Yes, “lunch”, not “launch”. Not yet.

The X1000 is an entirely new platform being developed by A-Eon Technology. AmigaOS 4 compatible, it brings the hardware up to date with built in dual core 1.8Ghz+ PowerPC processor, Radeon R700 graphics, 7.1 audio, DDR2 RAM and support for gigabit Ethernet, USB, SATA and PCIe devices. The classic Amigas were famous for their custom chips, and the X1000 goes one step further with the inclusion of an XMOS Core “programmable CPU” co-processor, a “customisable chip” who’s abilities are defined by software.

Amigans at lunch

Trevor himself is amiable and chatty, and make no mistake he’s a retro computer and Amiga enthusiast with an enviable collection of around 150 old machines. I’d love to have the space and time.

As the three of us sat over lunch of fish and chips the conversation ranged from the hazards of flying small aircraft over mountain ranges, to building down-hole-data diagnostic and monitoring systems for drilling rigs, and eventually – and at length – on to all things Amiga and X1000.

“We’re not Apple”, says Trevor. He acknowledges that the X1000 is a machine for hobbyists, much like himself, and that it will be marketed as such. ”We’d be happy to break even”, he claims, and I believe him. His infective enthusiasm for the project and the Amiga platform in general shines through. The X1000 is clearly, in no small part, a labour of love.

A-Eon are being careful to avoid the hardware niggles that have plagued previous “next generation” Amiga hardware projects. A very limited run of revision 2.0 X1000 motherboards is being produced in the next few weeks, and only if this goes well will a (slightly) larger run of boards be manufactured fora distribution to beta testers before autumn. Full production and retail availability is expected around Christmas, priced £1,500 or more for a complete system including an AmigaOS 4 license.

I’d largely ignored the next generation Amiga projects until now, due to price of the hardware and software and their incompatibility with my primary Amiga activity of creating WHDLoad patches for classic games, so today’s lunch was a welcome, informative and fascinating insight into the scene from someone directly and deeply involved in it.

Big thanks to DDNI for the invitation and to Trevor for taking the time out to chat.

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Main Building

Redeveloped at a cost of between £25m and £30m as a Public Private Partnership (PPP) initiative managed by the Belfast Strategic Schools Partnership (BSSP), the new Grosvenor buildings are one of seven projects across Belfast in a first phase of building.

Entrance Lobby

Now I’m no expert on these things, but new Grosvenor certainly seems like a state of the art school with great facilities. Facilities that will help the school maintain its enviable academic and sporting record for many years to come.

Sixth Form Common Room

The extensive new buildings contain specialised rooms for music, IT, media, art, languages and a host of other subjects, including a fully mirrored dance and drama studio. Sports are well catered for with extensive playing fields, a large gym hall and a fitness suite to rival many hotels. There’s a large indoor canteen and a rather nice new sixth form common room that’s a huge improvement over the shabby old building that I knew.

All this is in addition to the already impressive Ken Reid science block (which, hilariously for an old timer like me, I overheard being referred to as the “old science block”).

There was even a definite “new car smell” about the place, though I suspect the influx of 1,100 schoolchildren in September will soon fix that.

Not everything is new!

I was impressed by Grosvenor: The Next Generation, and it was great to see what the future holds for the school even as the one I knew from too many years ago is being pulled down right beside it.

Naturally, I took a few photos of the evening and the new buildings, which you can see on my Grosvenor New Buildings web album.

I’ll leave the final word to a more expert opinion from a current teacher, and old school friend of mine, who later wrote:

Grosvenor, her old stamping ground, is looking fantastic and makes the new term in September seem more like a treat than a dirge. Here’s hoping [...] turns out to be as bright, inviting and overall as much appreciated as Grosvenor.

Not bad.

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Matt Smith waves his magic wand around

Let’s be straight; Doctor Who is still a children’s show. It’s broadcast in prime “family” viewing time on early Saturday evenings and the “science” parts amount to little more than Matt Smith waving his magic wand around and rapid-fire-blabbering some vaguely science-y sounding explanations of what’s going on. Certain celebrity figures would seem to agree with my assessment too, including the show in a criticism of the general “infantilism” of British television.

The target demographic is pretty clear, and it’s not me. I think. I’m not so sure any more.

So what is it with this season that I’ve been drawn back into Whovianism, when the Tenant years (seasons 2-4) kind of left me flat? Or do I really mean the Russell T. Davies years (seasons 1-4)?

Weeping Angel, Scary Monster. A Steven Moffat creation featured in two of season five's best episodes.

Bags of credit must be given to Matt Smith, who brings a brilliant, manic, foppish, Britishness to the role of The Doctor, but in season five the key for me has been in the writing, under the pen and supervision of new “showrunner” Steven Moffat. It’s layered, imaginative, emotional, and complex, sometimes mysterious, dark and tragic, and there’s an arc that connects back and forward in time across each of the 13 episodes. You’re made to empathise and connect with the characters and the situations they find themselves in. The Doctor himself is flawed and vulnerable, doesn’t always have the answers (at least at first!) and his solutions aren’t always perfect.

It’s adult, in other words. Or rather, it now works on different levels to be accessible for adults and younger viewers alike. The kids have the monsters and the runnings around; the adults have the deeper plotlines (and the dads in particular have Amy Pond). This is what’s changed for season five. I can think of another series that has this style of writing, and it’s done all right for itself, so it’s a change for the better in my book.

Moffat teases there’s more of the same for the 2010 Christmas Special and 2011′s season six.

Geronimo, I say.

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Angry Birds on the iPhone

Angry Birds has been a huge success, selling half a million copies in the first month alone. This, I think, is down to the design cleverness that lurks beneath the polish, cutesy graphics and simple mechanics.

Firstly, it is very very easy to pick up the game and control the Angry Birds. However, higher scores and faster level progression are possible with greater skill, so practice with the controls is rewarded.

Secondly, once the controls are mastered, there are several ways in which to play the game which will appeal differently to different players.

The basic level completion mechanic is to kill all the enemy pigs on the level using Angry Birds, fired from a catapult, to either hit them directly or knock over the teetering constructions they inhabit. This basic progression through the levels will be enough for many players (I imagine), and of course is the mechanic through which the game is actually completed.

Layered on top of the catapult action, but unrelated to completing the levels or game, is a scoring system. Skilled players will be able to maximise their score with careful and clever aiming and suitable use of the different types of Angry Birds available. A per-level and overall score is maintained and recorded in a global high score table, providing comparisons with players around the world and motivation to replay levels and improve scores.

Playing for Perfection

A further layer, on top of the scoring system, is a ranking system where the score at level end is awarded 1-3 “stars” depending on high it is. This rank and the stars attained / stars available ratio are displayed prominently on various screens, providing motivation to achieve a “clean sheet” of maximum stars on all levels.

So you can play for levels, you can play for points or you can play for perfection.

Finally, collections of unlocks, secrets and achievements add further fresh challenges throughout the levels.

The basic gameplay is very simple, but couple these easy to pick up mechanics with high presentational quality, layers of complexity that widen increase the appeal of the game and replay value, add a sprinkle of special challenges as you go, and you go a long way to explaining Angry Birds’ popularity.

No matter what you think of the game itself, if you’re in the games business then you could learn a lot from it’s design.

Angry Birds is available for iPhone on the Apple App Store, and for Nokia devices on the Ovi Store.

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UFO: Enemy Unknown

The first X-COM game, UFO: Enemy Unknown (UFO Defense to our American friends), is a classic turn based game that blends long term strategic planning and resource management with squad level battles where only the best tacticians will prevail. It’s provenance couldn’t be better either, coming from the same creative team that brought us the great Rebelstar and Laser Squad games on the 8-bit home computers of the 1980′s. I spent most of early 1994 grappling with the alien invaders and nothing has come close to that gameplay since.

"New X-COM" from 2K Games

So the new X-COM game has been a long time coming, and like many retro properties that have seen a new lease of life recently, it’s being given a re-imagining:

XCOM is the re-imagining of the classic tale of humanity’s struggle against an unknown enemy that puts players directly into the shoes of an FBI agent tasked with identifying and eliminating the growing threat. True to the roots of the franchise, players will be placed in charge of overcoming high-stake odds through risky strategic gambits coupled with heart-stopping combat experiences that pit human ingenuity – and frailty – against a foe beyond comprehension. By setting the game in a first-person perspective, players will be able to feel the tension and fear that comes with combating a faceless enemy that is violently probing and plotting its way into our world.

That, and the screenshot, is all the information there is so far. It reads like you play a modern day Fox Mulder, perhaps initially investigating strange occurrences before uncovering an alien plot to invade the earth and then moving into management of and participation in the fight back. It’s a bold move to make with a series that has such a long history and dedicated fan base. However with BioShock, 2K Games proved they have the ability and imagination to take tired genres in innovative new directions, so I’m hopeful the end result won’t be another dumb run-and-gun with only pretences towards strategy.

I, for one, welcome our new alien overlord overlords. Watch the skies!

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I’ve seen the movie and make no mistake, it boots bottom. It’s Superbad meets Batman Begins, with a generous sprinkling of Kill Bill. Kick-Ass is not a serious movie with deep meanings and profound things to say, but then I don’t think it’s meant to be. What it is though is enormously entertaining in an over the top comic book kind of way. Great performances from the young cast and old codger Nicolas Cage, perfect comic timing and a kick-ass soundtrack make it a fun way to spend two hours.

But Christopher Tookey of the Daily Mail disagrees. He thinks it’s child pornography.

Warning: Spoilers Ahead. Also some swearing.

"Who are you dude?" ... "I'm Kick-Ass"

I don’t read the Mail, I try hard to avoid it and the drivel it spouts, but sometimes you click on a link and can’t stop reading what’s behind it. Like watching a car crash. Usually when this happens I calm down and move on, but with the Kick-Ass fresh in my mind I found myself absolutely incredulous and increasingly enraged at the vile rubbish I was reading. I wondered if Tookey was talking about the same film.

The reviewer is allowed, of course, to dislike a movie. That’s fine. Call it bone headed, run it down for not providing clever social commentary, whatever. In response however I’ll point out that it’s based on a comic book, called Kick-Ass, about asses, kicking and combinations thereof, so what social commentary and cleverness does he expect? I bet there weren’t enough fight scenes in Schindler’s List for him either.

It’s the spin and outright errors used to support an obvious agenda that I object to. Let’s start with this.

[Hit Girl] believes that her vigilante dad (played, simplistically, for laughs by Nicolas Cage) is a hero just as much at the end as she did at the beginning [...] Her attitude towards him doesn’t mature, which makes her pathetic, rather than cool.

Firstly, Nicolas Cage modelled his character’s mannerisms on a classic TV superhero, Adam West’s 1960′s Batman. Secondly, Hit Girl does indeed believe her father is a hero, perhaps wrongly I’ll grant you, but the end of the movie happens very soon after her father’s death, in terms of both screen time and time elapsed in the movie world, so she’s hardly had time to mature or been shown to do so. She is however shown attempting to start a normal life by going to school.

I’ll take care of this little point now.

Underage sex isn’t a laugh. Recent government figures revealed that in this country more than 8,000 children under the age of 16 conceive every year.

Good then that the only two characters shown to have a sexual relationship are at least 17, possibly 18 years old, and have spent the movie building a relationship based first on friendship. How terribly irresponsible of the movie makers.

Hit Girl from Kick-Ass. Is this sexy? Christopher Tookey of the Daily Mail thinks so.

Now the big one: Hit Girl as a sex symbol.

[...] it breaks one of the last cinematic taboos by making the most violent, foul-mouthed and sexually aggressive character, Hit-Girl, an 11-year-old.

Sexually aggressive? There was nothing sexual at all about Hit Girl. She is, as Tookey points out, eleven years old. I don’t recall her being sexual at all. Maybe I missed that part.

The movie’s writers want us to see Hit-Girl not only as cool, but also sexy [...] Paedophiles are going to adore her. One of the film’s creepiest aspects is that she’s made to look as seductive as possible [...] fetishised in precisely the same way as Angelina Jolie in the Lara Croft movies, and Halle Berry in Catwoman.

No no no no. A thousand times no, you sick fuck. Who does Hit Girl seduce? In what way is she fetishised (if that’s even a word)? I must have missed those parts too. She looks like a little girl dressed as a superhero, because she’s, you know, a little girl superhero, and furthermore her costume is in no way revealing or sexualised like the adult superhero examples quoted.

As if that isn’t exploitative enough, she’s also shown in a classic schoolgirl pose, in a short plaid-skirt with her hair in bunches, but carrying a big gun.

Yes indeed she dresses as an innocent schoolgirl. It’s a disguise. She dresses as an innocent schoolgirl because she’s trying to look like an innocent schoolgirl, in order to gain access to the drug gang’s headquarters building. She also very quickly changes back into her superhero costume once the disguise has served its purpose. Oh wait, that’s the sexy superhero costume, isn’t it?

Oh, and one of the male teenage characters acknowledges that he’s attracted to her.

What the character actually says is “I love her”, which in context clearly means “I think she’s awesome” after observing Hit Girl single-handedly taking down a room full of bad guys. There’s a big, big difference between that and “I want to have sexual relations with that underage girl” as Tookey’s spin implies. In fact the next line is “Dude, she’s like 11 years old!”, acknowledging Hit Girl is too young for that sort of thing.

[...] violence of the most extreme kind [...] is presented with calculated flippancy, as funny, admirable and (most perversely of all) sexually arousing.

The violence, while realistic and gory, is so obviously comic book over the top that anyone with half a clue can’t help but view it as slapstick. I mean, shooting a man off the top of skyscraper with a bazooka? Jetpacks with miniguns? Come on. But sexually arousing? I’ll watch it again to be sure, but in the meantime I’d appreciate it if someone could point out anywhere in Kick-Ass where any characters get off on the violence? High-fives on battles won is as close as it gets.

Do we really want to live, for instance, in a culture when the torture and killing of a James Bulger or Damilola Taylor is re-enacted by child actors for laughs?

Again it’d be great if someone could point out where in Kick-Ass this happens? It’s a cheap, sensationalist shot to include the Bulger or Taylor killings in a movie review. Shame on you, Tookey.

The point, I think, of Tookey’s review is as follows:

Kick-Ass is not the harmless fun it pretends to be. Yes, it’s lightweight and silly, but it’s also cynical, premeditated and mindbogglingly irresponsible. And in Hit-Girl, the film-makers have created one of the most disturbing icons and damaging role-models in the history of cinema.

A role model? Really? No more or less than any other obviously extreme fictional character I think. And for who exactly? Kick-Ass has a 15 rating in the UK, so I’d wager that anyone who sees it isn’t going to model their future actions on an 11 year old character from a comic book movie.

Tookey’s piece is not a review, it’s a thinly disguised diatribe, typical of the Daily Mail, pushing various sensationalist buttons to sell papers. Kick-Ass was just unlucky enough to have been a timely framework to hang the disguise from.

Have you seen Kick-Ass? What was your impression? Fun comic book romp, or seedy excuse for getting child pornography into mainstream cinemas? Let me know.

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That’s all very nice, but the return of Who has left me wondering, where’s the grown up science fiction on UK television?

Matt Smith is the 11th Doctor Who

Hold fire for a second and let me just say that the point of this post is not to stick the Sonic Bootdriver into Who. It’s clearly a high quality show enjoyed by millions of children and adults alike, including quite a few of my grown-up friends who I hope won’t be offended in any way by this post. In the Tom Baker era I rarely missed an episode or novel myself and I think I gave the revamp a fair chance by watching a couple of series.

However I quickly tired of the new Who. My problem, if you can even call it that, and if you can then it is my problem, is that Doctor Who strikes me as a show aimed primarily at children and teenagers. Analysing why that is or looking for reasons for the show is written and produced that way is another post entirely, and I’ve digressed enough. Suffice to say that personally I can’t get away from the “it’s a kids’ show” feeling.

Which leads me nicely back to the original question. Where’s my sci-fi?

BBC's 2009 remake of Day Of The Triffids

I’ll grant you there are occasional mini-series such as 2007′s Andromeda Strain, or Day of the Triffids that shuffled in on its roots at the tail end of 2009, and even more occasional short run series such as Paradox and, perhaps at a stretch, Ashes to Ashes and Survivors. Entertaining as they are, these shows are sci-fi-ish themes being played out in very ordinary worlds.

But where are the 20 episode series like Doctor Who, but aimed at adults who are allowed to stay up after the watershed? I’m talking about UK contemporaries for Galactica, or a reimagining of Blake’s 7 (a show, don’t forget, that in the first episode has the main protagonist charged with child sex abuse and, in the final episode, has the entire major cast gunned down) ?

I can’t accept that, as a country, we lack world class writing, acting, technical or production talent. Are these individuals then just brain-draining abroad, lured by supersized American and Canadian paycheques?

Science fiction series are notoriously expensive to create, so is it a simple question of budget? Or an audience size that justifies the necessary budget? Is this why we see the sci-fi-ish ”ordinary worlds”  as I called them above, and little or no original sci-fi programming from commercial stations?

Am I just whining about a matter of degree? My dad holds that all science fiction is nonsense about “lumpy heads” (his description of most TV alien makeup) and therefore all for kids, but then I don’t think he’s seen Blake’s 7.

Or am I just, somehow, missing all the grown-up science fiction that is actually being produced and broadcast in the UK?

I’d love to hear what you think.

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To explain this research, we first need a little bit of background information.

Modern digital computers – and therefore the Internet - currently operate on binary logic principles based on the fundamental values of one and zero. These basic units are known as “Binary Digits”, or “BITs” for short, and computers have operated this way since the dawn of the electronic computing age in the mid 20th century.

However, the computing pioneers of the 1940s could not have envisaged the recent surge of bandwidth heavy applications such as music and video streaming, online gaming, social networking and so on. The binary system, while adequate for the requirements of the past, is creaking at the seams under these modern workloads.

The new research describes a plan to break away from the outdated and limiting two-value binary system by adopting instead three-valued trinary logic principles, the fundamental units of which are known as ”Trinary Digits”, or “TITs”.

According to the researchers, because a “2″ isn’t much wider than a “1″ or “0″, adding a third fundamental value to the base Internet data transmission schemes wouldn’t take up much more space, and so would allow more information to be transmitted in the same time. The end result would be an immediate (almost) 50% increase in network capacity, essentially for free.

To push-up to this wonder number and achieve the best enlargement of bandwidth in recent years, the researchers have designed a number of new communication protocols and prototype hardware units.

The fundamental Transmission Control Protocol and Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) would be replaced by trinary extended versions known as Trinary Enabled Advanced TCP (TEAT) and New Internet Protocol (NIP) respectively. For low latency applications such as online gaming, the existing User Datagram Protocol (UDP) would be replaced by trinary enabled Jumbo User Grams (JUG) .

For it to be successful, a new trinary Internet must retain backward compatibility with existing infrastructure and applications. To enable this, prototype Binary Adaptive Processor (BAP) hardware units have been created to allow TITs and BITs to interact smoothly using an innovative Binary Out Of Band (BOOB) technique. It is envisaged that ISPs will eventually install large numbers of dual-redundant BAP pairs in racks, though the researchers admit they do yet have some difficulty in operating the prototype BAP Rack Assembly (BRA) units that would enable this. “There’s always a catch”, quipped one of the team.

TITs are exciting enough on their own, but the researchers are already looking beyond with theoretical plans to use advanced mathematical integration techniques to combine multiple TITs into the same space, offering even greater transmission capacity. This work is in its early stages though. “As yet the Combined Linear Integrated TIT is a purely theoretical construct with no basis in reality”, said a spokesman, “However we are confident you will see many TITs, TEAT/NIP, JUGs, BAP/BOOB and BRAs on the Internet in the near future”.

I, for one, am looking forward to that day.

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Did you make any New Year Resolutions? 2010 is now almost a month old, how are they working out for you so far? Were your resolutions wooly and vague enough that you’re finding it difficult to answer? Maybe you’re not being SMART.

Phil wrote about setting SMART objectives – Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, Timed – so that it’s easy to track your progress against the goals and resolutions you’ve created. It’s a practice that’s often found in business but it can be just as easily applied to your personal life.

The idea is that you set specific targets and deadlines that can be measured, to help with motivation and focus and so you can actually know if you’ve succeeded or … not. For example: instead of resolving to “get fitter”, be SMART and say “I will get fit enough to complete this 50Km cycling event in May“. See the difference?

However, as good a tool as SMART goals are, your life isn’t a business (as a rule) so I also think that, when you’re talking about personal goals, some latitude is permissible and you can set general principles as well. Ones that maybe aren’t so specific or even measurable.

For example, I regularly stay up too late and would like to do something about that particular bad habit, but I know that setting a SMART goal to “be in bed by midnight” (or whatever) would fail hard on the M, A and R criteria; I can’t be that rigid about it, nor am I going to record at what time I hit the hay (seriously, who does that?). However, I think that by stating the non-SMART general principle of “going to bed earlier” it will help me keep it in mind, and so perhaps make some progress without having a specific or measurable goal.

I’ve set myself a mixture of SMART and non-SMART (someone invent an acronym for that, please) goals, principles and nice-to-haves for 2010 and I should be publishing them on this blog in some shape or form soon.

But what do you think? What are your resolutions, hopes, goals and so on for 2010, and are they SMART? What can you change to make them that way? Have a think.

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Look at the shiny thing!

It’s a MacBook MC240LL/A from mid-2009, with 2Gb of RAM (I know) and running Mac OS X 10.6 “Snow Leopard”. I bought a second hand unit, but one that was almost new and still has ten months of manufacturer’s guarantee left. For the discount I got off the retail price of a brand new machine, that’s a bargain.

Look at the other shiny thing!

Second on my shopping list was an iPhone 3GS 16Gb. Second only because I had to wait for Vodafone to make them available on the 14th of January. In an entirely unrelated incident, Norwin got one too.

I haven’t had a chance to do much more that set both devices up and install the basic applications that I need. It’s not as if I’m entirely new to either though, so I know what to expect for the most part.

So am I one of those switchers from Windows land? Not really. I wrote a little while ago about some personal goals for 2010 that I’d been mulling over. Well, now I’ve had some time to consider them, some have solidified to the point where I was prepared to commit a not-insignificant amount of cash towards achieving them.

My MacBook and iPhone are means to an end. Shiny, fun means to and end, make no mistake, but they will earn their keep.

That’s the plan anyway.

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