” was the Danger Doom album I was listening to. Confused me. Everything Mr Burton touches seems to turn to gold. More importantly Gnarls Barkley are confirmed for Electric Picnic this year which is something to look forward to should it rain.

The BBC are running a tv show called Planet Earth which is the most important tv viewing for me every week. This sensational documentary is narrated by David Attenborough, thee voice of natural world programs and is filled with some of the most amazing sights and images. As a child I remember loving tales of “sulphuric rivers”, “snow leopards”, “white sharks”, “piranhas”, while being obsessed with facts about the worlds largest waterfalls, mountains, lakes and caves. But never have I seen or heard it presented with such awe inspiring quality with so many world first viewpoints on the subject mater. It truly feels like I’m watching a documentary about some alien world. It may also help to be a little older and realise things like a “100 metre tall mound of bat poo” is highly irregular. As a child everything is strange and new, so its hard to get a reference point for just how weird these things are. This is how documentaries should be done.

Listening to him on recommendation from a guy in work. Produced and sang on the gorillaz album from last year. Very entertaining. Gotta love those sweet chilli background melodies and rolling lyrics.

I know this is a bit late, but this album by Boards of Canada is their best imo. More accessible than previous outtings while still retaining a variety and disjointness to keep the listener interested.

I’ve not tuned into the artic monkeys yet, so I can’t comment on their stuff (although everyone is recommending it). But hot on their heels in the competition for “most internet/blog hyped” band evar is “Claps your hands say yeah”. Their album is very diverse and I keep picking up all sorts of references to other artists when listening to it. Theres a bit of bob dylan, theres a bit of tom yorke, ooh that sounds like snow patrol, is that the beatles? etc. It’s good and as an album it grows but I think what’s most exciting is the potential for how this will play live.

I’ve just got to point out this game since I was playing it several weeks ago. This game can be compared alot with Civilisation in space. The main reason it works well seems to be a load of hard work in bring the well balanced and designed previous version of the game up to date with adequate graphics, a great gui and an exceptional ship designer. This is highly recommended for the geeky.

So the summer is now coming to a close. At least this year I will feel I made something of it, mostly due making an effort to sail and exercise. All this has been aided by a sane working environment, doing what we do in work is a marathon not a sprint.

So how did the exercise regime actually go? Good for a lazy git like myself. I did get that “warm feeling in the belly”, in fact today I was pretty much euphoric running down the hill. The sun was shinning, underworld was rising on my earphones, the view somehow still surprised me when I came over the crest, I could see a few sailing boats in the sea, a plane was flying low overhead and I felt I could run forever.

Three weeks ago I went to a festival called electric picnic for the second time. It was a 3 day camping affair, a sort of chilled event and everyone was over the age of 18. AND IT DIDN’T RAIN AGAIN! I had an excellent time and I must have been the only person who really really enjoyed Fatboy Slim; he was fucking great (but everyone else seems to think he got boring after a while). Having said that, I thought everyone I saw on the Saturday night was great – Arcade Fire, Royksopp, Flaming Lips & FBS. This may have been due to me getting very nicely drunk and getting into a dancing mood. I probably would have danced to Bob Dylan if he’d played. By 2am when the music finished up I probably sweated 2 litres of water and I was starting to sober up. The best thing was the music wasn’t finished in the camp site. There was a “silent disco” (a tent where two dj’s played to people with wireless headphones) until 4/5am, live easy going music in “the body and soul” area, a real hippy, large, grassy grove with trees and decorations (I dozed in one of the tents for an hour after all the music – hmmm chillax) and finally several of the campsite stalls sort of converted into nirvana’s of cool music, like miniature nightclubs. Nice. So really those in the campsite got a second night out every night. Thank god it didn’t rain.

The sailing for me just finished last Sunday, as the boat I was sailing on took it’s last sail. It will now be sold on. We had a very good run since I’ve joined it (entirely down to those already on the boat of course) and I think we won most of the races even after being cut in handicap (physically we would come in 4th or 5th). I’ve definitely enjoyed sailing and I’ll be looking to doing it when I can from now on. My role has pretty much consisted of working the front deck, basically hitching and pulling ropes, and rigging sails. Physically it’s all pretty easy now, but I’ve only started to get the merest glimmer of what it takes to actually race tactically. The guy who runs the boat I’ve been on (and his brother when he is around) are both very competitive sailors and participate in regional Irish championships when they can. Again the only way for me to really improve is to get out into a small two man boat and take it from there. I reckon I’ll try get someone from work to try it out.

The new Nintendo controller looks great if it can really pull off all that has been attributed to it (at this stage some people are predicting world peace). I do reckon it will be a success and for me, this is the sort of innovation in technology I’d like to see; as opposed to gimmicky karaoke machines or mostly over hyped graphical chips. Hopefully it will become assimilated into the game world as a standard sort of controller that any platform can use.

Finally, I got a PSP and have been playing lumines and Tony Hawks. I really like the puzzle game; it takes some time to get over the fact that it isn’t Tetris and that the shapes (which are all squares) are not important. Instead it is what is inside the shapes that matters. I can already see that there is a long way to go before I can really “grok” this game; I’m getting little glimpses of possible things I could learn that would improve my game, but I know I need to learn the basics .. and that for me is a great (puzzle) game design. Tony Hawks, is really difficult, but I think I’m starting to get the hang of it. Surprisingly I haven’t gotten that gluttonous guilt I would usually get for buying such a dear console. Either I’m totally turned on by it’s looks, possibilities and games or I’m getting so bad with finances I no longer care.

Great album, Ok Cowboy by Vitalic.

Tune me: Vitalic – the past.

Need a quick way to be all pretentious to your mates? Want to act like a know it all at parties, festivals, get-togethers? Need a music equivalent of a towel that says “don’t panic” for conversations with music nazi’s? If so, acquire the current albums by Arcade Fire and Interpol. Listen to them twice, then read the press-bites in allmusic.com. Phew, now you are safe. Armed with new music from lesser known (as in not coldplay, chilli peppers, u2) bands backed up by the fact the stuff is fairly good, you can now go around being an arsehole to everyone you meet.

Just slurping down some carrot, apple, cucumber and pepper juice, freshly mangled from the juicer. I used to do this alot more regularly just after christmas, but sort of gave up on the extra effort it caused after a couple of months. I’m back on it because I’ve a bloody weird chesty cold. Basically I’m the 3rd person in the house to get it. It’s not particularly sore or extreme, but after the first few days of heavy cold symptons you end up with a weak spluttering chest. And it just stays. I’ve had it for two weeks now and others are going on eight weeks. And the doctor can see no wrong apparently. It’s not a huge problem, but it does make you sort of tired towards the end of the day.

I finally got out sailing on Sunday in a boat called the “Streaker”. I kid you not. In it’s prime the boat was known for invading world cup races with no sails! Or perhaps it was because it’s previous owner thought the name conjured up images of speed and gile. I dunno, I perfer to think it was the former reason. My main role was to act as ballast, moving to the “windward” side of the boat when it was “changing tack”. This involved ducking the “boom” (the big lateral pole at the bottom of the main sail) and diving under to the opposite side of the boat across the middle. The weather was calm and our boat physically came second last, but with the handicap system in place, we came second place (yep, thats how much this boat isn’t really a racing boat). I imagine if I head out with the same crew a few more times I’ll get a better chance to literally pick up the ropes and help out. Finally it seems if I am to be really serious about sailing, I can take lessons in Derry with the Culmore boat club. There you learn in small one sail boats after you register with the club.

Listened to the new Gorillaz album. I reckon it’s pretty good and I especially like “Dare”. I think the music sounds like the way the image of Gorillaz is projected. A sort of “fresh” youth hip-hop image, mixed in with anime/street childishness but pervaded with dark and weird tones and words.

This is a good album. I imagine alot of people are trying to compare this to Brushfire Fairytales, but there’s really no point. It’s the same sort of stuff. Just play them back to back and enjoy them both.

This anime show is great. Cowboy bebop was the last time I enjoyed such stylish and cool heroes. The music is great and the are stories interesting. One thing I’m noticing that works really well for anime is a slight formulaic/episodic approach to things. Each show generally has repeated elements (yakuzza thugs, big end fight, tea-houses, mystery-revelation-closure) and they aren’t ashamed of doing this. There are story arcs, but they are introduced very slowly and in small pieces over the 26 shows. Typically this involves revealing a bit more about a character’s background or introducing a foe who doesn’t get killed off (very unusual in samurai champloo).

Its sort of like taking a procedural approach to the show to start with – figure out the key building blocks, look for interesting parameters and variations, then repeat episodically (confident in the strength of the building blocks) and finally augment/sprinkle with extras and oddities to break things up. As an example of the extras, it might be the a mid-season character building episode where the hero shows past wounds in his love life. Or an episode set in a dreamworld. Or whatever.

Sometimes I really worry about games that get so caught up in things like story arc that they remove the stuff that computer games can really thrive on, to the detriment of the game and it’s production. At the end of the day, games are interactive. This makes games very weak when using traditional story telling techniques from books, movies, art, music, comics. By being interactive, the structure that these mediums rely upon is taken away. The more interactive, the less structure. Hence people these days talking about being bored with “on the rails gameplay”. This is where players are given a tightly structured game experience, so that the developers can focus all their efforts on making those scenarios the most interesting they can be. I’ve nothing against this in principle whatsoever – but I do believe its an expensive way to generate moment to moment gameplay because its all tailor-made.

So hence the talk of procedural as the way of the future. Procedural “what” though? Thats the question I would pose to anyone getting caught up in Will Wright’s Spore” talk. He demonstrated procedural runtime content generation that ties into the sandbox gameplay. But theres pretty much no reason to apply runtime procedural content generation to a linear game like “call of duty”. Netherless, I’m a fan, especially when procedural techniques are applied to gameplay. We shouldn’t dismiss repeatable/episodic cycles in our games. With enough variation and special one off’s the game will remain interesting and getting a good piece of repeatable gameplay is an art in itself. Repeatable gameplay is a huge win for production too. If a developer can spend all their time getting that 20mins of repeatable gameplay very enjoyable, then this is better than having to tweak 10+ hours of tailor made linear gameplay.

Using procedural approaches is just another tool in the developers toolbox. The key thing is, procedural stuff doesn’t work unless its properly designed. But when well designed it can more than stand up to tailor made gameplay and content – precisely because repeating gameplay with slight variations suits games very well. I tend to agree with Raph Koster when he says players can feel good by applying their skills after they learn them.

I’ve had a few listens to this album. Overall, its not the same Daft Punk that released discovery – but thats not to say they’re dead. I rather enjoy the title tune “Human After All”, the thumping “Robot rock” and the soft sensous “Make Love”. The other songs haven’t grown on me, unlike Discovery where that did happen. I feel the remaining songs are too rough and empty for much more interest. Perhaps this is an experimental stage or perhaps this is an unshacking of continous expectations by releasing a quick patchy album. Or perhaps Daft Punk are human after all (CHEEZE).

DJ says listen to : “RjD2 – Clean Living”

Chemical brothers – “Push the Button”. It has two stand out songs for me on first listen. “Marvo Ging”, this is a really enjoyable bouncy song that keeps ploughing on and “Surface To Air” which I think is the equivalent to euphoric dance music what U2’s “Where the streets have no name” was to the 80’s. Ok, maybe a bit strong for a first time listen, but really enjoyable netherless. “Close your eyes”, “The Boxer” and “Hold Tight London” are also pretty enjoyable and there’s nothing particularly crap in the rest of the songs. Pretty good overall imo. Will it be a classic? Hmm, not sure about that one – this album seems a tad “nice” or something, its certainly not the rough and patchy “dig your own hole” which was the anthem of my first year in college. Having said that, theres nothing wrong with “nice” music. I certainly look forward to hearing this music live at some stage.