However, rather than complaining about the rail service (which would be rather unfair given the circumstances in this particular incident) I’m instead directing my eye at the governments proposed crime fighting Internet and phone database.

For those of you not in the know this will stop short of archiving the content of messages (Thank Cod!) “but would have details of sites visited, along with senders, times and recipients of e-mails and calls.” Which frankly, in many cases is enough. While the government clearly hopes to catch communications with osamabinladen@hotmail.com (yes, I realize that it will be somewhat more complex than that) they’ll also be building a database that will reveal a huge ammount of information about ordinary citizens.

But perhaps more worrying is that the government is even outsourcing this work. So not only will the govenment have access to this information, but also the random company to which they outsource it. And while the government promises harsh fines if the data is misused, that wont exactly help those who have had their data leaked. And all this before we even consider someone leaving a laptop in Starbucks.

I realise that the most of these records exist already, kept by ISPs and telecoms services. I realise that the police can already gain access to many of these records. But it strikes me that a central database only makes breaches of security more valuable to those who obtain the data, more wide reaching, and very possibly more likely.

“Your site’s a bit sporadic,” said Tim, presumably referring to the, slightly inaccurate, last updated 5th August 2006 message on the front page.
“Yeah,” I admitted, “but most my updates are in my blog.”
“Occasionally, but not often,” was his response.

And he was right, I’m a crap blogger, and even worse at keeping the main site up to date. I mean, it doesn’t help that I’ve not been all that productive recently. The few things I have made have usually found their homes elsewhere, be it on flickr, or Fallout3nexus. But still, that doesn’t excuse the fact that this place sucks.

Fortunately I now have the ideal excuse to post, taking part in a meme which extends far beyond the blogosphere, that of making new years resolutions. In the past I have failed to stop biting my nails on several occasions, so now a chance to fail at something new. I shall keep this blog updated.

Come the new year I shall strive to write something here at least once a week, updating on Sundays if I failed to say something previously. This will still be the usual boring rubbish that is no interest to anyone, so this resolution can pretty much translate to ‘I shall massage my ego once a week,’ but at least my low readership figures shall keep me fully grounded.

Meanwhile good riddence to 2008. Who knows, if things go exceptionally well this year, the 2009-2010 resolution may be signed Dr. James.

bisexual
bisexuality
bisexuals
bi-sexual
bi-sexuals
…
gay
gays
…
homo
homos
homosexual
homosexuality
homosexuals
…
lesbian
lesbians
lesbo
lesbos

Along with several pejorative terms for describing non-straight people (except poof for some odd reason). What the list didn’t block is straight, heterosexual or any of its variants. This provides gay and bisexual people with little ability to discuss their sexuality, while placing no such restriction on straight folk.
This just continues to reinforce the idea that gay and bisexual people are an ‘other,’ and that there is something dirty or morally corrupt about their sexuality. If the list itself can’t be described as homophobic, it in the very least reveals the deeply rooted homophobia in our society.
Before someone raises the issue, I am well aware that gay and ‘homo’ are used as insults in the same was heterosexual isn’t. However the developer’s approach here is highly unsatisfactory, and I think creates a situation which is worse than the situation they were trying to prevent. By blocking the words, they merely end up re-enforcing the attitude that led to them being considered offensive in the first place.
I feel the developers (or more accurately the publishers, as there is an indication that the list was supplied by Disney) should have either allowed all non-pejorative terms to describe sexuality, or none of them.
If anyone is interested, the banned word lists can be found here.

This post was originally a message on the snopes messageboard.

CORRECTION: The post intended to refer to the game Pure, rather than P.U.R.E, as was mistakenly written in the initial post. I apologise to the creators of P.U.R.E for this mistake.

A few months ago I though this sounded quite snazzy, so signed myself up for the beta. Today I got access, so thought I’d give things a whirl. As a favour to their beta users, GOG are doing a buy one get one free offer on the first order, Sign-up was quick and easy, and didn’t seem to require too much in the way of information. Unfortunately it did decide to send my password and security question to my E-mail, a questionable security practise. I’ll E-mail them on this one.

I had a bit of trouble with establishing a secure connection, but that seemed to be due to OpenDNS. It seems to cause problems on secure sites if some of the page content is hosted at an invalid domain.

Payment allows visa or Mastercard only, which means those without a credit card are possibly out of luck. I’d try my debit card, but I’d prefer the added security of a credit card on an unfamiliar website. So can’t say if delta is also accepted. However they claim that they are adding more cards shortly, so I assume this limitation won’t last long.

On purchase of Sacrifice at the bargain price of $5.99 (About £3) the game was added to my account page for downloading when I saw fit. The account page also provides links to forums, articles and additional downloads.It also gives me the opportunity to rate the game and review it. The articles address technical issues with the game, such as the requirement to run the installer as administrator on Windows Vista.

The downloads for the game include the manual, reference card, desktops and avatars. The game itself downloads as a single exe, and the 562.6MB file is downloading hovered around 140kB/s-160kB/s, it looks like it will take about an hour.

While thats happening I’ll talk about the rest of the service. Much like Steam, GOG provides forums for all the games available on its service, as well as a General Discussion forum which currently contains mainly feedback and feature requests.

The website provides a nice console, listing games you own, providing download links as well as links to relevant support articles and forums. According to GOG purchased games will be available for download forever, which should sound like a no-brainier, but some download services fail to provide this. The website also encourages you to make backups to CD, something I’ll do as I don’t fancy re-downloading half a gig regularly.

Unlike something like Steam, the service doesn’t require any background tasks. This will please many people and hopefully means that games installs will be virtually identical to the CD versions, only without a CD requirement.

Interestingly the license covers any number of PCs/laptops in the same household. In practise of course many people will do this anyway, but its nice that they allow it implicitly.

Now onto the the most important aspect, the catalogue. GOG promises to add new releases each Tuesday, which should ensure a constant flow of games. Currently it just hosts titles from Codemasters’ and Interplay’s back catalogues. This includes among them classics such as Fallout 1 and 2, Sacrifice, Giants: Citizen Kabuto and MDK, all at $5.99. There are also a few $9.99 titles thrown into the mix. Currently they only have 34 titles listed, and a few of those are flagged as ‘coming soon.’ Notably key Interplay titles like Baldur’s gate aren’t present, I suppose Atari’s continued interest in the D&D license, or Bioware’s cavorting with EA, may be holding this one back. However the forums are full of requests so we’ll see what happens.

The developers currently seem to be fairly active on the forums, but this is may be just due to the beta period.

With the download done, we are on to installation. As suggested, I’ll install as administrator.

Hmm, bit of a slow start here, but its a huge file and the problem could be with Vista’s paranoid security. Still, we are in to a customised installer. Seems to be very easy to use, if you don’t want to charge the default installation directory it is installed and launched in three clicks.

Game works first time, and adds itself to the vista games manager, uhh, twice, once with a shiny icon, and another time with downloaded box art. The shiny icon has links to the manual etc, and the box-art icon appears to be the version Vista ads automatically. The game appears to be fully patched.

So overall the process was extraordinarily simple, and doesn’t have any unnecessary gubbins to get in the way. One downer is that they don’t provide an automatic update tool, but seeing as these games are pretty ancient I expect they are as patched as they are going to get.

Currently the selection is a touch limited, as are the payment options. However, it is still early days, and GOG already show intentions of addressing both these problems. I hope early sales will be sufficient to encourage other publishers to join the fray. The low prices means that I’ll certainly be using the service in future, to catch up on missed titles and to fill in gaps between modern releases. The benefit of not requiring the CD, of having everything patched up and easy to use, and having it all only a few clicks away, makes GOG an attractive alternative to scouring eBay and the pre-owned bins, and charity shops.

Good Old Games can be found at http://www.gog.com/ and is currently in beta phase.

I’m vaguely jealous of his job.

Edit: Ahh, much better. I ran my blog through a second time, and I find this word list slightly less worrying. (Card is so large thanks to the ‘what have I got in my wallet post)

Friday, the game didn’t arrive, nor was it there on Saturday, and by Tuesday I still hadn’t recieved it, or a card for attempted delivery. This morning was the day at which Amazon officialy class the game as delayed, and will look at re-delivery. I checked in at the sorting office on the offchance that the postie had been out of attempted delivery cards. The game wasn’t there, although the guy who helped was polite, appologetic, and actually bothered to search arround in all the nooks and crannies where it may have ended up, rather than just the place it SHOULD be. I also put a note up at the entrance to our flat complex, asking anyone if it had been misdelivered, or if they had accepted delivery.

This evening however one of the neighbours across the way caught me as I was taking down the note. “Your Amazon package?” he asked, I nodded. “Well, when I saw the note this morning I was thinking that I had seen a package outside your door Friday lunchtime, smallish?” he said,
“DVD sized,” I confirmed.

Bugger. Bugger because said package certainly wasn’t there when I got home, which means that someone nabbed off with it.

In practice I haven’t lost anything (except possibly my insurance premium); the post hadn’t been passed through the door and thus Royal Mail is still liable. As a result Amazon will be able to claim a refund. (I’ve asked that either they refund my money, or send the replacement via a delivery method that requires I sign for it.) However it infuriates me, and angers me much more than if Royal Mail had lost it. It also suggests that the fate of a previous piece of mail may have been somewhat similar. It also means that I can’t trust anything to be delivered to me via the standard postal service.

Now, I have already reported the crime to the Police. I doubt that it will have any effect with respect to recovering the goods or bringing the perpetrator to justice, but it might give a bit more weight behind my complaints to Royal Mail, and it might prompt the police to stick warnings through other flats, to ensure that people are careful with deliveries, and stop sticking the front door on the latch.

I’ll also be reporting the incident to the local sorting office tomorrow, and ask that they instruct their posties NOT to leave mail outside of doors. Amusingly I’ll also be in on there on Friday to pick up a Special Delivery, which means I’ll be in the sorting office three days in a row. (Incidently, it has only been sent by Special Delivery due to the missing mail) For non-British readers of my blog (which are as imaginary as the British readers) Special Delivery is the Royal Mail courier service, and requires a signature. If he tries leaving that one outside the door there will be serious trouble.

ETA: Wow! Amazon have already initiated the refund, almost exactly two hours after I first contacted them! I’m especially impressed as the initial E-mail was sent outside of office hours. So a good thumbs up for Amazon there! Very impressed.

Dwarf Fortress is a freeware indie game, that comes in at just 5.3 MB, that’s just 37 centipeggles for those familiar with Rock, Paper, Shotgun. However inside this small package you have one of the most detailed and absorbing games I have ever played.

Dwarf Fortress is really two games in one; fortress mode is a strategy/management game; adventurer mode is a Rogue alike RPG. Both games are set in the same world, and when your fortress finally falls you can descend into it in adventure mode and read the story of its fall engraved in its walls, and perhaps pick up a few artifacts that your dwarves themselves created.

However it is fortress mode which recieves the most attention, and rightly so. To attempt to compare it to commercial games would be to describe a breeding experiment involving Dungeon Keeper, The Settlers, and a DOS era word processor. In attempting to describe my first impressions of the game over at the snopes message boards I said the following:

I’ve been looking at the arcane and unwieldy ‘Dwarf Fortress,’ a freeware ASCII strategy/Roguealike game with the depth of an oceanic trench and an interface that would make the cockpit of a space shuttle seem user friendly. Despite its rudimentary graphics, the game still manages to take quite a chunk out of my computers processing power.

The games motto is ‘loosing is fun’ and that is something I fear may soon hit me. The first winter has hit and already I appear to have run out of seeds and yet have just taken an influx of new migrants which has doubled the population of my fortress. My carpenter has been working flat out to produce new beds for the migrants, while I’ve been very fortunate that one of the newcommers brought an axe with them, as the only one my party brought with them at the begining was stolen from the bedside of one of my dwarfs by an invading kobold.

Unfortunately I have no weapons, as I can’t build a smithy without an anvil, and the trading caravan that was supposed to bring one left with impatince as not only was my trade depot not built, but my broker was asleep when the caravan arrived.

Of course I can always slaughter some of the horses that gave birth in my Dining room, and the dogs have been trained up to hunt. My brewer is working efficiently, although I fear I may have brewed up too much alcohol, depleting valuble food reserves in the process. Still, my leader is a bit an alcoholic, so maybe she’ll get through the supplies.

I’m also dreading the day when I accidently mine into a nearby pond, flooding half my fortress.

That fortress survived a flooding, but sucumbed later, not to invaders, but rather to the after effects:

Dead, all dead. A series of invading goblins were bravely fought off by my quickly recruited militia, but we suffered heavy losses. Many of the Dwarves were severely depressed, and their refusal to work meant that the bodies of their friends began to rot in the corridors. In an attempt to raise the mood ‘Stoney,’ the leader, threw a party, however tragedy was to occur. A woodcutter flipped, sinking into a blood-frenzy, murdering half the dwarves in the party, and chasing the rest through the tunnels of my fortress. Those that weren’t killed slipped irreversibly into depression, and the death of the leader ensured they all stood arround doing very little. Eventualy the mad woodcutter was taken down but it was too late, the three remaining Dwarves starved in their beds until a final invading goblin force wiped them all out.

I’m now on my second fortress, located in the same world as the first, but some distance away. I learnt lessons from the first, and dug myself in much deeper, with only an entrance. Still, at one point I was down to a couple of dwarves, before a huge influx of immigrants rescued me. I’ve flooded half the fortress and rescued it, using the drained flood water to tide my fortress through the winter when all surface water was frozen and beer had run out.

I’ve got regular trade going on with elves, dwarves and humans, although have managed to annoy the elves on one occasion. (I’d dread to think what it would be like cooking for elves. The vegitarianism isn’t a problem (although I’m sure my dwarves don’t agree) but I fear they’d also object to my wooden table.) I’ve now extended my defenses, which seems to have attracted even more attention from the goblins than I was getting previously. The last siege was fought off with few casualties, but a smaller ambush proved to be a greater issue as my moat froze over in the winter, allowing them to bypass the bridge.

The game is still under development, and new features are continuously being added. It seems that the next version will look at military activity during world generation, with the eventual goal of providing the player with the ability to launch invasions against other settlements. However, the immediate results will be seen as a more detailed world history, and more variation in the civilizations you meet.

The early issues with the interface faded quickly as I became more familiar with the game, you get used to it. I…I don’t even see the code. All I see is dwarf, elephant, tower-cap. However, the game still seems to be throwing new challenges at me as my fortress gets larger, not to mention my projects are getting more and more ambitious. My warehouse/tower next to my trade depot is more or less complete, although still needs a final roof. My new defense network is mostly up and running, and I think I’ve got my resevoir systems hooked up correctly. Of course, I need to think about draining that moat. but that will involve blocking off the feeder chanels, so shall probably have to wait until winter rolls around again.

Zas Zasallas, Marksdwarf has given birth to a boy.
Zas Zasallas, Marksdwarf cancels Sleep: Seeking Infant

Many parents must know the feeling, but the mind boggles as the second message appeared about a second after the first!

Pockets:
* Wallet
* Keys + USB drive
* Mobile Phone
* Twix Wrapper

Rucksack:
* Raincoat
* Old pair of trainers (Broken)
* 8 Reciepts
* Notepad
* Direct Debit request that should have been mailed a week ago
* A Ball of String (Seriously! What is that doing in there!?)
* iRiver H120 MP3 Player, remote and headphones
* Bus Ticket Dated 31st Jan 08
* Glasses Case (Contains Cloth)
* Train Ticket, Cheltnham Spa To Edinburgh, 04 Jan 2008
* 35-in-1 USB Card Reader
* 3 Payslips
* 1 Envelope containing:
2 Train Ticket reciepts and accompanying address card
* £40 Virgin Wines voucher
* 1 Treasury Tag
* 1 pen
* 1p piece

Sorry, disabled comments on this post as I was getting hit by credit vultures.