Rome: Total War

August 26, 2004 //

Well I played the demo (162Mb) of Rome: Total war yesterday lunch time, I was pretty impressed, you get a simple training mission and the historical battle of Trebia where you play Hannibal with his elephants.
This was pretty good, but considering that the battle engine of Rome:TW has already been used on two historical re-enactment type TV programs I already knew it was gonna be pretty damn good.

The part of the game that I’m looking forward to seeing wasn’t available in the demo. This is the re-done campaign map, it is enirely in 3D, with the ability to zoom in and out. A more exciting aspect of this though is the fact that representations of armies on the campaign map are possitionaly accurate. In other words, if they are ‘near the river on the left’ in this view then thats where they’ll be in the battle view. Also armys can be possitioned to cut off trade routes and other such things. The representation of cities will also be accurate, with buildings destroyed in battle being no longer available in the campaign. ie if a barracks gets destroyed then that town will no longer be able to train troops.

Gamespy have a very good hands-on preview, although you do have to get past some advertising first 😐

Categories Technology

Ilford in receivership

August 24, 2004 //

Yes this is a sad day for traditional B&W photographers throughout the world, the company that is synonymous with high quality black and white photographic papers and films is now in receivership.
At the moment the future of the company is unknown, redundancies are deffinately on the cards (unfortunately) as the company has debts of over £40 million.
All I can say is that I (and undoubtably many other photographers) hope that the accountants manage to salvage something and keep the company afloat.

my fingers are crossed.

By the way I found this out on the channel 4 news.
[update]

Categories Photography

Optician insight

August 24, 2004 //

I was thinking, as I so often do, about some random things (heh, link with site name there, nice) and my thoughts turned to the opticians.
Why I wondered to myself is the eye exam always carried out in a darkened room?

Then sudden inspiration stuck, if the room is well lit, or even bright, then the pupils will contract, making the apature to the eye smaller, thus increasing the eyes Depth of field. This will in turn slightly fudge or hide any sight defects that the person being tested may have.
Ultimately resulting in an incorrect perscription, assuming that corrective lenses are needed.

This I though was quite a neat theory and wanted to check it out to see if I was correct.

Unfortunately as yet I have not been able to find any information on the subject of why sight tests are usually done in a darkened room… so I don’t know if I’m right.

If anyone knows for defiante or has any other ideas, well thats what the comments are for 🙂

Categories Random, Thoughts

Gym routine

August 24, 2004 //

They say that going to the gym will leave you feeling envigorated and refreshed.
In many ways this is a big lie and heres why. Excersice will only give you benefit if it occurs regularly and going to the gym for the first time or going after an extended absence (as I did yesterday) will infact leave you feeling completely knackered.
This is (probably) because your body is not used to the exertion so it needs much rest after the event, ie makes you feel knackered. However if you are a regular exerciser then your body is used to the strain and afterwards will be gathering energy from fat and releasing endorphins and all that malarky. The net effect of all this is to make you feel better (mentally) and more energetic.

Of course these things will probably depend on how hard you push yourself in your chosen sport, it is always possible to go to far which will result in exhaustion. Going to this level will probably result in you getting fitter quicker but of course for this you have to pay the price of being knackered all the time.

All the words starting with ‘ex’ in this post were brought to you by a dictionary I honestly have no idea why the spelling of these words causes me so much trouble.

Categories Health

Microwaves bugging me again

August 23, 2004 //

I was searching the internet earlier, trying to find out if food cooked in microwaves does actually cool down quicker, and if so why.
I still haven’t managed to find the answer (grrr) but I did come across this rather amusing but also alarming little story:

I don’t want to sound like I know everything in the world or even like I know quite a lot. But you had a question regarding “If a microwave oven door were to open while it was still on, what would happen? Could it hurt you?- JP”

Well ..Having the thought process that I have, kinda how should I put it? …Stupid? or inventive or even in-between. Well, my microwave door did happen to come off. Magic Chef 900-watt microwave. Well, I did my best to try to fix it but the hinge on one side did not attach properly, therefore having a gap between the door and the appliance. Being me (stupid) I wondered if it would burn fast or would it gradually warm up. I slid my finger between…You probably dying to hear what happened… But it didn’t gradually warm up at all. It was instant heat! It didn’t scar me or anything like that, but sure scared the H*** out of me to find out it got so hot so quick. I didn’t get any blisters either. But it just burned like touching something hot on the tip of my finger being that is the only thing I put in. Well you know the old adage, “You learn from your mistakes”, stands true. lol – Anonymous

Well I think I’ll be learning from that mistake too!!!
Acording to the reply on the board this was posted on, if the full 900 watts of power had been availible to the curious finger it would have been roasted quickly. Not a good thing!

Categories Random, Technology

Missing blog

August 22, 2004 //

I was gonna blog yesterday, honest 🙂

Not that anyone would have been worried or anything…
I just wasn’t in the right ‘writing’ mood, I had plenty to say but felt I was missing the will to say it, or at least to articulate it in a satifactory way.
I don’t really know where I’m going with this post, I have read on some peoples blogs that if they don’t post every day or even every few hours, people will start to e-mail them asking if there’s anything wrong….

I can not even begin to imagine that kind of poularitiy/maddness, and I kinda hope that things never get to that level.
Although its always nice to be wanted 😉

Categories Website

London Joy

August 22, 2004 //

Much excitement was experienced on Thursday when myself and Row went to explore London.
We found Picadilly Circus, china town, soho and the ‘red light’ area of soho… I’ve put quotes around that because its not really like the red light district of Amsterdam, which is the more famous example that everyone associated with that phrase.

Well we also went to Camden town and very much enjoyed the huge and diverse market there… I can tell you now, that’ll be the place where I’ll be buying my clothes from now on, when I can afford it.
Defiantely full of very cool stuff!

Categories Diary-esq

Broadband irony

August 20, 2004 //

Just got my broadband working activated and connected… and you know what?
In the time it took my ‘legal’ broadband to get activated, someone else has moved in with an unsecured router… damn if only I’d been more patient !!

Nevermind, at least I can use P2P file sharing programs now 😉

Categories Humour

Struggling with emo

August 20, 2004 //

It was a few months ago now that I first heard the term ’emo’ in relation to a musical genre, at first of course I was completely comfused and had no idea what it was all about.
Shortly however it became clear that this was ’emotional’ music, so the followers of emo listened to emotionally charged music. I thought this was a fantastic idea, a genre of music that transends and encompasses all other types of music.
Why – my thinking continued – this could include dramatic opera, rousing classics, (some) pop music and also rock, jazz, hip-hop, R’n’B, maybe even some dance… especially the darker beats with moody breakdowns…

unfortunately I soon discovered that it wasn’t this interesting and gound breaking at all.
Emo music in fact means aggressive guitar thashing and incoherent screaming… aka crap (in my book).

So with this massive disapointment I will make my own music genre ’emot’ which will be all that I thought ’emo’ was going to be, and more.

Join me
Join emot

Categories Music, Opinion

Where are they now?

August 18, 2004 //

Sometimes the question on people’s lips or the title of a poorly scripted American TV show (complete with cheesy canned laughter).
Well Wil Wheaton, otherwise known as Wesley Crusher to all the Star Trek:Next Generation fans has actually done something interesting with life-after-child-acting.

Unlike some people

Categories Random
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