All entries from Apr 2002
30 Apr 2002
Last week, Penny Arcade let loose a rumour that Nintendo were going to announce something big at E3... something big that wasn't going to be just another (amazing) game title. Soon after, some guys on the GameFAQs Gamecube Message Board sussed out that this was related to display peripherals.
So then everyone started puzzling over 3D display technology, including the lame attempt that Sega made in the arcades, way back when, with Time Traveler. Well, it seems like the guys at MediaFuzion might have cottoned onto something much more concrete. It seems Nintendo have made a bit of a slip-up and dropped subtle hints in their own screenshots. This one, in particular, shows us some "doubling" at work, which could well be used in conjunction with some 3D specs to bring us "ultra-realistic" three-dimensional graphics, the like of which have not been seen since Muppet*Vision 3D!
29 Apr 2002
Designed for the education market Apple today released the eMac. Featuring a 17" monitor, and 700mhz G4 processor this could be a big hit in it's target market. It's a shame Apple can't bring a 17" iMac to the normal user on the street like all those rumors had suggested. Insanely Great Mac have an interesting take on the story.
28 Apr 2002
I just succumbed to lust and am now
22 Apr 2002
It's often said that scientists have little taste in aesthetics, so it should come as no surprise when a budding tech slave, Yoshi DeHerrera, comes up with something as ugly as this: Yoshi's Boxx. Basically it's a collection of nextgen consoles and a custom PC with random factor Atari 2600 and NES thrown in there to fill the empty space. The fact that he's put a custom PC and an Xbox in the same box strikes me as a waste of space - he could have fit a Dreamcast, Saturn and Megadrive in there instead!
21 Apr 2002
The Long Bets Foundation turns the less-than-noble pursuit of gambling to noble ends with it's focus on long-term forward planning for the good of mankind and our environment. It encourages the refinement of critical thought by asking those on both sides of the debates to put their money where their mouth is.
Most of those involved are Wired luminaries or at the forefront of their fields, but there's the odd curveball with Ted Danson even getting involved for a more short-term, whimsical bet. Though with minimum stakes of $2000 none of the bets are made lightly.
20 Apr 2002
If Quiter is to be believed then tomorrow Japanese Gamecube magazine Dengeki will reveal the existence of previously unannounced Mario and Zelda games from Nintendo. If true it will mean that Gamecube will be seeing 2 Mario and 2 Zelda games within the next year.
19 Apr 2002
I've said recently that I've been extremely impressed with Mozilla 0.9.9 on OSX, and that it's now my default browser. Well, Mozilla 1.0 Release Candidate 1 has just been unveiled and we're one step closer to the full release of Mozilla 1.0. I'm just off to download it, if anyone else has done so already post some comments on how it looks..
18 Apr 2002
Apple has released the latest point upgrade to OSX, check in Software Update for the 2.2mb download.
Update 10.1.4 delivers improved networking, security, and additional disc recording device support. Specific enhancements include:
Disc Recording Devices:
Updated and new support for Fast 10 SCSI drives, including the Pioneer 201 drive.
Expanded support for SmartDisk, EZQuest, and LaCie disc recording devices.
Networking Improvements:
Dial-up connections over PPP are more reliable and system responsiveness has been improved.
Significant improvement to file searching on local and remote volumes.
Apple Filing Protocol (AFP) services can be browsed on networks with 3Com routers.
Security Update:
BSD-based TCP/IP connections now check and block broadcast or multicast IP destination addresses.
I was searching for a link to an excellent Bergeresque documentary by Piers Plowright called Ways of Hearing which I just watched on BBC4 when I came across BBCi Experimental Music.
17 Apr 2002
Someone has discovered a one of a kind 'Stealth Mac' in a barn in Boulder Creek, California.
16 Apr 2002
The world's turning into a 70's disaster movie. via 1.0
Richard Linklater's animated film 'Waking Life' sees it's UK cinema release this weekend. I think Matt may have mentioned it in the past, but I just saw a short documentary on it Sky News is running and have been completely blown away.
The film is of special interest to Mac users as it was made on a host of G4s. Footage was shot by a small crew as normal live action on DV camcorders. The footage was then converted in Quicktime, before being passed through rotoscoping/animation software on the Macs to give it a comic book look.
Waking Life is a series of vignettes exploring the boundries between reality and dream worlds, communication and human desires. It opens in cinemas across the UK this Friday, and receives its R1 DVD release on the 7th May.
15 Apr 2002
I came across the Covers Project while reading up on all this web services malarkey (since it has an XML-RPC interface). It's much fun, basically a database cross-referencing which recording artists have covered each other, and charting the longest interconnected chain of covers in the process. What's great about it is that it's still fairly incomplete. I'd added a Nirvana cover of Devo's Turn Around, and a Beastie Boys cover of Minor Threat's Screaming At A Wall within my first couple of minutes.
Unfortunately the interface is slightly lacking in places. There's no easy way to report an incorrect entry, and no verification of your additions as far as I can see (some poor soul has entered Madonna's Material Girl as being a cover of a KMFDM song). It'd also be nice to have some kind of logging of who's entered what, but it's still good fun and I'd guess it's only early days. Test your pub-quiz knowledge and see how many you can rack up.
12 Apr 2002
Further to yesterday's post, it seems that Google's Web Service is now officially open. Or at least ready for testing and tinkering. Oreillynet is punctual as ever with Rael Dornfest's comprehensive tutorial on how to get started. There's a devkit available for download from Google with sample SOAP requests/responses and Java and .NET bits and pieces to set you off on the right path. You'll also need to sign up for an account since they're sensibly limiting developers to 1000 requests per day, and 10 results per response while still in beta.
Speaking of mr. Dornfest, I'd heard his name bandied around before, but hadn't quite linked all his achievments together. He's the man behind the small and perfectly formed Blosxom weblog app. He's also behind Oreilly's Meerkat RSS newsfeed portal. And last but not least there's his excellent Raelity Bites blog (See the "Googling for Rael" sidebar for an early-adopter application of the API).
Oh and by the way, the post before this was number 300. Hooray for us! Have a browse through our archives for a taste of our not-so-long and prestigious history of cutting edge reportage.
11 Apr 2002
One of the best nights of my life involved seeing Arab Strap live, cheap Whisky, a flying kebab, a half ton block of sandstone, my bleeding head and my girlfriends tears in the moonlight.
If you've never had the pleasure then get over to Arab Strap's 'official' website, the MP3 page has a couple of CDs worth of MP3s to download, half of which are previously unreleased or rare demos and sessions etc. The files are all high quality rips and the music is all up to Arab Strap's usual exceptional standards.
Note: I just noticed the album tracks are only 30 second samples, but all the rare stuff is still good to go :)
10 Apr 2002
O'Reillynet has an interesting piece by Tim O'Reilly about what the thirteen-thirtyseven geeks are saying are the technologies to watch in the days to come.
The roll-call is low on revelations, but towards the end Tim goes into a discussion of the relationship between custom web-spidering and web-services. The gist of it being that we're going to see a lot more of the big database sites (amazon, imdb) providing low-to-no cost web-services similar to that which Google seems to be planning on offering with the recent announcement of it's beta RPC interface and API.
Tim also covers many of the same topics from a slightly different perspective in this interview with infoworld.
7 Apr 2002
I can't even begin to explain or describe this without spoiling it, so just click the link and praise Panasonic for Hi-Ho.
6 Apr 2002
More l'espion fun this afternoon, landing joiner. Think I might try sticking to flatter subjects in the future.
1 Apr 2002
I got me some Evangelion Kubricks off Tracy for Christmas, JonnyRam's Tron ones look ace though. Wonder if they glow in the dark?
