This is the view from my office on Saturday morning (Dec 19th). It's a touch early. Maybe we'll get the again same later this week.
December 2009 Archives
Man, what a week! I haven't played anything for over a week with the exception of some Forza 3 last night with friends. I've barely had time to do any reading. Work has been keeping me really busy and if I've actually had any time spare in the evenings, I've usually spent it with friends. That means Assassin's Creed 2 has been on hold since last week. I haven't had the energy to get any reading done when I finally get into bed in favour of just going to sleep. I did manage to get some creative writing done earlier in the week, but that was admittedly business related (beginnings of a story outline for one of our projects).
I cannot believe Christmas is next week. I must have been saying Christmas is a 'still few weeks away' for over a month. I only realised how close it was on Thursday when I looked at the date. This also means I've been totally slack this year in terms of Christmas cards and presents. So I apologise for that. I'll catch up in the new year. Speaking of which, I also can't believe it is almost 2010. It doesn't seem that long ago we were celebrating the turn of the century. Having said that, I'm also looking forward to some time off.
It's going to take a while before I get used to using things like Twitter and Facebook. I'm like one someone who comes up with a good response hours after the conversation. Whenever I realise I've done something I could have thrown out there, it's well after I'm done. It doesn't feel legitimate posting everything in the past-tense on those things (and I don't want to use present-tense in case I contradict myself about what I'm doing or look like I'm slacking off). I'm sure I'll get better at it, I'm just not mindful of using them when I'm caught up in the moment of actually doing something.
There is an Xbox 360 Dev Kit sitting on the floor beside me, which looks pretty cool. It will be fun to have a look at that in the coming weeks (probably next year at this rate). I was evaluating the Boost C++ Libraries earlier in the week (might have been last weekend actually). I haven't had the need to really use it in the past (beyond standard STL), as I've generally been working with custom libraries to handle Threading and such, but I need a framework for a Rebel Brains project and it seemed like a good candidate. I threw together some stuff in about 20 minutes before breakfast on Wednesday, and I was impressed how quick it was to get up and running with it.
Anyway, that's all for now. It's been a very long week and I'm looking forward to getting away from the computer for a bit.
My racing rig consists of a Playseat Race Pro with a Logitech G25. It's an awesome setup and it is usually connected to my PS3 for playing Gran Turismo 5 Prologue and Dirt 2. I tend to prefer playing games on my Xbox 360 (I am a bit of a Gamerscore whore), and I was really excited when Forza 3 was released just over a month ago.
Unfortunately the G25 isn't compatible with the 360. Back in August I had pre-ordered the Porsche 911 Turbo S wheel by Fanatec in preparation for Forza 3's release. This wheel is compatible with the PC, PS3 and the Xbox 360, which is brilliant because the wheel needs to be bolted onto the frame of the racing seat so it's secure enough - this makes changing wheels painful to say the least. Ultimately they had some production problems and the wheel - that was originally scheduled to coincide with Forza 3's release - slipped by about a month and a half.
While I was waiting, Forza 3 arrived. I was keen to try it out and after initially just playing a few laps with the controller, I went through the arduous task of attaching the Xbox 360 Wireless Racing Wheel to the seat. The issue was compounded by the fact that the wheel doesn't have bolt mounts to attach it to things. The official way to attach the wheel to surfaces is to use the clamp that comes with it, but that doesn't work on the Playseat. The creators of the seat came up with a mounting "solution" using sticky velcro strips and some plates you can bolt onto the frame. The end result was sturdy enough, but pretty tacky.
Using the wheel was such a disappointment. It had been years since it had last been used and, unfortunately for it, my new frame of reference was the G25. The difference was utterly astounding. The Microsoft wheel feels like a kids toy. The force-feedback is ridiculously weak and the pedals are floppy with no real resistance at all. I'd also become used to 900 degrees lock-to-lock of turning; the MS wheel only has 270 degrees (a usable 221 according to wikipedia).
I decided that it just wasn't worth potentially ruining Forza 3 attempting to play like that. So I put it aside. That should change soon enough though, as I received confirmation on Friday that my Fanatec wheel has finally shipped! Words can't describe how excited I am to finally be able to get some quality time with Forza 3.
I'm in the process of moving to a new server. This site is the first to move. Hopefully everything still works. I have decided that after 6 years of running my own dedicated server, I just couldn't justify the price versus flexibility when I wasn't utilising the machine completely. I'm paying for overhead simply because I might need it. On the flip side, I'm also unable to upgrade whilst still being cost-effective (It's usually cheaper to replace the whole machine).
This wouldn't be as big an issue if I was co-locating and actually owned the server - which I would do if it was financially viable on the Isle of Man. I also don't see the point in co-locating when I can't easily get access to the machine, so going offshore isn't an option. Renting a server just doesn't make sense for me anymore
Instead I've decided to go with a VPS provider (Linode) for all my personal stuff. Business hosting will be a combination of Amazon Web Services and Linode, depending on the requirements. Amazon S3 will cover all my online storage (which I was using already - it'll just get used more). Thankfully, Google have been handling my email for over a year now, so server moves are less mission-critical than were in the past.
I'm liking this so far as it means I can change my server specifications depending on my requirements and I only pay for what I'm using. It's also trivial to spin up new machines if needed (and just as easy to take them offline again). Linode seem to be decent in terms of price and performance. They're not quite as flexible as Amazon EC2; but for my more permanent hosting that's not really an issue.