Advocating City of Heroes

With City of Heroes working on my Mac thanks to Crossover Games I've been running around Paragon City as Sue Purr, tiger woman extraordinaire. But with random crashes of the game occurring frequently, causing me to have to relaunch the game maybe a dozen times per gaming session, I am not getting the full experience that City of Heroes offers. The game looks like a lot of fun too, running around a living cityscape with gangsters to bring to justice with my energy beams and power punches, as well as fighting for the greater good through missions given by contacts. I would really like to be able to play interrupted.

Maybe I don't want to play without the game crashing enough to install Windows, but certainly enough to become a Crossover Games advocate for City of Heroes. I applied both to have the chance to improve Crossover Games for everyone using the software but mostly so that I can get the most out of the game itself. From the Crossover Games compatibility forum for City of Heroes there are quite a few people interested in getting the game running properly, so there's a good chance that Codeweavers will take interest too.

Posted in Gaming | Comments Off on Advocating City of Heroes
Tags: advocate, city of villains, crossover games, sue purr

I'm Sue Purr, thanks for asking

Look out, criminal masterminds, Paragon City has a new protector! With the previously mentioned information that City of Heroes had a good chance of running on my Mac I bought the game to try out. It would let me explore and progress in a new world, as well as help reinvigorate my interest in World of Warcraft by giving me another option when I get bored.

With the guidance from the forum post I got the game installed and running and was presented with the incredible character creation options. There are so many ways to customise your character that it is almost overwhelming. Luckily, I could pick some generic options to give me a basic character and then simply add some tiger textures to be the exact character I'd like to be. This gives me the perfect character whilst introducing me gently to character creation. The most difficult part was coming up with a name. Somehow my puny brain came up with a fairly decent pun, and Sue Purr entered Paragon City to fight crime.

After having played World of Warcraft for years it is disorientating to be a complete newbie again, not knowing the interface, roles, missions, powers, or indeed anything about the game. Some parts are straightforward to pick up, but there are certain aspects that are unfamiliar enough to wonder whether I am making mistakes in using them or not using them. I just hope that I am unable to make any mistakes serious enough that will affect me throughout my superhero career without being able to change them once I learn better what I am doing.

I am a blaster, with the energy and mutation power types, which offers me the excellent combination of being in a ranged attack role with melee special attacks. I don't think it's working out so badly, though. With a bit of running around attacking random minor gangsters in the city I have been using my ranged attacks to open and then using the energy melee attack when the mobs get too close, which has the benefit of knocking them away from me, so maybe I made a good, or at least interesting, choice.

I've already reached the heady heights of third level superhero. Everything is going smoothly so far, except that I black out from the game crashing whenever I spend a minute or so in Atlas Park, whereupon I have to reload and log back in before I can continue being a tiger superhero. It's a good thing that I don't have to spend much time in Atlas Park, or return there frequently, for training and picking up missions, for example. That's a relatively minor frustration for a game that otherwise works wonderfully on a platform it wasn't written to run on, and I'm looking forward to blasting many more gangsters and mobsters.

Posted in Gaming | Comments Off on I'm Sue Purr, thanks for asking
Tags: city of heroes, crossover games, sue purr, tiger, world of warcraft

Old gig tickets

As I go to most gigs by myself I wondered how long it had been since I last went with someone to staged wrestling matches. So I got my pile of tickets and started flicking through them. The pile isn't a complete record of all the gigs I've been to, as I've bought a few tickets on the door and some tickets either didn't have a stub or were taken fully on entrance, so I don't have a physical memento of the Dandy Warhols gig at the Electric Ballroom, Ride and The Charlatans in Brighton, or Velocity Girl at the Camden Underworld, for a few examples. It turned out it's been something like three years since I went with someone to a gig but, more interesting to me, flicking through the tickets brought up a couple of items of note.

I'm off to see Blitzen Trapper at the Water Rats next month. I've seen the Water Rats venue in the gigs listings in the back of the NME for years and although there have been maybe a few bands play there that I've liked I've never actually been there. At least, so I thought, and still thought when I ordered the Blitzen Trapper ticket, reminding myself to find out where the venue is. One ticket I found in my stack was for a Modey Lemon gig, back when they were playing over here quite regularly and I saw them whenever I could, and that particular gig was at the Water Rats. I'm still trying to think back and work out where the venue is or what it was like inside.

A little more interesting, however, was another Modey Lemon gig that I'd been to, this time at the Camden Barfly. The gig was part of the MTV Gonzo tour, with Eighties Matchbox B-line Disaster headlining, and Modey Lemon supporting. As the band I wanted to see were one of the support acts I wanted to make sure I got there early enough to catch them, but for some reason I didn't get there too early. If I had got to the venue early enough I would have caught the first support act, a band little-known at the time, Maxïmo Park! Wow, if only I'd known then what I know now. Maxïmo Park have gone on to sell out some big venues, and quickly enough that I haven't been able to get tickets. I know hindsight is a wonderful gift, so I'm hardly going to regret this. For all I know they could have been another China Drum. Maybe I'll have to tell my tale of China Drum one day.

Posted in Audio, Personal | Comments Off on Old gig tickets
Tags: barfly, blitzen trapper, charlatans, china drum, dandy warhols, electric ballroom, gig, maximo park, modey lemon, nme, ride, velocity girl, water rats

Diddy Kong Racing retrospective

Having played some Mario Kart Wii recently I was mulling over other racing games I've played. I remember Diddy Kong Racing from the N64 fondly. I don't recall whether the game was released before Mario Kart 64 or not, but I had both of those two games and enjoyed them both. It may be that Diddy Kong Racing was released first, as I have no affinity with the Donkey Kong games released in that era that would lead me to buy the racing game, apart from it being a racing game.

I think the handling in both games was fairly similar, at least in the feeling of being in control of the vehicle. With Diddy Kong Racing offering races in hovercraft and aeroplanes the handling between the two games cannot be directly compared across all cases. Both the hovercraft and aeroplane handled well, although the aeroplane needed a bit of practice to get the hang off. The steeering of the hovercraft lagged behind the driver's input, mimicking hovercraft in real life I imagine, and were much fun to drive as you could buzz across any surface just as easily as any other.

Diddy Kong Racing had a single player mode that was more involving than Mario Kart's, and was more akin to Super Mario 64. The player had to complete races to collect balloons, and once enough balloons were collected new stages were opened to race in and new vehicles were enabled. These stages included challenge stages where the player had to complete eight coins littered around, and sometimes off, the racetrack whilst still finishing first in the race itself. Once all the stages were completed there was a boss to race against, who was fast and had special attacks to use against the player. These were tough, and almost game-endingly so. The walrus had me awfully frustrated for the longest time before I managed to beat him, because of the bubbles he throws that stop you in your tracks as well as the motions of the waves. After beating him and opening up the next stages the racing was much smoother.

I even managed to complete the final boss and open up the hidden stages. The lighthouse that seems ornamental in the game becomes a rocket ship that transports everyone up to a space station where four more tracks are unlocked, and a new stage of racing can take place. I had to defeat the last boss to get to that stage, but the real enemy was always the walrus. I had to try to get past that stupid creature again when my cartridge was fried after lending the game to a friend, and I'm not sure I ever defeated him a second time, keeping the space stages locked away once more.

The power-ups in Diddy Kong Racing were not random like in Mario Kart. The type of power-up picked up was determined by the colour of power-up balloon you drove through, and the same power-ups were placed in the same positions for each race on the same course. The power-ups themselves were quite simple, offering a missile, speed boost, or magnet. The power-up could be enhanced twice by picking up a similar type of power-up more than once without using it. The missile became ten missiles and then a homing missile, and the speed boost and magnet power-ups had an increased effect. The fewer types of power-up and the predetermined nature of their positions kept them powerful enough to offer strategic uses, but prevented the random destruction frenzy that often accompanies Mario Kart games. Because of this, Diddy Kong Racing could be argued to be more of a racing game than Mario Kart, even though they both offered a similar experience in pure racing terms. And in Diddy Kong Racing if you weren't carrying a power-up the joystick button that normally activated them instead sounded a horn on the racing vehicle, which is just as much fun beeping as firing a green koopa shell.

The choice of characters was good with Diddy Kong Racing too. As with most games I tended to restrict my options to the cute characters or those who offered superior handling of the vehicles over speed or weight. I enjoyed playing as the tortoise a lot, and later on played nearly exclusively as Timber, a really cute tiger cub. One of the neat little touches that kept me far more entertained than perhaps it should was on the character select screen. On selecting a character the character would let out a little exclamation, but more amusingly upon deselecting them they would let out a little grumble of disatisfaction. In Timber's case this was a cute growl. I spent far too many times just selecting and deselecting the tiger before starting to play in any one game.

With all this reflection I owe it to myself to see if the game is available on the Wii as a download, and look to pick it up if it is. I have a suspicion I read that it is available but also that some changes were made that affect the gameplay. I'll have to look in to this some more.

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Tags: diddy kong racing, mario kart, n64, racing, tiger

Five minutes, two hours

I had a five minute vibration test to perform yesterday. It's not long, but it keeps me occupied, and the set-up and configuration can take a bit of time. I spent about thirty minutes in the morning taking off a jig from the previous test from the shaker's slip table and putting the jig appropriate for the current test on. Then I waited for the test hardware to appear.

The hardware turned up a little after 2 p.m., so a quick bit of bolting on and five minutes later I'll have completed the test. It's such a quick test that I'd probably need to complete the written test log after the event instead of during. But wait, the chap from the project forgot to bring a connection interface necessary for the structural integrity of the system as a whole. He'll pop upstairs to get it, won't be five minutes. I start to fill in some gaps in the test log and get the digital camera out to take a snap of the set-up once it's all together.

About half-an-hour later the project chap returns with the connection interface. The interface is missing the connector itself, so I ask if this would make a difference. Apparently not, he's happy to continue, so I bolt everything together. When I start the vibration period the interface starts rattling around significantly, because it is on floating connections and relies on the connector it is currently missing to provide a firm fixing with the test unit. The noise from the rattling feeds back in to the control system and overloads it, aborting the test. The project fellow says he'll just pop upstairs to get a connector, he won't be five minutes.

Indeed he won't, as it's over forty five minutes later that another bod turns up with the connector, attached to a test cable but that's not a problem. I ask if he also has the screws that secure the connector to its interface, and apparently this was overlooked. He'll pop upstairs to find some. A quarter of an hour passes and a 'phone call comes telling me that he cannot find any screws, but another engineer in my department points out that we've probably got some in the lab. We take a look and we do indeed have some screws, which I quickly use to secure the connector to its interface, and then reattach the test hardware back to the fixture, this time in its full configuration.

Five minutes of vibration and the test is complete, but it took two hours to get there. Still, at least I got my hands on some hardware. It's been a bit quiet of late.

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Tags: shaker, slip table, vibration

Firefox updated

'Pon my word, but my PC at work has been feeling awfully sluggish. It's not an old machine and has a decent enough amount of memory, so why it takes so long to launch Explorer or pauses for a couple of seconds to refresh the screen every now and again is beyond me. I suspect part of it is because of all the cruft that the outsourced IT department installs to monitor and 'protect' the system. Even so, having my browser stop registering keystrokes for a few seconds every five words or so became too frustrating to bear. I reasoned that it can't just be my PC that is causing this and realising that I was on a Javascript-heavy site and still using a pretty old version of Firefox I considered that perhaps it was time to update the software.

I really should keep more of my software up-to-date. The OS I use and any software that uses automatic updates is kept current, and when I become aware of security issues in software I use I will update, but I have had the unfortunate tendency to keep using software as long as it works for me. But after seeing Safari 1.x struggle pitifully to load modern web pages, back last year when I was on my old G4 machine running Panther, I knew that I was probably running far-too-old a version of Firefox at work for my own good. I downloaded the latest version and, after backing up my profile, installed it.

The installation was clean, with my profile intact afterward, so I opened up the browser and had a poke around a few sites to try it out. It was immediately clear that the upgrade had helped significantly. No more were there struggles to load pages or unnecessary lags in the UI, everything was running smoothly again. Well, except for Explorer still taking too long to load.

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Tags: browsers, firefox, internet, safari

Guitar arrival

My new guitar, a white Les Paul Custom, was delivered yesterday. It was quite exciting to unwrap the well-packed guitar, and my first look took my breath away a little. It is really quite an attractive instrument. I didn't have much time to do anything apart from unpack it, as I had a gig to go to, but I quickly tuned it up and gave it a quick play. Well, as much as I can play the guitar. I did a few finger exercises to get the feel of the guitar and then decided to play along to a couple of tracks to see how it felt.

I pulled up iTunes on my computer and set to random the playlist I have of the songs I pretend I can play. I found it amusing that the first random track was Australia, by the Manic Street Preachers, when my choice of colour for the guitar was influenced in part by James Dean Bradfield. I bashed out two or three songs, unamplified, before it was time to go out and was most happy with how my new Les Paul felt.

When I get some more time I'll get to making sure the guitar is set up properly. I'll check the string lengths are okay and I'll lower the action a bit as it's a little too high for my comfort. I just need to ensure that I don't introduce any buzzing with the adjustments. I should also get it all plugged in to make sure all the hardware is functioning. After that, I just hope that I get around to playing more and hopefully improving. It would be a shame to let a beautiful instrument sit unused.

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Tags: guitar, les paul, manic street preachers

I Am Kloot, London Koko

Last night I headed in to the city for the I Am Kloot gig at Koko. I got to the venue early enough to see the support act, which turned out to be a solo performer with a guitar and mouth organ. I was a little wary that act could fall flat as there is only so much variety that can be achieved with a single acoustic guitar, although I reminded myself that Johnny Bramwell, of I Am Kloot, manages to create wondrous songs on stage with just a guitar. Even so, there was little to distinguish between most of the songs of the support act, whose name I forget. The lyrics were lacking metaphor and lost my interest above listening to the vocal quality, and I spent half my time wondering what the songs would be like if there was some backing. It was pleasant enough music though, and I've seen many supports acts who have been far worse.

I Am Kloot never disappoint. There is nothing not to like about the band, from their energetic songs to their soft, lilting songs they inject a passion in to their playing that can be clearly heard and seen, and is carried from the strong lyrics. Other bands who play with such personal commitment often shy away from public performance and are probably trying to pretend that the audience isn't in front of them half the time, but Bramwell doesn't have this problem, swapping banter and sharing jokes with the audience between just about every song. He starts slowly and drily this evening, introducing new songs as 'this is a new song', knowing that fans will see his humour rising.

Bramwell introduces Twist by saying that he has 'never played this song on this guitar before', and after finishing a wonderful rendition adds with a grin that 'we didn't even try it out during soundcheck, but I thought 'fuck it, it's only London'.' After another song the rest of the band leave the stage, obviously taking a break to let Bramwell perform a couple of songs solo, but we are told that 'the smoking ban has hit the rest of the band hard'. And then he goes straight in to Fear of Falling, a truly delightful and uplifting song. At most gigs there is always a low hum of conversation that pervades the entire set list, yet during the solo songs no one dares miss a single note. I have only seen such polite attention paid to Mazzy Star and The Sundays before, and it is a testament to the wonder of the songs and respect for Bramwell that audience is enraptured such that hardly a whisper can be heard. It seems like every song is a highlight, and yet the band still have something better to come. The set ends with Life in a Day, bringing the evening to a more-than-satisfying climax, and even that is trumped when the inevitable encore ends with I Believe.

The music is great. I was a little concerned that my lack of familiarity with the new songs would dampen my enjoyment of them, and whilst that was probably true it didn't seem to matter, as most of the new songs were interesting and entertaining at least a little even on a first hearing. Even so, I find it quite difficult to get a good reading of music on a first hearing and cannot say for sure how much I'll like the new album based on the gig, but as all the of the older songs played during the gig resonated quite deeply with me I can't help but think the new songs will surely end up being just as good with time.

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Tags: gig, i am kloot, koko, london, mazzy star, the sundays

Lt. Daniels and the Argonauts

If anyone is watching the first couple of series of The Wire and wondering why Lieutenant Daniels seems so stiff whilst he's walking you only have to look to series three to find out. It is in the third series that he gets his shirt off and you see that he has a fabulous sinewy muscular physique, which can only have been sculpted from clay.

It all becomes clear. He walks in a way that is realistic but doesn't seem quite natural because he's animated by Ray Harryhausen.

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Tags: ray harryhausen, the wire

Choice of strings

Along with the new guitar I ordered an extra packet of strings. The guitar will have its own strings, and I am fairly sure I have a packet or two of strings lying around, but I wanted to practice with something different. When I first started playing guitar Ernie Ball Super Slinky strings were recommended to me, which have a .009" high E string going down to a .042" low E. They were good enough, I don't really know much about strings really, but the top string did tend to be the first to break and I got to wondering whether the light gauge didn't suit my preferred rhythm playing over lead. Understanding that a heavier gauge can give a better tonal quality, as well being good strengthening practice for bending, I bought some Regular Slinky strings, which range from .010" to .046". Another benefit is that a guitar tuned down to E♭ retains a fuller sound with heavier strings but because of the lower tension they can feel like lighter strings.

I have been using Regular Slinky strings ever since. As I am now aiming to be practicing techniques more than just learning and playing along to songs I thought I could use a more forgiving gauge for my strings than normal, particularly as I haven't being playing regularly for a while. With my guitar order I also ordered some Super Slinky strings again, thinking that they will help me get along with the fingering techniques more quickly. They will probably feel quite light to start with and I may need to hit a local shop to see if I can get an assortment of plectra to try out to see how they feel with the different strings. I may end up using Regular Slinky strings again once I get more comfortable with playing, or I may just prefer the feel of the lighter Super Slinky strings. It's an option I think is worth exploring.

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Tags: ernie ball, guitar, regular slinky, strings, super slinky