libertus

Oh dear. Scarcity doesn’t imply quality.

It was ages before I found Mariokart Wii in a shop. I remembered being a fan of the previous versions of the game on the SNES and N64 so had no reservations about buying it for the Wii. I wish I hadn’t.
Continue reading ‘Mariokart Wii’ »

It’s a pain trying to buy the most popular game in the world. It took an age to find but we finally have it – Wii Fit.

We bought it to help out with the “diet thing”. Having spent a few hours with it now, I can say that it’s very interesting and definitely more a workout tool than it is a game. Computer-aided exercise – what will they think of next?

Nintendo at their best. Highly recommended, if you can get one, that is

I completed Super Mario Galaxy this weekend, not in the purist sense of doing absolutely everything, but in the normal sense of having helped Mario to beat Bowser and rescue Princess Peach.

Awesome game. 9½ out of 10.

Wow! It just can’t get any better than this. I’ve been banging on for months about how the Wii would be perfect for a scuba diving game. Well, Endless Ocean isn’t a game but I imagine it’ll be 90% of what I had in mind. Released on 9^th November 2007, the same day I return to the UK, it’ll be a must buy for me!

Here are some YouTube videos and be sure to check out the Wikipedia entry.

Having a mate who works in a game store is a real bonus when it comes to play-testing. I took my Wii to the shop and we spent some time checking out all the games we could get our hands on (the ones returned for exchange mostly), so that I could figure out which ones I wanted to buy. Hey… there’s no such thing as a free lunch and not making your customers feel ripped off is good business!

Continue reading ‘Wii Must Try Before Wii May Buy’ »

I logged my first dive for the third time today. I’ve paid £3.95 for one month in which time I can log as many dives, write as many stories and make as many changes as I please.

Last night I received one of my usual junk mails; “Microsoft Download Notifications: August 25, 2006″. Normally I skim then delete but this one caught my eye. Something I’ve been waiting for is now in a state I can download and use – the first “Release Candidate” of Internet Explorer 7.

I’m not fan of Microsoft, having had a long and occasionally arduous relationship with their products. On the other hand, I’m sure the majority of people using the internet do so thorough Microsoft’s magic window, so as a professional web developer I am obliged to investigate and support it as best I can. IE6 was dreadful – it worked but lacked support for some important web standards. IE7, I am told, is standards-compliant, so I am expecting it to work as well as, if not better than, the competing standards-compliant browsers such as Mozilla Firefox, Opera and Konqueror.

Here are my experiences.

Continue reading ‘Internet Explorer 7, Release Candidate 1 SUCKS!!!’ »

“Smiley” Peformance Monitor plugin for WordPress

As there have been reports of dramatic slow-downs after upgrading to WordPress 2.0.4, and my blog is still running 2.0.3, naturally I wish to investigate these reports prior to upgrading. I could wait for the WordPress developers to do this, but I’m impatient. WordPress 2.0.4 contains a critical security fix that I wish to apply, among others. I don’t want to sacrifice performance for a tiny amount of extra safety.

I previously investigated the memory use of WordPress 2.0.2. I shall build upon that work to introduce execution timestamps and database queries into the performance graph. I shall then directly compare the performance of 2.0.3 and 2.0.4 on the same dataset – my blog, of course!

Continue reading ‘Investigating WordPress 2.0.4 Performance’ »

I’m a sensitive soul with computers. Whilst I appreciate the incredible power and capacity that modern computers provide, I cannot help but remember those hazy days during my youth when I learned how to program. My first computer was modest by today’s standards – a Sinclair ZX81 with 8Kb of ROM (including a built-in BASIC interpreter) and 1Kb of RAM. That was enough for some but I didn’t really get started until I had 16Kb of RAM. That was enough for me and my skills at the time. I proceeded to write computer games.

WordPress is a personal publishing system designed to work on modern servers. Servers are enormous. The server that hosts this blog has 125,000 times more RAM than my first computer. My blog may use only 8MB, a limit enforced by the programming language that the blog uses; PHP.

So how does WordPress fill this tiny pocket of the big machine? Today I’m looking at the memory footprint of WordPress 2.0.2. How efficiently does WordPress use its most precious resource?

Continue reading ‘Memory Usage in WordPress 2.0.2’ »

Turing Test 1: Are you a computer?
Turing Test 2: No. Are you?
Turing Test 1: No.