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Spore Creature Creator

Despite the hype, I haven't really been able to see what all the fuss is about with the upcoming game Spore. But after sitting down to play with the recently released Creature Creator the other night, I'm beginning to change my mind.

The Creature Creator is the part of Spore that lets you design a creature and see it come to life. There's nothing more to it than that, and I was a bit cynical about EA's decision to release it as a $10 download (although some stores will then give you $10 off the full game when it's released in September). However they've also released a free version (which has fewer bits to build your creature from than the $10 version), and it's that that I was playing with.

I only expected it to occupy me for half an hour or so, but in the end I spent a couple of hours with it, and will probably go back to it again. It was surprisingly fun and addictive playing around with different creature designs, and it's amazing how the game can then animate your creation.

Most cunning of all is how the designs are actually saved in the image of the creature itself. This means you can just save the thumbnail (like the one above) to your desktop, then drag and drop it into the Creature Creator to see it move or use it as the basis for a creature of your own. Clever stuff.

More of my creations here.

Disqus

I'm experimenting with a new commenting system for this blog called Disqus.

It's exactly the kind of thing that I wish I'd had when I was running A Limey In Bermuda. Why?

• You can rate other people's comments (with automatic hiding of comments that score too low).
• You can edit your own comments after posting them.
• You can add a gravatar (a picture) to all your comments, to make it easier for people to recognise you.
• You can keep track of all the comments you have left on this site (and any others that use Disqus) in a single place.
• I can provide per-comment RSS feeds.
• I can display comments in threads, to make conversations easier to follow.
• You and I can both reply to comments on our content via email, and have those replies appear as comments on the site.

And a whole bunch of other great stuff besides. It even made me briefly think about restarting LiB, with comments, just so I could use it in anger!

The main downside seems to be that Disqus comments are not indexed by Google et al, so you can't use the site search to find them.

Let me know what you think.

Aidan goes to school

Aidan went to nursery school for the first time yesterday.

He's not due to start for real until September, but the school suggested that we might want to send him there for a few hours a week this summer to help him adjust. We debated about whether he was too young (he's only 21 months now and will only just be turning two in September), but in the end decided to go with what most other people we know are doing. Our hope is that it will help to develop his social and language skills, as well as giving granny and pop a break from babysitting duties.

We decided it would be best to break him in gently, so mummy dropped him off at 9am and granny and pop went to pick him up at 10.30am. I thought he'd probably cry a lot to start with, but then be distracted by whatever activities they had the kids doing. Wrong. Apparently he screamed for pretty much the whole ninety minutes.

When I first heard this, my initial reaction was annoyance that the school hadn't called us to come and get him. But apparently Aidan's behaviour was relatively normal. That said, the person who runs the school said she could only remember one child who was worse than Aidan on his first day.

Fortunately, today was a little better. Aidan cried a bit, but it wasn't as bad as yesterday. We're just keeping our fingers crossed that tomorrow will be better still as one of Aidan's friends will be there then too, and hopefully he'll get some reassurance from that.

Jesus Christ

Now some people are comparing Premier Ewart Brown to Jesus.

Well, here's another Biblical reference for you:

"Hear this, you stupid and senseless people! You have eyes, but you cannot see. You have ears, but you cannot hear." Jeremiah 5:21

My dad, my hero

"Just retrieved all your old Lego from the loft – see attached pictures.

Amazed ourselves with how much stuff you had and as you can see, still with some of the original boxes. Also with all of the instruction leaflets and booklets as well. The assembled pieces are just as you abandoned them, when you were about 10, for the computer! We even found an astronaut on a digger!

Hope this will have made your day. But to ship this lot to Bermuda would cost a fortune!!!

Dad"

Alas, I think he's probably right. Guess I'll just have to take a large, empty suitcase with me next time I go to the UK.

More pictures here. Thanks for digging it all out, dad!

Lego nostalgia

This is absolutely awesome.

I almost cried when I saw the Lego Galaxy Explorer again. It was my favourite Lego model when I was a kid, along with the Space Cruiser, Starfleet Voyager (so that's where they got the name from!), Mobile Rocket Transport, Alpha-1 Rocket Base and all the rest of the Lego Space stuff.

Don't suppose you've still got them up in the roof, do you, dad?

Tim Unwise

After reading the interview with American race "expert" Tim Wise in Friday's Mid Ocean News, I have completely lost all respect I previously had for him.

Two passages stood out. First, his response when asked if there could be racism against white people in Bermuda:

"I definitely don't think it's happening here... Real racism, in order to be effective, has to actually oppress people. We know what anti-black racism did. Here, in Bermuda, there is nothing that (Mr.) Scott or (Premier Ewart) Brown could do. Let's just say they absolutely hated white people - I find that to be a fanciful, almost absurd characterisation but I know many whites believe it - what could they do? This is a country that's entirely dependent on foreign dollars and tourist dollars for its economic vitality and those are dollars that are mostly invested and spent by white people. So they could absolutely detest white people and there's almost nothing they can do to them. It doesn't make it right for them to hold a prejudice, it doesn't make it okay or fair, but really what it comes down to is Scott and Brown and members of the PLP, their only power is they can hurt white people's feelings."

The Government of Bermuda has no power? Yeah, whatever you say, Tim. Tell that to the chef who was summarily deported for making a joke about the Premier. It might not have been racially motivated, but it was a clear demonstration of the power the Government has and is unafraid to wield, without any recourse to due process.

And outside Government, what about black landlords and employers? Do they have no power to choose their tenants and employees, should they so wish, on the basis of their race? How can you be so sure racism against white people cannot be happening here?

Second, his response when asked if he thought every white person here was rich.

"Absolutely not. But the reality is the white people who aren't rich - is their mortgage in the hands of a black banker? Is their job in the hands of a black employer? Is their child's education in the hands of a black teacher? If so, then at least theoretically they could have a point although we'd still have to excavate the practicality."

Er, actually, yes they are, and your caveat makes no sense. Do you know anything about Bermuda?

It's comments like these that have, over the years, caused me to lose any interest I once had in taking an active role in the fight against racism. By legitimising feelings of victimhood in some members of the black population, people like Tim Wise and the guilt-ridden appeasers at CURB are only making the problem worse.

(Misplaced) Enthusiasm

One of Aidan's most endearing features right now is the enthusiasm with which he often responds to simple questions.

"Would you like some toast?" we'll ask.

"Yes pleeeeease!" he'll reply, as if you'd just asked him whether he'd like to have a million dollars' worth of Tonka trucks.

It never fails to raise a smile in me. It's even funnier when it's completely inappropriate.

The other morning Aidan stubbed his toe while opening mummy's wardrobe door. His face wrinkled up.

"You're fine!" we breezily reassured, operating under the principle that kids are often more upset by the worry in their parents' faces than by any pain they're feeling.

Unimpressed, Aidan started to wail. Time to go to stage two.

"Did you hurt your toe? Would you like us to cut it off?" we asked.

The sniffles subsided. "Yes pleeeeease!"

The Pyro is a Bermudian

While debate continues about whether Team Fortress 2's Pyro is a man or a woman, with him set to receive a new weapon called the Axtinguisher later this week, there can no longer be any doubt about his nationality.

Making progress

Made quite a bit of progress in GTA IV yesterday, getting another 10% or so further through the game. I reckon I've got about the same to go again before finishing the main story, after which I'll probably leave it and go play something else. Compulsive completer-finisher I may be, but there are just too many other games out there vying for my attention now.

Yesterday aside, I've now spent the last eight days writing my program for Mandy. In that time I've only left the house three times, and never ventured further than Ferry Reach. Starting at 9am and working until 11pm most days, I've been working harder than I do when I'm at work.

I've made good progress, but there remains a lot to do. It's proven to be a much more complicated piece of software than the inventory management system I wrote for Godet & Young, and I think I underestimated the amount of work involved. I've learned a fair bit about data binding in .NET and SQL Server Reporting Services in the process, though. The data binding stuff has proved considerably trickier than Microsoft make it out to be in their introductory videos, and I've run into several problems that I've struggled (and in some cases, am still struggling) to fix. I'm now going to have to work evenings and weekends to finish it.

As usual when developing, I've been doing a lot of swearing, but overall I've been feeling less stressed than I normally get at work. I think that's because at home I have at least been able to work uninterrupted, whereas at work I'm constantly getting emails and phone calls from people who need me to do stuff for them, which makes getting into a state of flow almost impossible. It's times like this when I appreciate the advantages an office with a door has over open plan.