Steam – Now in OS X Flavour!
Mar0
It’s been a long time coming, but the nice people at Valve have announced that Steam is coming to Mac. When? April.
This is possibly the biggest boost to gaming on the Mac since the move to an Intel architecture, especially given that Valve is bringing its entire Source-powered line-up of games with it on launch, without needing to buy another copy. I expect to see the quite lengthy list of games on Steam which already have a Mac port move over in the near future as well.
And now, some eye candy.
When in Rome…
Feb0
Recently there’s been a bit of a furore over if Sikhs should be allowed to wear the Kirpan, a small dagger of religious significance, in schools and other public places. A prominent judge (incidentally a Sikh himself) seems to think they should.
Oddly, quite a few people take a dim view of this proposed exception from the law of the land on religious grounds. Now, I’m all in favour of religious tolerance – I honestly don’t care which faith someone is. I have no problem with religious practice such as obligatory prayer at specific times of day (as long as they don’t stop to pray right where I intend to walk). You can wear whatever combination of clothing, charms, symbols and paraphernalia you want – as long as (and here’s the important bit) it doesn’t break the rules.
Oyster Fail
Jan0
Today, as some of you may know, I am in London with Claire to have a bit of a break, a bit of culture and a bit of musical. Like all good travellers we came prepared – rail tickets booked in advance, hotel reserved, how to get around the tube worked out and a topup for our Oyster cards waiting for us at King’s Cross.
So when our train pulled up at King’s Cross (East Coast first class, nice complimentary tea and coffee) we duly meandered to the Underground station, only to find that since our last visit it had moved. Northern line now exclusively departed from a brand new and very shiny ticket hall. Since our Oyster topups were nominated to be waiting at the Northern/Victoria/Picadilly barrier I smartly swiped my card at the new barriers and walked through. Claire, on the other hand, was stuck. No topup waiting and not enough balance to get through the barrier. Oops.
I then had to touch back out at the same station (incurring a “WTF are you doing?” charge) whilst we sorted the mess out. Gate assistance staff told us to speak to the ticket office, who then gave us some weird advice. Apparently our topup for Northern/Victoria/Picadilly was waiting at the other (older) barriers from which we couldn’t get to the Northern line we so desired. The solution was for us to walk to the barriers at the other end of the station, explain to the gate staff what was going on, touch in (beginning Claire’s journey and acquiring the topup) then walk back and get the gate staff to just whisk us through without touching again.
Fortunately, before being whisked through the barrier I was smart enough to check with the ticket office about the state of my in/out at the same barrier, and the nice man removed my stray transaction so I was back to my original balance with no journeys in progress. As a result of this I got a receipt detailing my £9.50 balance. “Odd”, I thought. “I had £9.50 before, and should have a £10 topup on top of that. Balls”.
It transpired that my topup wasn’t on the Northern/Victoria/Picadilly barrier at King’s Cross, but like Claire’s was on the Northern/Victoria/Picadilly barrier at King’s Cross. Another yomp across the station, explain it to the guards, touch in (we are now both touched in at King’s Cross) and yomp back so we could be waved through sans-touch and get underway.
Apparently this is a recurring issue caused by the new barriers being confused. Annoyingly there is no indication of a problem with the topup not being at the barrier you may expect unless you either a) don’t have enough credit on your card to begin a journey; or b) pay close attention to what the gate tells you about your balance as you rush past. If Claire’s card hadn’t failed to work then we would both have been on our way without our topups, leading to calamity later in the trip.
Move Over Warcraft…
Jan3
It looks like World of Warcraft’s reign as the definitive MMO is on the way out. Just check out the trailer and you’ll see what I mean. I might even pay for a subscription to this one.
My inner child is screaming at me to get this the very moment that preordering is available – I just hope they have cross-platform compatibility (OS X version please).
In other news, I’m having all kinds of trouble repartitioning my hard disk to install Windows 7 as my Boot Camp OS. I’ve decided to migrate from Windows XP after many years of faithful service, simply because it needed formatting and Windows 7 is just as good (and infinitely better than Vista). I might be due a proper defragment and try again.
Maybe China Have It Right?
Dec0
Has anybody stopped to consider that maybe China have the right approach in executing a man who was found entering the country with 4kg of heroin? He broke the law, he must suffer the consequences. If anybody involved in the case thought he was suffering from a mental illness which clouded his judgement or made him susceptible to carrying something through for someone else then they should have brought some evidence to the case
The Great Email Migration
Nov0
After much deliberation and scratching of my beard, I’ve decided to move all my personal email to Google Apps. No particularly exciting reason except that it gives me better server-side spam filtering and faster webmail access. Now all I need to do is wait for 8,250 emails to find their way across the ether and enjoy the usual chaos whilst the universe’s DNS updates itself.