So there I am on Friday afternoon, on the bus home. Bloke in red tie is sat where he is in the photo. He has a small bag on the seat next to him which is otherwise empty. Girl in pink top moves toward seat intending to sit down. Bloke sees her, picks up the bag and with an almost perceptible snarl throws it on the floor in front of his feet. Girl sits down, looks over at me and I smile and give a “Can you believe that” wave of the head.

I guess he’d had a bad day! So I whipped out the phone and took this photo.

I’m a great believer in the Wisdom of Crowds (Great book by James Suriewicki BTW) and today launched portent.org a collaborative blog about new and interesting things on the web. Not unlike Boingboing.net. They have 5 high profile journalists and writers. I’d like 25 bloggers. As an encouragement, 90% of gross revenues from any advertising will be paid to portent’s bloggers. The details are here.

With 32 million websites and new ones appearing every hour, theres so much new stuff waiting to be found and highlighted. Let’s get started. If you want to sign up, visit the link above.

At work I’ve been experimenting with Visual Build Pro. Our existing build system is well let’s say very backwardly compatible … as far back as Dos so a new version control system and a new Build Manager.

The Build Manager I’ve been looking at is Visual Build Pro (VBP) by Kinook Software and it’s very nice and at £200, very reasonably priced. I got up to speed with it very quickly and it’s clear that the designers have probably used it on their own projects as everyting is well thought out. Integration with Subversion is very good.

The big work project is a mixture of Delphi and Visual C++ with a fair bit of C. Automating the Delphi bit was ok but the Visual C++ stuff has been ‘fun’. Our project uses Make files, all 115 of them. VBP uses DSPs, the Visual Studio Project file. So I’ve had a one off manual conversion task. I did consider automating it and possibly still could but it’s the old classic connundrum- can you do it manually in the time it would take do to it in code?

I’ve had this domain for many years, intending to do something with it and recently noticed that it was picking up a fair bit of traffic. I searched on google for dark games and it’s 7th or 8th out of nearly 200 million. Blimey. So I’ve started putting it to some use and will be moving all my game stuff onto the site.

A few years back I had an idea for a card game and the prototype fitted on the backs of two decks of playing cards. Thus was born Odds On. It’s in alpha stage of development, needs testing and balancing but the idea is that as one of a number of bookies you take odds on horses (random combinations of horse + jockey) from other players.

The main game play is playing your odds cards. When all horses in a race have odds the race begins. If the horse with your odds on wins then you gain points. After a number of matches, lowest points wins. There are a few random cards etc to make it more interesting.

My brother in law has gone through hell over the last 7 months, since December 2005. He’s a taxidriver in Blackpool and was accused by a female passenger of touching her legs and breasts in the course of a 3 minute drive (while going round a curvy route- and with his right hand!). This happened just before Christmas and he lost nearly two weeks of work at a busy time of year. And he has had this hanging over him since then with possible loss of freedom, job (self employed), and house. He’s married with a 9 year old daughter and no criminal record.

The woman was heavily intoxicated- her friends had to hold her up to get her in the car. She described my brother in law as 25-30 with brown hair. He’s 40 with grey hair! She said in her statement that her boyfriend (at the destination) was waiting with door open when she arrived and witnessed her breasts being fondled. Her boyfriend said that he was in the back of the house and the first he knew she was back was when she put her key in the lock.

Result- 12 Jurors took 20 minutes to all decide Not Guilty. Why on earth did this come to court in the first place? Are the Crown Prosecution Service on some politically correct, ‘Try them in court no matter what the evidence’ waste the taxpayer’s money kick? The Judge said it shouldn’t have come to court. But at least it was a fair result.

Last night Walthamstow Council voted 31 to 22 in favour of becoming affiliated with Mo2ID. The against votes were purely along party lines- Tories and Lib-Dems in favour of affiliation, Labour against.

As the Leyton rep (we’re a very small group) I went along to snap snaps, hand out badges and leaflets etc. Plus I met and chatted with one or two councillors and watched Democracy in Action. Phew, pontificating and political! I’d never appreciated how much the major parties have on local Govt. But it was interesting to see all of the maneuvering and discussions. Not exactly my idea of a fun time though!

My job dictates that I have to use Windows, and I also use a properly licensed copy at home. Nevertheless I think Microsdoft is getting increasingly over reaching with the information they suck out of your PC. I read the EULA for the latest Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA- We Get it ALL?) update and section 6 says this.

“6. Computer Information. This supplement uses Internet protocols to send to Microsoft computer information, such as your Windows XP product key, hard drive serial number, PC manufacturer, operating system version, Windows XP product ID, PC BIOS information, user locale setting, language version of Windows XP, validation result and whether the installation of this supplement was successful. Certain information derived from your IP address, which cannot be used to identify you, is retained in association with this computer information. “

Now I really object to some of this one several grounds.

• Hard drive Number

– What business is it of Microsoft to know this?

• PC Bios Information?

Why do they need this?

• PC Manufacturer

– That’s commercially sensitive information!

I do wonder if they read the CPUID or network card MAC Address.
They also say in section 7. We may also share the aggregate data with others, such as hardware and software vendors and volume licensees to help protect their license keys. WTF? Since when is it Microsoft’s job to police on behalf of licensees? Do they police GPL? I bet not!

As a developer I appreciate Microsoft when they do things like provide the free Express Editions of compilers. But this stuff just builds up resentment. So I have declined the update. We’ll see what happens. I encourage you to decline the update as well. If enough people do it, Microsoft will start noticing.

Another thought. Some of the information they collect is commercially useful. If you want it, you buy it from me. Savvy?

Casus Belli was an old Play By Mail (PBM) game I wrote in 1986. It had 1,500 players at game launch (1986) thanks to a feature in Computer & Video Games magazine. I designed Warlord at KJC Games in 1989 and that was basically Casus Belli Mk II. It is still run now. (Older than the Web!)

I always wanted to program it as a desktop game and then maybe on mobile, and the web (Flash) so to start the ball rolling, I’ve been writing it up on my website. The Delphi version will be given away, warts and all to open source. The C++ and C# versions will appear on the Cplus.About.com website when I have finished preparing it. (I’ve been accepted as the new guide!)

You can see the first three articles on the new Casus Belli at the bottom of this page on my website. Have fun.

As the weather was unseasonally warm and windy I took a trip to Fulham Broadway to check out the latest PSP games and Border’s Bookshop where I bought a book. (Perhaps I should change my name to Pooter…)

The photo is the view from the platform for trains to Wimbledon. Lurking in the distance is the Empress State Building which possesses a rotating disc section on the top floor. Tables and chairs on the disc section slowly rotate. Mind you, that bit is closed unless booked for filming. I’m sure I saw an episode of Spooks there and the front of the building featured in that fine epic of film making Fat Slags. If you want to see the building on Google Maps enter the post code SW6 1TR. Here is a photo I took looking North from the building on a not quite so sunny day.

I succumbed to temptation today. I can resist everything but… in the shapely form of a Dubble bar It was dubble or nothing…

Why oh why do they put the “Nutritional values” per 100g of chocolate and not the bar. It’s 529C per 100g (and not the bar)? That’s 212 C for the bar if you’re wondering. As only 20% of the world is supposed to feel comfortable with maths, its a bit of a no brainer to add this. In fact if you look closely at the bottom line it’s there but not brilliantly laid out. Sack that wrapper graphic artist- he could easily have added another column.

Oh..You’re not interested in my rant and wonder what the bar tastes like? Very nice. I prefer the Divine bars they sell though… Nuts are ok but pure chocolate is soo nice.

There’s a Comic Relief sticker on the wrapper so presumably all the bars have laxative in them..Oh…maybe not!