John's Essays

Linux as a Word Cloud

2008-07-05T23:51:00.004+01:00

Discovered a really sweet site by the name of Wordle yesterday, via Shawn Blanc. Experiences with Linux and the free-as-in scene came to mind…

Counting Open Palms

2008-06-24T22:40:00.003+01:00

Just wondering what happens if despite it all Mugabe still loses the runoff. Might may well be right when you are a shameless dictator, but he was beaten once already. I'm not saying it's the likeliest outcome, but let's keep an eye on what the troubled Zimbabwean voters say. It would have been a whole lot easier to just fake a result last time round without bothering with the crass coverup which ensued. Something's still independent in that state; if embattled.

Let's just say I don't expect a 2003 style 100.0% YES for Saddam, while the dust-clouds of invasion grew.

Evil Empires

2008-06-16T22:05:00.008+01:00

Civilization

Once upon a time, I really used to love Civilization. I got hold of the first one a few years after its release on some borrowed floppies which featured the game along with other dusty DOS titles such as Elite. Never did bother playing the others much at all. Soon enough I picked up my own legitimate copy on a still newfangled-seeming CD-ROM, and read the hefty instruction manual on a trip along the Firth of Forth the same sunny summer's day. Not the worst travel reading I've had! And it did explain a few hieroglyphs I'd had to guess before.

Civ was great. I loved rewriting history. The screen may have been full of garish green and blue with orange, yellow and white squares on it: but that was the earth itself and the citadels of vying empires. Sure, it wasn't much to look at, even at the time; but as if that counted for anything. Far more important was the concept and indeed the successful implementation of it even on the humble systems of the age. There were keyboard shortcuts for just about anything and fundamentally it was a perfectly playable mouse game. This thing was all about ideas in your head and the simplest means of interacting with them in surprisingly powerful ways.

Civ II came out in 1996 and I "shared" that purchase with a friend. It was easy enough to copy! I remember debating whether to play it in Windows 3.11 or 95, which was what passed for nerd debate at the time. Little did I know I'd still be playing it on Windows XP six or seven years later. It was a solid improvement on the original game, and best of all could behave itself nicely alongside other tasks. The scale of maniacal conquests and modified worlds I got up to with that on my meagre Pentium laptop with 16 MB of RAM still lingers in a long lost gaming corner of my mind. The game's concepts were vast but its demands were simple.

Then I kind of fell out of it. I've not been much of a gamer in this century really full stop. Civ II saw less and less action as the internet grew to become the thing to get on with when nothing else is up. Civ III didn't play nice at all, and I faced a global meltdown experience in Civ IV as the game engine dissolved into a piteous death as I launched World War Three with more nukes and tanks than my enemies had civilians. That forced an end to trying out that game right there. (If it can't handle my play and Civ I and II can what the hell is up?) I played a bit of Battlefield in the years since, but overall gaming just didn't seem to be my thing any more. Not that it's likely gaming's fault. We all change after all.

Revolution

Then, last week, I heard about Civilization Revolution. Tycho's take on it was fairly promising, and a friend who's never been into Civ at any point in the past decided to try it out on his PlayStation 3. I went around on Saturday to see what it was like … and let's say my take-away is a little mixed.

First of all, it's very visibly based on Civ IV. I pulled up a screenshot from my game of that as I'd saved back at the time to show off a mess of enclaves at the imperial fringe, and lo and behold the similarities were as clear as I thought. Fair enough. It only makes sense to reuse what you've got. Indeed, if Revolution had been more like Civ IV (minus the molasses) I'd have been happier…

Alas, it is not.

You seem to be forever zoomed right in. I urged my gaming friend to pull the view back as far as it went, and all that seemed to achieve was a glimpse of the vanishingly small game world. Uh oh. That's not the Civ I played, although I'll admit I'm unlikely a normal Civ player, as if there were such a thing for a game with this kind of vision.

Comically, I mistook the fog of war for a world covering ocean as they seem to have elected to tart up the darkness. Oops! That was a confusing first minute with a lonely settler.

Anyway, I advised him while he played it for several hours. Our Arabian Empire was doing well enough – we'd established the all important self-replicating city factory fairly early on – and the simplified tech tree was quickly being filled. The neighbours didn't like us much though. Indeed, their dazzlingly huge avatars kept barging onto screen (a handy forty-incher 1080p) and had to be silenced after a while … although not turned off per se, as that is impossible. Dang. Soon enough they were making demands at frustrating regularity, confusingly presented demands I must add which both of us had to pause to figure out more than a few times. After being told where to shove these, we had a war on two fronts to deal with. One of those fronts was the lonely city of Berlin, so it was nothing we couldn't handle.

Apparently my friend had gone through an entire game before this without really fighting much. I taught him the classic techniques of churning out mass produced armies and rallying them ready for singular onslaught. This worked against little Berlin, and the Germans could be seen scurrying away in a boat for a new beginning just before we seized their ancestral home. So then eyes were turned north, (only partly ironically) to Spain.

Civ Rev had another card up its sleeve. Fresh from easy victory over Germany, our ever increasing armed forces concentrated on the nearest Spanish town and duly pounded it. But why were we making no progress against its defenders? They didn't even have a city wall to add to their defensive score, unlike that we faced in our siege and then bombardment of Berlin. After losing a great many men (all instantly replaced by the industrial engine back at home) we moved against other Spanish city. Same story. Eventually we worked it out.

They had a wizard.

Civ Rev calls them Great Generals, if I recall. And supposedly their genesis is random. Random … oh bête noire of every strategist! This guy would wave his arms as though casting a spell during every single one of our stream of engagements, and not once did his hit-points fail. He decimated a mighty army many times his defenders' strength. He did so with the unbreakable fantasy-magic of a monumental gaming frustration.

While trying to attack around this fellow, with ever more powerful and bloodthirsty units pouring from our machine of an empire, we made our last discovery. The Spanish launched an attack on our western outpost, our conspicuously well defended outpost I should add. It mattered not. They had another wizard. Pain in the arse! Their victory was instantly ensured. The arm waving spirit summoner led his part time cadre of goat herders through the lakes of blood hitherto known as our comprehensively superior defensive lines. The city was seized, just like clockwork. And we stared into the certain knowledge that fanciful diplomatic capitulation aside, our fate was just as ended as the pitiful Germans we had suffocated an age before. It wouldn't be so horrendous if Spain were our equal. But they were not. We had four times the population and ten times the military might. What abomination! Comic, certainly, but not what you want at the peak of many hours building a meticulous creation, under the now deluded assumption that up is the opposite of down.

Metal Gear Solid 4 was the easiest disc swap away ever at that very moment…

2000 Game Essay

Eight years ago I opened up another old favourite of a game. Word 2000! I cobbled together the following as the record of my ideas for a future title of my own creation. The other night's experience reminded me of the same. Note that avatars are nowhere to be found, nor indeed shrunken miniature game worlds or the recruitment of magic sages. As it happens, a few of my ideas were independently implemented in the Civ's then yet to be. Congratulations on that. But as for the rest … ah, but to figure out how to do it and to craft the art and code. That kind of magic I can agree with.

So here it is. I leave with a blog post from before the word had been coined and free hosts like this invented…

Game – something to do with Civilization, but naturally a whole lot better.

It is a world control game where the player takes charge of one of the earth’s nations. They will have the same controls as a civilisation participant but with more depth especially inside the cities and the manners of ruling the population. In particular the game is concerned with a much larger world where instead of the civ seven powers there will be a hundred or somewhere around that area. These individual groups over time will find themselves consolidated down into a smaller number as invasions and conquests occur, but their identities shall remain in the people who live there. As the Scots may be taken over by the English the people in Scotland wont turn directly into English (or British) folk. The region after conquest would be more difficult to manage than the home part of the country where the cities have been formed and brought up under the same leadership. Conquered places are instead well aware of the fact, and keeping the population happy – and out of revolution requires more resources to be used up and other control techniques like occupying armies and the use of colonising settlers. Changing the system and layout of government (as the eventual need for democracy takes over) is also at the player’s disposal. Devolution of power, federalism, even socialism and communism are there as options. Elections and keeping the majority of people in your favour, if not just outside of actually doing anything against you, will be of increasing importance in the game: much as the overall progression of the player’s role changes from being a King into being a politician. I intend to draw up full rules for these eventualities – along with the whole array of possibilities depending on all of the circumstances. For example the difference between European colonisation of Africa and North America: in Africa the indigeonous peoples eventually recovered their independence (along with the many conflicts and crises that arose through this complex process and past) and the settlers that had moved there found themselves out of power and in a very minority position; in North America however the native peoples were swamped in population by the huge influx of european settlement and never found the opportunity to revolt or to re-gain power, instead the settlers took arms against their distant rulers and established their own power and dominance in number.

The key game concepts are as follows:
Cities / centres of population are the fundaments of each civilisation. Much as in Civilisation the cities grow and are the sources of the cash, production and the population of all involved. The game logic is carried out on a city by city basis. But I intend to have their population and social makeup calculated much more concentratedly, while also liberalising the acquisition of natural resources constraints and concepts so important and consuming of the time of a player in civ. Cities will have effects on a greater area around them – determined more by the presence of foreign neighbours or forces and the shape of the terrain than by the simple 2 city squares radius of civ. A city holds domain over the lands and further towns and farmland around it, these needn’t be constantly the business of the player but an automatic progress for each city. Production of food can be carried out at different locations to the populations needing it. Large cities can expand to a new level by the connurbation of the areas aroud them leading to metropolis cities like New York and Tokyo. The player will have optional and necessary input at various stages in this path – escpecially when the largest cities first become that and so need fully fledged transport systems to where the raw materials they need are supplied. (Inner city construction and development may be a matter for the player. Whether this is done on a civ style “x needs an aqueduct” manner or on a visual city by city one is also a matter I’m yet to solve. Perhaps the player may only need to deal with the condition of their own city – the capital. I’m not sure. The game is principally to be a world game than a town one.) Borders also will be more natural than with civ’s 2 squares around a city. Movements of units, fortifications, the natutal objects already forming the landscape, all will play a part – along with treaties where competing leaders can demand far more than money but annexation of other’s countries. The player will also have all these techniques at their disposal.
Spherical world. The game’s planet is a three dimensional sphere and can be viewed zoomed out as such. A square by square arrangement is not what I have in mind, in line with civ and so many games – as this wouldn’t work on a round planet with poles instead of arctic bands. Units have distances they can travel each move accross various different terrains, and have a strike radius where they can attack without necessarily being adjacent to their target. Gunnery will benefit from this, as other more modern weapons. This will necessitate the expansion and defence of a nation’s borders, and also with the resources this will take provide increased incentive for treaties and alliances between opponents, helping with the formation of more complicated world power structures where one nation has less and less chance of being in complete dominance. The units will be 3D models rendered from the correct angle on the sphere with lighting conditions in DirectX. Textures, models, and lighting will be in all one form with 3D hardware acceleration being made use of as the game outside of menus takes place as a scene. The lighting will be a directional beam – like the Sun but not rotating 365 times a turn! The angle of this could be dragged around by the right mouse button or somesuch at the player’s liking. City lighting and volcano effects, perhaps even aurora will be visible at night. The world itsself will be turnable as a need for seeing the far ends of it will come in time with the game, unexplored regions being shaded a blank texture until exploration or the aquisition of maps. Later in the game space exploration and colonisation will require new and parallel planets, the details of which will be dealt with separately. The colour of the Sun light changes with different planets (because of the different systems they would be in, with different stars), a stellar aging aspect could be brought in – but I think not, with the comparitive lengths of civilisations and stars!
Politics. Civ concerns the player mostly in moving units and the manipulation of their cities. Unit by unit movement is not perhaps what I want this game to be mostly about – and the appointment of generals to deal with the exact movements of distant and later units I intend to be an important aspect of the player’s leadership. Each city shall have a political makeup based on the origins of its population (previous owners of the city, settler populations of immigration, colonial population movements), these will be distinguished by the names of the various civilisations present at the beginning of the game.. no groups being allowed to exist without their own civ at one time at least. Then the political opinions the people have – the parties they follow in later democratic times – and the closeness to physical violence and revolution they are at. Pie charts, historic displays and the rest will make these stats graphic to the player. Bitter internal rivalries between different groups instead of toward the central government are to be enabled also – especially for colonial situations with migrant peoples taking over other’s lands. But apart from the civilians the military must too be kept under control. Your own armed forces (and other power’s militaries against them too) have the power to overthrow and temporarily or permanently get rid of you – dependent on how enraged they are and what external repurcussions killing you might have for them. So in other words beware the armies you make, and use them in more ways than just for outsiders. As for external politics this is also an area for much enlargement where world power is a job for much negociation between rival and friendly civilisations; international groups and alliances using this extra weight to their advantage – and with any luck a UN style international body whose status and resources are parts of yet more negociations between the real powers and at various summits. A little more than the global reputation and alliance/peace/cease-fire/war weltpolitik of the civ here, a “Newsnight” stlye game, even with peace processes.
Elections, and a parliament. Part of the politics yes, but also directly part of your government. Each city will have a number of representatives sent to the parliament once elections have been chosen to go ahead by the player. Basically the old model of despotism/monarchy/republic/democracy is the idea, but the player has a much greater say in the exact affairs of all of this, subject of course to the demands and wreckings of the population (and the military / present government and beaurocrats) themselves. Initially the player has total rule – autocratic power. But as the civilisation stretches out and the wealth of the higher citizens grows and the size of the military increases the need for this to change also becomes larger, effected particularly by revolts, local and wider-scale uprisings and by entire military coups. “New civilisations” can form inside current ones as a large enough area sharing a similar population reaches a critical level of disenchantment. These could be limited to already dead civilisations – but with new figureheads. Or alternatively could be seperate and new divisions of the still externally present groups, free to make their own paths if not to seek to join with the previous empire from which they came. Also “new” groups as in the Americans could appear – in this case being a large group of settlers now disenchanted and revolting against their own empire. A checklist of who can turn into what in this regard would be necessary though to prevent the curious events civ used to unleash occasionally when a capital city was overrun and a civilisation split into loyalist and rebel halves, such as the Babylonians splitting into still loyal Babylonians and new rebel Ancient Egyptians. Anyway, elections are the main tactic of coping with this, the exact cities and groups of the population able to vote (and even whether the system is a small choice of PR, PR by national group [Lebanese style], first past the post city by city, region by region or just constituencies inside the towns etc.) and of the number each city gets allocated – all to aid with staying comfortably in power. Complicated scenarios of knowledgeable voters, political scandals, army demands and war politics should ensue, with the occasional user glance to the all important polls to make sure they’ll still be in charge next turn. Because periods of opposition could happen – and whatever in the way of wrecked alliances and schemes the computer government would then get up to. (Quite possibly a limit to the length of opposition time would be required, to save centuries or eternities out in the cold.. this is a game of course! Coallitions could guard against this kind of thing, or be the norm under PR. But keeping partners diminishes power and causes all manner of trouble of its own. The exact depth of this aspect of the game is up for debate I’d imagine!)
Year of The Game. Time starts at year 1 and increments by 1 each turn. No silly scaling to a Civ timeline... and no fixed endgame. For fully functioning scenarios such as epoch 1700, 1945, 2000 etc the year could be set to another value for the game entry. But a one year increment is what I want.
Names. More than just the leaders of the sides having names I want for there to be a whole bunch of historic names buried in there somewhere. Such as opponents lurking in your own civilisation ready to take control against you, revolutionary types most likely to lead native and colonial uprisings, and philosophers and scientists occasionally opening up new areas. Each leader (and perhaps a group of the other named individuals at any one point) will have a long formal version of their title where every territory of note they hold (and the odd disputed zone) is listed grouped into particular titles, such as: “x Emperor of Europe and North America, King of South Africa, Lord of the Carribean and the Arabian Gulf” etc etc. But in actual fact far more particular and finnicky land and sea names than that.. as to be mentioned next.
A named world. For each world – but principally of course the starting one, most usually Earth – the player will find that the lands they explore and the seas they cross have names appear to describe them that have already been placed in at the design (or “cunningly” in a random world). Islands, deserts, mountain ranges, hill chains, rivers, great lakes, seas, volcanos (might not be known to be such until first observed erruption!) continents and oceans will have names enough to give the world a reasonable level of name detail for its size. They are free to change these but may find the other people there not so quick to adopt their latest whims. The same idea applies for revolution and recaptured cities – whose original names most likely will reappear (or new ones arise paricularly with communist uprisings like “Leningrad”), whatever the player likes of this. Of course one problem posed by this is that of name placing when the edge of something is just coming into view. Oceans for example would be given away by a sign such as “Pacific Ocean” appearing just off the coast. And having the size of signs to match the importance and size of what they are describing adds to this with big signs saying the most important things and early stumbling into these would yield an advantage. Some level of relevant hiding rules should do the job though – as such an advantage would be a pleasing extra reward for the bother of having set out to explore in the first place!

Individual Details:
Leaders are people. Have names, personalities, and mortality and so can be executed or taken out by special forces operations and wars. Rivals, usurpers and revolutionaries have the same characteristics, the details contained inside these of course differing between individuals. Terrorists can cause all sorts of trouble. There is the possibility of the player actually being killed.
The population is divided. Elections and uprisings and unemployment and rights marches have their implications. The people must be placated. And the situation observed over large distances and great divides. Winning a war and having an official end to hostilities may well be popular amongst the home population and ease political pressures there – but the treatment of foreign powers in the new order will have direct implications on the populations of these living under your control.
What effects the player must also effect their adversaries. The computer players wont have advantages and simplicities over the human, but must make their own moves in the same way. The details of this may be tricky, but it is something I want.
The world has many many more civilisations, whose descendants remain separate from their conquerors even long after the civilisation itsself is dead. (In cases like the Americans – new ‘civs’ can form and from varied bases, and long long extinct civs peoples’ re-emerging can have different names. It is just the idea of multiplicity that is important and the differences that remain between people in the game.)
The world is far far larger. And is a notable sphere. Piece movements will have to be more diverse than as a grid, and the whole thing rendered in 3D.
Places are named; islands rivers mountains continents etc. The names may be changed but to avoid Scott-isation the other peoples wont listen to these.
Battles and official Wars and Treaties are named. Summits may be held between many parties to discuss and resolve international disputes – especially when leading up to and after wars. Names (the city of the meeting, or the site of the battle or province being taken) and dates (in game years) are noted and can be looked up along with the military information on each such attack and the movements of people.
Time is expressed in “Year of the Game”. One turn = One year. No allowing for faster modern events. Just nice linearity. Game starts at Year 1. But scenarios can have an offset, and perhaps a multiple. Maybe in ‘Active’ times such as huge ground wars the turns can be packed in to a smaller number of years. But I don’t want excessive ‘End of Turn’-ing, and the boredom of the Civ loop that often occurs.

Snowed Over

2008-06-12T22:24:00.003+01:00

Right, well … I was wrong and right. Usual story. If it weren't for a MacBook Pro pipe-dream, we'd have even had a bingo. As it transpired: this was another Stevenote all about iPhone. Notice a trend?

The $199 iPhone 3G is a big deal so I can forgive that. It's even a £99 =~ $199 in Britain kind of deal, which is quite something. I've got a little something underway of my own in that regard, so actually my interests were well catered to. Except for one.

Cue RoughlyDrafted.

That sounds just the type of Grand Central I could really like. Where on Earth do you think we could be headed with all of this? My bet is on spectacular success on both fronts, but then I would say that…

Mandatory Stevenote Prematch Prognostication

2008-06-09T17:44:00.002+01:00

10.6

I'm not at all sure what to make of these rumours about Snow Leopard. Something about it doesn't sound right to me. It's not the little funeral for PowerPC, or even the curious ramblings about it being 64 bit Intel only*.

Rather: why advertise a release whose raison d'être is to fix mistakes? It sounds all too Microsoft to me, as in a service pack. Indeed, could it be that some folk are believing that Leopard is the New Vista? Give me a break.

(*I upgraded my Mac mini to a Merom Core2 some time ago. It always seemed odd that the first Intel Macs were 32 bit, especially when the iMac moved from 64 bit G5 to the new 32 bit Core Duo chip. Thankfully, the speed improvements weren't at all overstated and the new machines have all been greatly superior. But I made sure to grab the appropriate 64 bit upgrade for my old mini just as Intel were putting them out of production. It seemed to me to be something with implications rather further out than 10.6 already. I still doubt there's sensible argument to strike at all the Macs from most of 2006 with such an arcane distinction as far as customers are concerned.)

Carbon's demise seems greatly exaggerated too, though the kernel of a valid rumour seems to be there … albeit misinterpreted.

My prediction: 10.6 is talked about, graphically demoed perhaps, and the iPhone and Mac presented as one and the same thing moving together. Cocoa will overcome! But I don't think most of the buzz at the moment is accurate, not to mention the Mac clone thing!

January seems a bit of a rush too. Oh, and what's all this nonsense about 10.6 and 10.5 being parallel? I'd need Steve to hypnotise me as to the benefits of that one all right…

3G iPhone

Yes, obviously. Several models? Perhaps. Certainly, the platform thing will be key to all of this. Mac and iPhone, iPhone and Mac. That's my expectation.

New Mac hardware?

About as likely as new displays! Actually, maybe not that bad. But Intel's summer delay in Nehalem is a pain and likely to push things out a bit. Still, at least they'll be spectacular machines from the benchmarks I've seen. Might have to get one myself if PowerPC is going out of fashion as fast as it seems.

Right, well, I'd better watch the keynote!

Yesterday's News

2008-06-04T19:20:00.004+01:00

As everyone, everywhere, including those who actively do not care, know: Obama won the nomination last night.

Congratulations.

Hillary's not giving up though. It's just as I predicted with an hour still to go on Twitter:

Tonight's Hillary prediction: she still won't quit. She doesn't know how. It's going to take a Brutus.

Brutus? Bill? We’ll see. The shouts of “Denver! Denver! Denver!” were audible during her non-concession speech last night, before a too-homely-for-Obama crowd of defiantly hysterical supporters. I doubt there’d be much of a travelling party left with her come Denver in distant August, after a summer of full campaigning for the big boys and the oblivion the media will gift her once this week is done. Oh sure: it’s in some interests to keep her ghost around, haunting the golden one. But even while objectivity, verifiability, honesty and sanity are all out of vogue as ever among the press; a higher rule still stands that yesterday’s news is yesterday’s news. Americans hate losers. I think even though she has dark plans to steal whatever she can get – for concession is very likely death to part of her group’s collective mind – it will quickly cease to matter. Just as counting the last vote is always forgotten weeks after the event is done in American politics, she will be tarred with that very worst thing: passé.

There won't even be coverage of what happens once she again fails to offer Obama her concession this week. Just a little stir at the farce which will be her lot at the convention, smaller than it is now, especially among the supers. They have careers to protect.

John Edwards' strategy isn't looking too bad right now. Strange that early failure is sometimes better than lengthy closeness to success.

Apple ♥ Montenegro

2008-06-02T16:39:00.003+01:00

Gruber, the Daring Fireball, has been following the latest rumour just in time for WWDC:

New top-level domain (ostensibly from Montenegro). Apple has filed for “apple.me”, “ipod.me”, “itunes.me”, and, I presume, others. These domains are open for anyone to register starting June 6, but the actual .me top-level domain doesn’t go live until July 17. I think it’s merely a coincidence that this TLD is going live right around the same time that it appears Apple is set to launch a service called Mobile Me.

Could "me" be the new "i"?

Certainly, .me is a catchier domain than .tv or .nu or the other handful which have cropped up from some of the world's more obscure locales. And anything beats .uk to be honest, perhaps even super rare .gb … but I digress. If .Mac gets reborn into a service which actually really works, I think it could be very interesting. If it's a free one or fairly enough priced, then it'll be enough to make me try it. I've not as much as even tried the 60 day trial of .Mac in the five years I've been on the platform; knowing I'd merely miss it as soon as it was gone.

Google have proven what power there is there. Podgorica, count me in.

Out of the Archive

2008-06-02T01:07:00.002+01:00

Happened into this old prediction while searching for something else in my diaries. It's from Tuesday, 31st May 2005:

As for politics, there’s been a big story. The French referendum on the EU constitution came out a pretty clear “non”. Already Raffarin has lost his job to everyone who can remember the UN antics before the Iraq war’s favourite, Dominique de Villepan. As for Chirac, he’ll probably be alright – being able to sack your Prime Minister is a pretty neat trick to be able to pull at times like these – though it’ll probably ensure this is his last term now. Interesting that de Villepan has never stood for elected office and yet has been Foreign Minister, Home Minister and now Prime Minister of France! Wonder when we’ll have someone like that pop out of our unwritten constitution? As for politics domestic, this puts more pressure on the already active “Blair’s time has come” campaign, popular among the press. He should never have announced his future resignation the fool … kicking issues you don’t like into the long grass is all fine and well, as long as your contempt for democracy is strong enough, but kicking oneself there is purely stupid! Supposedly it was widely expected that Blair, desperate to win a reputation for himself in retirement other than Iraq, was hell-bent on leading his last charge into posterity by taking Europe by the horns and actually trying to win that vote he’d promised next spring. Some hope. Even a sturdy kicking, as can only be expected, was to have been his valiant swan song. But now … well, after the little holiday this week, the gloves may be off. Unless we’re given a renewed promise, like the other EU countries yet to hold their referenda, that the climax to his ‘masochism strategy’ is still on, then what’s to hold Brown’s lot back now?

Other, that is, than their leader’s fatal flaw, his lack of killer instinct!

Actually, Brown is an interesting enough character to have many notable flaws. And his premiership will be a troubled one, when it comes. But I’m given to thinking that day will not be too soon. Blair can say “stuff it, we’ve nothing to vote on now” and there will be no coup. Just as the junior partner in their coalition (1994 to this day, and running) called off his dogs of Stop the War and let Blair have his victory in 2003 which has caused them all so much trouble. It could have been explained as a “let him have enough to hang himself”, but it’s not exactly paid off. If Blair keeps to his word – not 100% certain anyway I’ll have you know – and Brown is dumped in the deep of it at the time Blair’s hinted he has marked out, spring 2009, then Labour can be expected to have a rough 12 months or less in office before a taxing election indeed. In Scotland, where they least need it, they’ll get a lot of votes back. People here are suckers for a Scottish candidate, just look at the Lib Dems rise after Paddy Ashdown went for Charles Kennedy. But in England, in London and Birmingham and all the places that actually count for shit, well … Brown will have a fight on his hands indeed. Think 1992 and John Major. Only, without a recent popular war in Iraq from which to parade from the gun tower.

It’s not that I don’t like Gordon Brown. I’m just critical of his personal presentation and charismatic abilities compared to Tony “second coming” Blair. That, and I don’t exactly like the Labour party or believe in social democracy. For his pains, he made the wrong decision that evening in a fancy restaurant with his hitherto junior ally. You should never be sold on promises that big where you, of course, are to go second and not first. Whether you even trust them or not, it’s just madness to think you’ll ever get your turn when there’s little matters like general elections at stake. And then to have done it apparently without a pre-arranged handover date! He’s coming from a bad position. And I foresee trouble for him. Make it double if the tories, sometime this year, pick the competent, charismatic and sellable candidate they’ve long been looking for, after years of trying!

Hot damn, was I right. It's good to know I can call them every once in a while.

Perhaps that's why the air of change in politics on both sides of the Atlantic at the moment feels so good: because only three years ago it was still the thick of the old days. The eternal Blair was still in charge – and had another two years to go – Michael "Something of the Night about him" Howard was the opposition's man, and Barack Obama was only known over here to the kind of politics junkies who stayed up to see the Democratic convention a summer earlier. Guess who!?

The particular political matter of the day I started up about is quite forgotten now of course. European treaties are the stuff of yawns the continent finds itself truly united by. "No constitution please, we're British!" And of course Blair went down as a four letter word for the history books, just like his gifted predecessor and fellow Anthony: Eden.

The latter's career path reminds me more of the current prime minister, in that both served much longer as the eminent heir than the time they finally did get to hold the top job. But one particularly glaring exception is that Eden called a snap general election once his old man retired, and won it.

It's Callaghan which comes to mind with the polls the way they are now. The caretaker who could have won his own term if he'd only struck when time was right. And the poor bastard who's in for a hammering the night before the removal van turns up, to leave political life to the knowledge that some just don't ever win elections.

Two years. Tick tock…

Objective Spring

2008-05-29T12:24:00.004+01:00

The arrival of a certain book has been keeping me busy. It's good to be getting a grip on the long postponed ambition at last. The sixth iPhone SDK downloads in the background too, indicating my intent.

Meanwhile though I should note that it's spring at last in Edinburgh. In truth it came a few weeks ago, and has crept back again today after mists and rain and all the rest. There's something about summers – more even than my allergies now ramped back up again – which I was reminded of when I found this article in the New York Times today. Interesting stuff for the politico-historians among us, especially those not even born until a decade later.

Roger Cohen's right about the chaos of ideals. Something certainly changed in the 1960's and remains so to this day; only it seemed to escape absolutely anyone's guess at the time. Also, I should point out that in my view similar things have happened several times before. The reaction – at last – to the Iraq fiasco bears great similarities with earlier American wars, and I doubt the veracity of the notion that the Cold War bore too much in common with the hottest war in history which led to it in the first place. I suspect the lessons we'll see made true again will be from different ages, intermixed. There's no doubting however that it will certainly be interesting.

When I was an impressionable and idealistic teen myself, I read and watched a lot about the supposed miracles of the sixties. Suiting my personality, the affair was actually courtesy of Hunter S. Thompson! Instead of believing too many song lyrics or the furthest reaches of idealistic old films – yet alone in the present day dross still murmured about Cuba – the good doctor's drug addled expeditions were what chimed true for me. Human nature has a habit of denying our equally natural dreams from coming anywhere near to fruition. Communism, revolution, free love (as in beer or in speech!?), and even the preoccupation with nuclear genocide … all have fizzled away back into the fantasies from which they came. Looking back on it, craning your neck to avoid the worst excesses of every involved party, you can't help but see the beauty in failed ideals. That history is littered with them is one of the lessons only age seems to bring to the mind who form them in the first place.

A blue sky gestures me to get on my bike. That I shall. Bearing in mind that it's only when we've made our mistakes we really get to learn!

Apples and Oranges

2008-05-14T14:27:00.003+01:00

John Gruber dismisses the old Apple Adobe merger idea. Reasonable stuff. I stroked my chin and wondered something different a month ago, but even Microsoft's lurching gambit has evaporated in the meantime. The spring's couple was instead Apple and PA Semi, a deal whose consequences are no less than intriguing.

I'm more confident about this one!

Tail End of an Angry Dog

2008-05-07T14:45:00.003+01:00

All right, so perhaps there is something about where this campaign's been going of late as identified by Fake Steve:

I guess I never realized this. But 80% of the people I talked to today I'm sure do not read a newspaper on a regular basis. Furthermore, many of them could not read a newspaper and comprehend the meaning of the stories. I don't mean that they're illiterate. They could probably read most of the words, as long as they didn't have more than three syllables. What I mean is they could not really understand what the stories mean. Also, I doubt most of them could focus long enough to finish an entire newspaper article.

And yet they vote. This terrifies me.

Actually, it's a view of middle America sadly popular over here in gleefully condescending Europe too, and although amusing it hardly rings as definitive. Instead, I'll turn to another liberal doyenne whose metaphor seems a touch more haunting:

It’s hard to believe that this Hillary is the same Wellesley girl who said she yearned for a more “ecstatic and penetrating mode of living.” What would that young Hillary — who volunteered on Gene McCarthy’s anti-war campaign; who cried the day Martin Luther King Jr. was killed; who referred to some of her “smorgasbord of personalities” in a 1967 letter to a friend as an “alienated academic,” and an “involved pseudo-hippie”; who once returned a bottle of perfume after feeling guilty about the poverty around her — think of this shape-shifting, cynical Hillary?

She’s so at odds with who she used to be, even in the Senate, that if she were to get elected, who would voters be electing?

Obama is like her idealistic, somewhat naïve self before the world launched 1,000 attacks against her, turning her into the hard-bitten, driven politician who has launched 1,000 attacks against Obama.

As she makes a last frenzied and likely futile attempt to crush the butterfly, it’s as though she’s crushing the remnants of her own girlish innocence.

As for my own reaction to Indiana and North Carolina last night – or indeed the next morning over here – it's at least something Clinton didn't win them both. Ever since her resurgence in Ohio and into Pennsylvania I've been getting a bad feeling about this. Let's hope I'm wrong again!

It's just painfully obvious that all she needs to win is a single vote: Barack Obama's concession. The convention is still so long away and the race, no matter what now, helplessly deadlocked. Clinton's shown all the merciless determination. Worse yet, my gut feeling is that she'd be continuity president even above the overlooked recurring Republican rebel McCain.

Bloody Hell Boris

2008-05-03T22:40:00.002+01:00

All right, so I was wrong. Phew.

Looking at the figures though, I was on to something. It did indeed go to a second round; and Boris got less transfers than Ken Livingstone. Fortunately it was still fairly close (48% to 52% by my numbers) and far too little to overturn his widely expected first round lead.

One of the BBC's better analysts, Nick Robinson, has an interesting take on Boris's victory.

I agree that this is a huge test for the Tories. Fascinating that it should be via their well known outlier, right in the media's very den. It's being said a lot at the moment that David Cameron may come to rue this particular success; I doubt that myself. People underestimate Boris. I think this could prove to be brilliant.

Certainly, the biggest political schism in terms of image and supposed clout, is now plain to see in Gordon Brown versus Boris Johnson. I just so happen to think that Boris's style and defiantly odd empathic talent will outshine and out-manoeuvre old Gordon in dramatic and even mythic terms the media won't be able to resist. One bites his lip and tries to usher public opinion about as though his pent-up anger weren't writhing in every motion. The other apparently bumbles on, ineffably affable, as though put there just to taunt him. Cameron may just have had his most effective lieutenant placed into position.

Now: is it Boris's dad who wins the by-election?

I've Got a Bad Feeling About This…

2008-05-01T21:05:00.005+01:00

The polls close in the hour.

Not here, north of the border, but down in some of England and London in particular. The new yet old Prime Minister faces the usual round of presumed bad results; to be shrugged off by repetitive and disinterested lieutenants in the media tonight and tomorrow. Nothing ever changes there. Add to this however the London mayor election and what was otherwise just a teacup of a contest becomes, by the media's local eye at least, something of a storm.

I don't think Boris will win though.

I'd like him to. I've been voting against Labour (and their Liberal cohorts) for a decade now, ever since I was old enough to vote, and yet so often it's come to naught. Their social democratic whim – albeit sometimes held behind a supposedly Margaret Thatcher shaped fig leaf – went against my principles, and it still does. Their recent shift from governing hegemony to shaky angst, is not alas due to an ideological tide among the public. It's a simple absence of the one thing which made Labour New back in 1997, and which troubled them so once 2003 invited an issue called Iraq to stay. Tony Blair of course. Gordon Brown is no Tony Blair. He's not even the Gordon Brown many of his supporters inside and outside the media had talked up for years to a supposed fever pitch of expectation. Instead, after his first fumble so soon in office, he came across as exactly the grumbling, resentful, inarticulate and indeed stereotypical jealous Scotsman as his enemies had predicted. I never believed the former line of bullshit myself, but even I have been impressed with just how obvious is his fumbling and just how loathing is reaction to all those outside his inner coterie; electorate and all.

But today is no general election. It's just some locals, and a rivalry between Boris Johnson and Ken Livingstone. Indeed, in London: if only it were just that. But as I understand it, there's proportional representation at work again. Howard Dean would be proud.

So, as its close, here's my prediction just before it's too late: Boris will get more votes, but just like Al Gore in 2000 and maybe even Barack Obama in 2008, the other guy will win.

Bloody Liberals.

Jackpot!

2008-04-28T16:24:00.002+01:00

Finally, somewhere good on Princes Street!

Curse You, Speedy Analyst!

2008-04-24T20:44:00.002+01:00

Daniel Eran Dilger prove his prowess yet again today in Why Did Apple Buy PA Semi? Long before I did too. He's pretty much got the important points all covered to head on over to see what I was just about to say about PowerPC v Intel v ARM and all the rest of it; quite likely better stated too.

Like some commenters also wonder: how can someone this on-the-ball be publishing on his own non-commercial site when there's so much guff passing for journalism both online and in old media? I for one am delighted to read his articles whichever way. Sometimes I wonder if some in Apple HQ don't make a point of it too!

videoGaiden do America

2008-04-22T22:03:00.005+01:00

As far as I know, the only place videoGaiden ever aired was in Scotland. And even then, I only noticed it when the Christmas Special just so happened to bring the venerable Dominik Diamond – with appropriate fanfare – to my screen while channel surfing. “What on earth is this?”

Way back in the 1990’s: GamesMaster was teenaged geek’s must see TV. I remember complex discussions the next morning in German class at school about whatever games had been dealt with in the last night’s episode. That must have been 1992! It only seemed natural that gaming deserved its own early evening blockbuster. It had the shelf space at the newsagents, and the cavernous bunkers in the high street record shops, so why not? And yet when the show was finally axed after its seventh season, there would not be a replacement. There still isn’t.

Despite the thriving place gaming has today, you have to go online to see it talked about.

Meanwhile, for the last few years, BBC Scotland – the local division of everyone’s favourite state-run media conglomerate – had been sneakily airing this little gem where I’d never notice it. It wasn’t just me either: you’d be hard pressed to find anyone who’s aware of its existence even in Scotland! The special which I fortuitously saw was itself on at some daft time, and our meeting was pure coincidence. But it didn’t take long at all to realise there was something to this that I liked. Best of all, they keep all their stuff on the website. (If your IP address is in Britain, apparently, or of course YouTube may be able to help.)

Another new fan of the show just so happens to be Stephen, the friend who made last month’s machinima with me. After going through the show’s archives – and its online-only predecessor Consolevania too – we had enough to go on to give The Movies another try. Hunter and Rayorg in particular inspired our little endeavour, if you’d like to check it out.

Do beware though: the in-jokes for those not already familiar with Jeff Gerstmann’s infamous departure from GameSpot (and subsequent project: the Giant Bomb), Rab and Ryan’s games critique style, and said Hunter and Rayorg’s great saga; may prove mildly bewildering. We did though ensure that the Scottish dialect component was up to scratch, so if you can put up with twisted textual swearing: have at it.

A message to BBC Scotland: if you keep us plied with videoGaiden, I can forgive you Newsnight Scotland. Do not try my patience! Perhaps putting it on sometime a little less daft – and maybe advertised before its last / maybe even last ever episode – could help bring in those rare viewers? Just a thought.

Someone Please Give Howard Dean a Wedgie

2008-04-16T17:15:00.005+01:00

As asked rhetorically in the Times:

Whose brilliant idea was it to leave six weeks open before the Pennsylvania primary?

Probably not Dean's personally, but as the genius who drew up the maddening system whereby Clinton and Obama are heading to a knife edged convention irrespective of who actually votes for them … well thanks a lot, Howard. Relentlessly proportional representation sounds good on paper but is one of the best known recipes for a political fudge wherever it's put into practice. John Kerry's deeply faulty coronation so soon in 2004 before Edwards' star had come to shine was wrong as well, but it was a poor lesson to shape the future. 2008 and 2004 are so different politically, yet here we are enduring an overreaction to mistakes long forgotten and even less relevant.

Something due to be knocked out at Denver will be, I sincerely hope, a correction to the primaries. It doesn't have to be a return to the broken dynamic of New Hampshire or Bust, but it sure had better not remain like this. McCain's elegant stroll to a convincing nomination might not be enough all by itself to level up the precarious slope the last national midterms in 2006 exposed under this trailing president; but it's certainly become a factor thanks to the Byzantine procedure still rumbling on far from conclusion among his competitors.

Denver doesn't even happen until late August. What's the betting both candidates are still running by then? What a bitter denouement for what had been until Super Tuesday the most lively and uplifting contest in a generation.

Still, it is of course the stuff of journalistic as well as dramatist's dreams…

And In That Vein

2008-04-14T17:02:00.004+01:00

Looks like a good time to be speculating along the lines I just did. Interesting indeed…

Mergers and Acquisitions

2008-04-12T14:25:00.006+01:00

Adobe is worth $36 billion and change at today's price. Yahoo is pretty similar, boosted of course by recent interest. Adobe's price to earnings ratio is twice as sane as Yahoo's. I wonder why Microsoft are hot on the trail of buying one instead of the other…

All right, I'll admit it: I'm a software guy. I can see a lot more value in companies like Adobe and Autodesk than I can in Yahoo. The former pair turn healthy profits from selling software to industries that they dominate: publishing and graphic design in Adobe's case; 3D modelling, animation and engineering in Autodesk's. They're a pair of little giants compared to the market's valuation of internet firms like Yahoo. If I were in charge of the itchy leviathan of Redmond, I'd be more interested in them than a distant rival to Google, essentially well past its prime.

Of course: I'm overlooking the mess of antitrust consequences too, as I'm not really that committed a Microsoft watcher!

What interests me about Adobe is what they're up to. Everyone knows Flash and Photoshop, and they've taken what they won in eating up Macromedia to the next level with this AIR platform they're weilding, and the much praised Photoshop Express. I'm no fan of proprietary extensions to the web – Flash being the example par excellence. But I can see what they're up to, and recognise it as one way to try to own the future which we all know is coming: where the internet is the platform and whatever way you're getting to it is but a minor detail.

In a way, Adobe are trying very hard to be the new Microsoft. Their web strategy looks a lot better than Microsoft's own, or indeed Yahoo's for whatever precisely that may really be worth. I don't particularly wish them well for it, but I recognise that it's definitely in their interest.

Adobe have been in the news lately because of a nasty surprise coming in their flagship software suite: Create Suite 4. The Windows version will be 64 bit, but the Mac version will not. This comes down to an ancient rivalry regarding Mac OS X. Adobe have stuck with Carbon while Apple have been calling everyone over to Cocoa, and last year's fait accompli at their developer show left Adobe in this particular lurch. Or rather their many professional users on the Mac.

That the two biggest developers for Mac software outside of Apple: Adobe and Microsoft, just so happen to be two competing platform companies – albeit of very different sorts – remains a sore point.

One of the defining changes Steve Jobs brought with him when he returned to Apple a decade ago, was a push to develop platform-critical apps in-house. Open source code and technologies from outside were and are welcome of course – as few things are as destructive as the Not Invented Here syndrome – but when it comes to your platform, you really have to keep the wolves out. Apple's apps dominate the Mac experience now, and keep many a professional served too. There are however a handful of remaining exceptions. Those are owned by Microsoft, Adobe and indeed in the field of animation so well known to Pixar: Autodesk.

The iPhone's continuing snub of Flash and this CS4 / Cocoa affair indicate that not all is well between Apple and Adobe. Microsoft ought to be exacerbating that. Apple, meanwhile, may well just have a skunk works or two busy on competitors to Photoshop and Illustrator.

I'm not one to give stock advice to anyone – especially not now we're in some choppy water – but I've a feeling Adobe and Autodesk are out there to be bought by interests greater than themselves. Bear in mind though that I am but a humble blogger…

The Tech World's Cassandra

2008-04-02T13:37:00.003+01:00

It's articles like this which keep me reading RoughlyDrafted. Daniel Eran Dilger memorably dismissed the Zune just at the peak of its pre-release media hype with as well a reasoned an argument as I've ever heard in future telling. He did it again in the magnum opus Why 2007 Won't Be Like 1995, which I commend to everyone and ask could you have done any better? He’s a top notch tech commentator, and RoughlyDrafted continues to be among my top RSS favourites.

More on this later.

Iraq

2008-03-29T16:17:00.001Z

So, it's five years since the fiasco started.

I was always against invading. It's easy and universally fashionable to say so now, but not entirely uncommon back in 2003 here in Britain either. My opposition was not the typical pacifist stuff; I thought my objection to be far more objective. Naturally. Giving a vile and obdurate dictator a kicking sounds good on paper, but right at the heart of the Middle East? Clearly, this was to be no Falklands. It was the political equivalent of sinking Italian leather shoes into a doorstep gift of flaming excrement. To be blind to this fact beforehand was the worst excess of hubris. That we made an almighty balls up of the occupation thereafter is the very opposite of a surprise.

It'd be good to think that such a woeful mistake will serve a good lesson for the future. That is not however clear. Even if my favoured Obama takes the White House, the long term reaction to this mid-sized cataclysm of an unforced error may well be out of rational control. Vietnam – a war and a failure so very different from Iraq that it's surprising their political overlap seems as substantial as it is – underlay the zero response to the Rwandan cut-throat genocide two decades later, and the humiliating withdrawal from Somalia after some Black Hawks did indeed go down and it was thought better to quit entirely. Somalia today is a much more hateful mess than Lebanon, or even perhaps Iraq … but fortunately for us we just choose not to care, for no discernibly logical reason.

In politics so much can be overreaction to fingers burned in the almost forgotten past. A little moustachioed central European fellow won his rise to the very worst excess of power because of that. Who would war with an irascible but not necessarily unreasonable dictator while the world still mourned its lost sons of 1914? As it turned out: everyone. Just a little too late.

I'm not trying to make any point here about specific conflicts on the horizon, as those we scarcely ever know. I'm certain that the world is a better place today than it was while the Soviet Union existed. But there'll be folly, madness and ludicrous hubris forever more so long as we are alive! There's no such thing as an end to history. Well, that any human will live to glimpse.

A Night at the Machinima

2008-03-09T22:29:00.006Z

Until this weekend I'd never heard of a little game called The Movies. Wikipedia has the details as always, but in short it's a something of a cross between the Sims and Theme Park, at least to my rather outdated feel. There are two games to it: first a build things and train people game like so many before, and second the good part; which is what we spent an evening on.

I was at a friend's who had just recently picked up The Movies on a budget title impulse. He already had a game in progress where he'd been attempting something of a Harry Potter remake, with actors tailored as best as he could approximate them given the game's often clunky tools. Since he already had that progress saved, I asked if we could try making a new feature, borrowing the cast and sets he'd already spent the time constructing.

The concept we settled on was the Hitman. The games have a film noir feel to them, and having seen the limitations of this Movies title, that was pretty much the recipe to escape the worst of those. Dialogue is made a morass of mumbling Simlish, fist-fights and swords are pretty dodgy, cars are very visibly filmed against rolling backdrops, and you've never really quite as much control over the camera or the actors as you'd want. But hey, it's there, and being a challenge it's not without its charm.

What we came up with over the course of four hours then was a dark tale of the solitary assassin, doing his work in a city of eternal darkness and eerie mists. The fellow who had earlier been cast as Harry Potter duly shaved his head and donned the all black suit of an urban professional … albeit with double breasted jacket and a bit more flamboyance than we'd have preferred given a broader wardrobe. The ginger lad was recast as the trigger happy law, which seemed to suit him. While the girl – I'm not a Harry Potter fan myself so I can't ever remember the names – was vamped up something special as the mandatory mysterious woman such movies need just as much as guns and nonchalance. A little far fetched maybe, but I couldn't help from choosing the black afro and Vampira combo!

The story evolved as we were planning the scenes: each of which is a moderately customisable pick from a fairly broad menu for each set. All was going well by the time we'd finished the planning phase, though it was not to last. One thing we'd forgotten was a director! You need one "in game", despite your own essentially directorial control. We nominated an untrained cast member who can be seen as the janitor with broom in the subway. Far more consequential however was our negligence of the extras. We'd been cunningly trimming them from scenes and actions in the planning phase, only to discover with horror when our little sims did the actual filming that at least some of these deleted positions were still there. A ginger haired lass in garish miniskirts was a repeating feature … single-handedly responsible for our deleting the hitman's shots in the car chase sequence as she was inexplicably sitting in the passenger seat for all to see! She also accompanied the cops down the subway stairs, a ludicrous arm waving accomplice as they approached with guns drawn. A final discovery – which had us in stitches when the scene was shooting – was that the female cop was chased against the subway car's door by a Swamp Thing of all the apt bloody luck! Argh! Ed Wood, your genius lives on this game all right.

Post production cured most of the trouble though. In fact this side of the game was better than I was expecting … by then. Your control is a lot more direct, so my able offline editor friend could trim the shots from appalling cheesiness down to their moments of passable drama and symbolism. The music choice and timing was also better than we'd hoped. While the details were being done, I quickly cobbled together a script for the all but silent short's much needed onscreen prose. While the rest of post production may have been about reducing cheesiness, I must admit I did ham it up a bit with some especially literal lines for the old man's sweet early 80's word processor. Indeed, it was the idea behind that computer's appearance which set up the tale in the first place.

I must say we were both quite impressed with how it finally turned out. We had a decent little noir for our evening of battle with the game. Savoured all the more for the knowledge of the horrors we had to cut out! If our virtual studio had been pressing DVD's, the out-takes for this one would be quite special.

If only I'd remembered to change the characters' names to our more fitting "Hitman" and "Vampira". The original idea had been for it to be a presentation by the Rank Xerox Organisation too, but building on another save game's deeds puts an end to that. Back to the very 20th century studio title then. I still remember the shorts we never made…

Anyway, without any further ado: the Hitman.

Leap-Year Time-Warp

2008-02-29T18:36:00.007Z

As observed elsewhere, leap days are decidedly unintuitive things. The fact the world spins through space in arbitrary measure – while we won't stand that sort of thing when it comes to our own precious conceit of time – is swept under the carpet until just these occasions. There are leap seconds too, now that we've become good enough at measuring time mechanically then comparing with the stars. Events can take place in those as well: including births, deaths and every sort of inconveniently significant thing as already transpires through the other forgotten and foolish times we fake daylight savings with. Just don't get me started on that, not while I'm still living in brief sweet GMT.

So, leap, or intercalary days if you like … what about them strikes as noteworthy?

Well, it's just pleasingly absurd to think the last time it was February the 29th we were all back in 2004. John Kerry was already the challenger-apparent for what was set to be an unjustly dull election while Iraq was such a hotbed. Just why primary voters didn't flock to the better natural politician – John Edwards – I don't know. And I'll not pull out a baloney explanation for why conservatives haven't rallied to Mike Huckabee either! My beloved PowerBook wasn't quite a year old and Panther was the new big cat on its hard drive. Ah, Exposé. I'd only persuaded a single switcher back then too. An already ageing Athlon XP handled Battlefield 1942 for me. All right, in glacial John gaming time it wasn't really all that long ago…

Wind back another one, and it was Feb 29, 2000. The Clintons were still lingering in the White House, and Al Gore was already lined up against some wannabe Texan from Connecticut who pounded poor and honest John McCain with three more primary wins that day on his way to the nomination, and – infamously of course – the presidency. I was running Windows 98 on … a several years outdated Pentium 133 laptop and a crotchety 450 MHz K6-II. Was it the retro charm of Grand Prix 2 I was still in to then, or Civilization II? I've really never been cutting edge when it comes to gaming! But I was already used to 24-7 broadband internet by then, only just not at home.

One more back and things really get weird. In 1996 Bill Clinton was at the prime of his pre-Lewinsky charm, set for an all too obvious win, so it wasn't the presidentials which I remember much from that year. I didn't have my very own personal computer yet, it was a shared household 486 in Windows for Workgroups and very often MS-DOS for games and wavetable soundcard hijinks. It wouldn't be until that summer that I read Hunter S. Thompson for the first time, and really woke up to the potential of writing and far flung thoughts. John Major's Tories were still in power in these parts – wildly villified – making me wonder just what was rotten at the core of democracy if this was what people really felt. I remember actually caring about Formula One back in those days, presumably eager to see how the great Gerhard Berger and Jean Alesi would do with the car Michael Schumacher had just won his second championship with before trading teams and places. It turned out the magic was all Schuey. I also vaguely recall David Baddiel splitting with Rob Newman – an absurdist comedy partnership I had liked – and penning one of the more annoying football anthems of all time with Frank Skinner. It didn't come home by the way … that seemed to actually matter back in those days. Meanwhile I read of chopped Harley-Davidsons, played only the finest half dozen costly Super Nintendo cartridges, and occasionally did battle with System 7 … though only on inexplicably archaic Classics.

1992 even sounds like another whole age in history. I didn't even have my SNES until Christmas. Guess my main tech was playing with the night sky on SkyGlobe for DOS on a monochrome 286 Amstrad! You could hear the processor struggling with screen updates, I kid you not. I remember the UK general election, in that the media were appalled with the outcome … but not for another few months back in (my arbitrary hook) February of course! A Clinton succeeded a Bush as we were being reminded until fairly recently as well; some old guy who said to read his lips a lot and had some sort of business with notably poor-marksman "Saddam Insane" from one of those countries that started with "IRA" and had lots of sand. There were Scuds too … and a noticeable atmosphere of propaganda which even my 11 year old self didn't fail to notice while the merry foray went on. All the cockpit footage looked very sci-fi and impressive and all – echoed by a whole era of war games hot on its heels – but there was still death and destruction, right? Why weren't we so bothered when the other guys where getting slaughtered, or that bomb shelter full of kids? Not that I was a pacifist … no, I'd already all the cynicism and intrigue in me to make a full blown politico!

1988 … ring any bells? I can remember teachers and classmates, a friend or two I still have kicking around even now, but nothing really big-picture. Maybe I'd learned BASIC already on the (mysteriously ancient, yet again) TRS-80, Vic-20 and Apple ][ (don't know which one) we had at times at home. Maybe not though. Whenever Woz's one arrived, I must admit that floppy disks seemed so futuristic compared to saving your code to cassette!

1984 … original Macintosh. We had BBC's at school though. Or rather our school had one BBC Micro, and that wasn't necessarily 1984 either. (Like I can be bothered checking their history…) I remember it would show up on a trolley maybe once a term, its armour-clad monitor on top and a reading-glasses-twiddling teacher would open a manual and peck at keys until the damned machine did anything at all, much to our youthful ho-hum. There was a time though when I knew enough to summon:

10 PRINT "MISCHIEVOUS MESSAGE OF YOUR CHOICE ";
20 GOTO 10

Now that was an afternoon!

Damn, if only my folks had been wealthy and daring enough to pick up a 128k. I'm sure MacPaint would have impressed me more then than when its ubiquitous clones caught up with me many years later. I can even remember trying my hand at a text editor in BASIC just so I could save files on those instant-off micro's we did happen to come by. Yeah, I know, I'm no Linus Torvalds, but floppies … and the better plastic box-shaped kind, in 1984, oh yeah, let me at that mouse!

In spring 1980 I was only a few months old, so I can't lend any truisms about Carter versus Reagan from any sort of past perspective. According to this system of time travel then, that's as far back as our vehicle gets. No cheating now.

One trusism I can offer though is that tiresome one about the unpredictability of time. Tech gets better – in ways we only occasionally suspect beforehand – while other things, well, I'm tempted to say they disappoint in comparison! Not always though. In politics its so often the leaders which really matter. Things I and many others haven't paid much thought to in years, like oh say the whole Middle East peace process if you can even remember that in earnest, can and probably will resume once Washington has its purge after the election. Obama or McCain, it's all good. Hillary even too, though frankly I'm beginning to make that time honoured mistake of overlooking her before all's said and done. Next Tuesday, yeah, or a ghoullish replay of the machinations which saw the last overthrow of a democratic winner, right before Al Gore's eyes again!

Anyway, even I detect my rambling now so don't worry, this post comes to a close. Obviously the future is the place to point it: what do I think tomorrow's Feb 29 will be like, in 2012? UNIX based, open sourced, well designed, and safer than today? Yeah, sure, like legend's dragon's die so soon. Another maxim I've come to suspect is true over the years is that good and evil are perspective as much as anything. So too can be, alas, up and down if you follow long enough to see this most strained distortion. More on that later, as I cover the extremist's refuge. But for now I'll say the truth, which is I can't even tell you what happens in November yet alone leaps and bounds ahead. The human world in its seething politics and glorious complexity is like that. You can suspect, intuit, and maybe conjure up sound reasoning in retrospect; but projections alone are a mug's game. One I just can't keep from playing.

Where the MacBook Air Fits in Apple's Design

2008-02-23T14:50:00.009Z

Design in the Age of Intel

Macworld San Francisco in January 2006 was an intriguing time. The Intel transition was the talk of the Mac web and much of the media beyond. Expectations had risen that we would see the first models of the new platform that very show, despite Apple's earlier promise they would arrive by summer. Expectations were right. Steve Jobs unveiled with typical panache the first Intel powered desktop and notebook Apple had ever made and dared to call a Mac! He showed off their performance before an eager audience. There was just one strange surprise: the Intel Macs looked eerily similar to their PowerPC predecessors.

Two models moved to Intel that day. The Core Duo powered iMac was essentially identical to its G5 ancestor in outer appearance. The Core Duo successor to the PowerBook G4 was a little easier to tell apart – it had a built in iSight camera for the first time at the top edge of its display – and it had a name change to MacBook Pro. However, this was still less ado than Apple had made with previous generation changes between G3, G4 and G5. Despite the move to Intel being a far greater technical challenge and accomplishment, it was as though their industrial design was playing it down.

As the year progressed the entire Macintosh line made the leap to Intel. The Mac mini was next and looked identical save for an artfully placed remote control receiver and a more liberal selection of ports on the back. Then came the iBook, which like its aluminium brother, had a name change to now be called the MacBook. Unlike the MacBook Pro, the MacBook was a new design and easy to tell from its predecessor; more on that later. But it was back to business as usual when the Power Mac As the year progressed the entire Macintosh line made the leap to Intel. The Mac mini was next and looked identical save for an artfully placed remote control receiver and a more liberal selection of ports on the back. Then came the iBook, which like its aluminium brother, had a name change to now be called the MacBook. Unlike the MacBook Pro, the consumer MacBookcame to Intel the last of all, picking up a second drive slot (a wealth of useful changes hidden inside) and its new title of Mac Pro. The server oriented relative to the Mac – the Xserve – received a similar treatment although without a name change, completing the Intel transition in surprisingly speedy time.

So, to recap, there was only one new design in 2006: the MacBook. Every other Mac had been transformed on the inside too, but on the outside there was as little change as possible.

2007 brought the iPhone – an entirely new product and an area where Apple have great ambitions – and then a whole new generation of iPods. The iMac received its first major industrial design change since the G4 "sunflower" model was replaced with the minimalist "where's the computer?" G5 some three years earlier. That G5 iMac, incidentally, was considered to bear a lot in common with the iPod in terms of style. The new aluminium and glass iMac in turn shared its design in similar ways to the iPhone. Once the iMac joined the MacBook in the shortlist of new designs, there were no more changes. All the other Macs were not altered on the outside. Hardware evolved on the inside as 64 bit became universal across the entire platform with the Core 2 Duo, but once again the outer design was kept untouched.

There's Something in the Air

Then on the second anniversary of the first Intel Macs at Macworld 2008, Steve Jobs unveiled the MacBook Air, causing a storm of interest and debate which clearly carries on today. The Air was clearly a new class of portable with no direct ancestors at all. Its industrial design made this very clear: it looks quite unlike any other computer.

So much has been written about the MacBook Air – controversies rage about its many trade-offs and where precisely it fits among its MacBook siblings – so much that I needn't add any more to it. Instead, I'd like to compare the external design of the Air to Apple's other recent changes as I've listed above. Perhaps we can get a sneak peak of the future?

A Picture Speaks a Thousand Words

Have a look at the high quality photos AppleInsider took of the MacBook Air compared to the MacBook Pro. Everyone knows that the Air is thin; but seen side by side with Apple's well respected flagship professional portable, we can see the immense design shift for what it is. As usual, I'm writing from my 12" PowerBook which had a reputation for being tubby compared to its aluminium peers. The Air is probably about as thick at its front as the curved lip of my own laptop's battery, creeping round the edge! (The cell itself is far chunkier than that.)

Also note the MacBook Air's keyboard. Look familiar? It should do. This style was brought in with the first MacBook in 2006. Rounded, separate, "chiclet" keys which despite some initial concerns have proven to be well regarded for typing and general use. Last year's aluminium iMac brought the same thinking over to Apple's long untouched desktop keyboards: its new wireless keyboard having particularly strong ties to the MacBook. The Air's black keys come with backlighting … I expect this will spread to other models in time as well.

There is no guessing required when it comes to the MacBook Air's display. Apple have stated that they will remove Mercury from all of their products: this means a transition from traditional CCFL to LED backlights. Steve Jobs also pointed out that a key design goal with the Air was to maintain a full size keyboard and display in as thin a package as possible. This sounds like an implicit warning that we'll see no sub-13 inch Macs, and therefore no direct successor to the 12 inch PowerBook. I think Apple are likely to concentrate on tablets like the iPod touch for smaller sizes.

Lessons for the Leery

Back in 2006 I for one had not expected Apple to reuse their designs. As much lesser generational leaps like those between G3, G4 and G5 had brought new cases, materials and geometries in turn; I really anticipated brand new shapes and forms. If the glass and aluminium iMac of 2007 had come out at Macworld 2006 instead: I would have actually been less surprised than I was with the G5 iMac's doppelgänger!

Since the move to Intel: the MacBook, iMac and MacBook Air are new designs. This leaves the Mac Pro, Mac mini and MacBook Pro waiting for their overhaul. What are they likely to look like?

The aluminium PowerBook design which the MacBook Pro still bears, dates back to the start of 2003 and my own rather quaint laptop. It has worn well – often considered a true classic among notebook designs – but the MacBook Air's sudden arrival has given it something of a dent. I know it is controversial to suggest that the professional oriented MacBook Pro take a diet as radical as produced the Air, but I think looking forward a few years it is inevitable. The Air shows that the compromises needed right now are still too steep for its bigger brothers. I am certain however that this is precisely the direction they too will go in good time. Flash storage replacing hard disks as it has done in all but one iPod now, optical drives becoming external peripherals, replaceable batteries exchanged for iPod-like integration, and ports being selectively culled or delegated to USB. Such changes aren't necessarily as harsh as the Air itself has taken: there will be more room by definition on a 17 inch notebook, and professional machines may well hold on to select ports the Air has boldly dispatched. Thin, though, is certainly in. MacBook Pros today will look as over-sized to their descendants as the Air does against them now.

Reports of the Mac mini's demise are – fortunately – greatly exaggerated. This most miniscule of Mac desktops appears to be with us for the long haul. It's difficult to imagine just what Apple might have in mind for it next as the Mac mini, uniquely, has never been redesigned since its inception in 2005. There are G4 minis and Core Solos, Duos and Core 2 Duos; but their appearance is unchanging. Having been inside of one myself – upgrading its 1.6 GHz Core Duo for a 2.0 GHz 64 bit Core 2 Duo – the only obvious space to be reduced would be the omission of the optical drive; though it's hardly as appealing a proposition for a desktop! Apple could really do anything with the mini. It has long been speculated that it could be merged with the thinner but wider AppleTV. Unlikely I think: the set top box has a very different purpose in mind.

And then, lastly, the Mac Pro. Like the MacBook Pro, it still wears the outer design of the well established PowerPC model it replaced: the Power Mac G5, also introduced back in 2003. Popular opinion has it the Mac Pro is too large, a sentiment often shared quite naturally about the G5 Power Mac. History suggests the Mac Pro may well borrow from the iMac in appearance, as did its distant ancestor the Blue & White G3. The Power Mac line did not however take on the snow white style of G4 and G5 iMacs, so it's not necessarily so! Again, Apple have quite the opportunity for a new design in the headless desktop Macs. Aluminium is a favourite to still have some part in it.

Twists and Trends

In summing up: Apple are a great example of evolving industrial design. In many ways they are conservative and reuse a great idea wherever they can once it has succeeded. The great brushed aluminium tide of 2003 is a prime case in point: even today the Mac Pro and MacBook Pro utilise what was made then, some five years back. Balancing this is a drive for new design, which emerges as a great surprise whenever it is ready and soon enough takes over from the last major change. The iPhone was just such an innovation: in form as well as function. The iMac's subsequent shift from a white iPod to glass and aluminium iPhone-inspired design is the natural consequence. This is why I expect the MacBook Air to be a seminal work, influencing future models just as the first aluminium PowerBooks did, and indeed the original iMac. Apple design in waves. Once again, on such a crest, we are in most interesting times.