January 19, 2009 – 8:30 pm
I’ve had a few people mentioning that I’ve not been posting more photos of Jamie here, so a very quick pointer to my Flickr page, where I occasionally post new pictures.
October 1, 2008 – 9:58 pm
On Monday morning, September 29th 2008, at 2:37am (BST), my wife Catherine gave birth to James Cooper, our son, weighing 7lb 13oz. James is our first child, and so far parenthood is proving to be rather… surreal. You don’t really notice that anything has changed, until at some point you realise that almost everything has. Catherine and James came home from hospital today, and as I type this I’ve just finished bottle-feeding him, and he fell asleep against my shoulder as I quietly whistled “Sweet Baby James“. It’s difficult to explain how it feels being a Dad, but with moments like this, I think I’m going to like it.
There’s so much more I want to write, but at the moment I’m not sure what it is. So for the time being, here are some photos…
Tonight is the last night we’ll spend in our current house, Mrs.Bod and I. Tomorrow we move to a new house, on the other side of town. A brand new house, un-lived in by anyone (apart from a handful of woodlice). I’d say that I’m excited at the prospect – but frankly I’m just tired. I’ve spent the last couple days packing everything we own into boxes, and I’ve been doing the same for the previous two weekends – this post is being written just prior to packing away my PC and being without internets for a couple weeks. It’s tiring. It’s stressful. I’m quite looking forward to not having to move ever again. We’ll just have to wait and see how that pans out.
I’m a big fan of AVG Free, the cost-less anti-virus software from Grisoft. I’m a keen advocate of it, and have installed it on several computers of friends and relatives (tho’ trying to ensure they keep it up-to-date is a trickier matter). Around this time most users will be seeing dialog boxes appear stating that they should be installing the new version – AVG8. I would agree, as it’s certainly fine software… I have some niggles regarding its installation of unwanted (in my case) web browser addons, but that’s something that’s easily fixed. Not so simple, at least from reading various forums, is killing AVG8 – so I found a way… Read More »
We’ve been quite busy of late (please, no crude comments about recent announcements). Aside from the whole “family-starting” thing, Mrs.Bod and myself are in the process of selling our current house (where numerous demoparties have been held) and buying a new place. Of course we want to optimize our available space when we move, so a brand new high-definition television seemed to be the best option of “things to buy”. Me being an oddly non-geek geek, I have a habit of reading through manuals before even getting new techie kit out of the box, and it’s for scary gems like this, found in the manual to our new Samsung LCD TV, that it’s all worthwhile. I’m a tad confused by all of the “Image Enhancement” options on new TV’s, Sony with their Bravia and Wega systems, Philips with Pixel Plus, and Samsung have DNIe. We chose a Samsung TV:
DNIeTM (Digital Natural Image engine). This feature brings you more detailed image with 3D noise reduction, detail enhancement, contrast enhancement and white enhancement. New image compensation Algorithm gives brighter, clearer, more detailed image to you. DNIeTM technology will fit every signal into your eyes.
I’m ever-so slightly concerned.
A long long time ago (in a galaxy very similar to our own) I wrote for small-press fanzine “PD Power”, published by Prism PD. It was all about the ZX Spectrum, specifically the Public Domain software scene – this was after the demise of wonder-zine Your Sinclair, which kind of marked the end of the commercial side of the machine. I actually had a column (oo-er) in the magazine, some of which I actually wrote, all about the Spectrum +3 – I was a little miffed when I saw other people writing under my name, but these things happen when you’re as popular as I.
So, I’ve recently been playing around with some of my old software and I found the sources for the articles written by me, in Word-Master format. Rather than lose these forever, except to the small number of people who saw the magazine, I thought I’d re-post the articles here, complete with (in some cases) lawyer-unfriendly typos – really, in the first article about replacing drive belts a typo actually stated that “Prism PD and I, Icabod, accept any responsibility for, well, anything really.” – Uhm… so far nobody has taken me up on that claim, and I’d like to now publicly withdraw my comment. Phew.
Anyway, the first of the articles is below the break, and is that very same 3″ drive-belt replacement article.
Read More »
I’m always interested to see what people are working on, and I think it can add to some excitement and expectation – sometimes unfounded, but often it gives a good idea of what’s to come. For example playing beta versions of games – sure they may be a little rough around the edges, but they allow you to get a feel for the final product, which will hopefully be released in a more polished state. Concept artwork too is nice as you get to see in essence what is going on in the head of the designers (which may be a little scary at times, but rarely is it dull). I’m working on a demo at the moment for which I’ve prototyped some code (in Windows C++ as it’s quick-and-easy) – I’ve then been able to pass that along to LaesQ so he can see what my plans are and compose some appropriate music.
But this post is about a different kind of production, for which you can see an early beta representation here. It’s a joint production from myself and Mrs.Bod, and you can probably tell that a lot of development work is still required. The expected release date is the end of September 2008, although as this is the first production of it’s kind from us it’s liable to succumb to delays – possibly into October. So, a little late for showing at Sundown. We’ve not yet decided on a title (people seem keen to provide suggestions), but we’re expecting the soundtrack style to be of the “loud and crying” vein.
