XCOM: Enemy Unknown is the latest modernisation of a classic game developed by Firaxis and published by 2k. Although the franchise has a colourful history of cancelled games and relatively unheard of releases, it’s heyday was back in the mid-nineties with the original Enemy Unknown and the sequel, Terror from the Deep, being the titles that most gamers will be familiar with. Their premise was as simple then as it is now. Aliens have started invading a near future earth [...]
2012 was my second year at Eurogamer, the first being last year, but it was no less spectacular second time round. I only went on the Saturday this year, mostly because I booked my ticket too late, but also because I wasn’t so interested in the games on offer this year. There were tonnes of triple A titles on show, as well as the usual mix of merchandise, retro gaming, t-shirts and the like. But if I’m honest, the games [...]
The current generation of gaming is the best looking we have ever had. High Definition TVs are affordable for the masses, allowing every bedroom gamer to get the best looking experience for relatively insignificant sums of cash. But with all the focus on visuals, it’s often too easy to overlook the sound. Most HD ready TVs have very poor quality sound. It might be good enough for watching TV shows on, but it is a pathetic effort if you are [...]
On Saturday I had a great day out at the Monkey Forest in Trentham (near Stoke-on-Trent). It’s a fairly large enclosure housing some 150 free-roaming monkeys, making it a great place to go and take photos (or take kids, if you have some available). As I had no kids, this trip was all about trying my Canon 4.5-5.6 55-250mm IS lens. I’ve been using my jaw dropping quality 2.8 17-55mm almost exclusively for the last year, but I simply could [...]
Starting to get quite excited about this year’s Beat-Herder Festival! 6 or so friends have confirmed, and I have my ticket + parking pass. More of the lineup has been trickling out over the last few weeks and I’m most exited to be seeing Slamboree, Lee Scratch Perry and Parov Stelar. There’s also loads of stuff on that I’ve never heard of, so hopefully I’ll bring home some new names to listen to afterwards. Anyone who has not heard of [...]
Reckoning is the first game in the new Kingdoms of Amalur action RPG franchise. In a gaming market awash with sequels it’s great to kick off 2012 with a fresh title, especially with the promises made by Big Huge Games. Despite being a new game it talks the talk, bring with it a pedigree production team featuring Tom McFarlane (Spawn) and Ken Rolston (Morrowind, Oblivion). Combined with a plot waved by New York Times Bestseller, R.A. Salvatore, the game has [...]
XCOM: Enemy Unknown is the latest modernisation of a classic game developed by Firaxis and published by 2k. Although the franchise has a colourful history of cancelled games and relatively unheard of releases, it’s heyday was back in the mid-nineties with the original Enemy Unknown and the sequel, Terror from the Deep, being the titles that most gamers will be familiar with. Their premise was as simple then as it is now. Aliens have started invading a near future earth [...]
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2012 was my second year at Eurogamer, the first being last year, but it was no less spectacular second time round. I only went on the Saturday this year, mostly because I booked my ticket too late, but also because I wasn’t so interested in the games on offer this year. There were tonnes of triple A titles on show, as well as the usual mix of merchandise, retro gaming, t-shirts and the like. But if I’m honest, the games [...]
Continue Reading →
The current generation of gaming is the best looking we have ever had. High Definition TVs are affordable for the masses, allowing every bedroom gamer to get the best looking experience for relatively insignificant sums of cash. But with all the focus on visuals, it’s often too easy to overlook the sound. Most HD ready TVs have very poor quality sound. It might be good enough for watching TV shows on, but it is a pathetic effort if you are [...]
Continue Reading →Sometimes in life it’s easier to be forgiven for something than it is to get permission. It’s an approach I’ve been trying to adopt in my programming lately in a way that sometimes feels a little counter intuitive. If, for example, you need to ensure something going in to a database needs to be unique you may do something like this: def generate_slug(self): if not self.slug: self.slug = slugify(self.title) try: Page.objects.get(slug=self.slug) self.slug = self.slug + "_" self.generate_slug() except Page.DoesNotExist: self.save() [...]
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On Saturday I had a great day out at the Monkey Forest in Trentham (near Stoke-on-Trent). It’s a fairly large enclosure housing some 150 free-roaming monkeys, making it a great place to go and take photos (or take kids, if you have some available). As I had no kids, this trip was all about trying my Canon 4.5-5.6 55-250mm IS lens. I’ve been using my jaw dropping quality 2.8 17-55mm almost exclusively for the last year, but I simply could [...]
Continue Reading →If Django’s convention of putting all your unittests in to a single tests.py file to be followed you’ll soon end up with files well over 300 lines long. While on site with a customer a fellow Django’er brought to my attention a better method that’s much cleaner. Create a folder called tests, and then simply place the following in __init__.py from .tests_1 import * from .tests_2 import * From python’s point of view this is exactly the same as putting [...]
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In case you haven’t heard, Apple computers can be infected with trojans and viruses too! Ok, this is obvious, but a major selling point of Apple devices has always been their relative resistance to infection. OS X has enjoyed this reputation for many years, and it has regrettably lead to some complacency when it comes to security. Apple basing OS X on BSD/Unix flavours was a very smart move as the architecture is fundamentally more secure. With a Root account and file permissions at its very core, it’s [...]
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If you’ve ever tried to enable a guest account on OS X Lion there’s a good chance you broke something. The guest account is designed to create a temporary account on your machine that does not need a password and is removed after logout. The problem is that it has never worked for me. Even worse, it broke my System Preferences so I could not edit any users. If you have ever enabled the guest account, on this screen: Then [...]
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Starting to get quite excited about this year’s Beat-Herder Festival! 6 or so friends have confirmed, and I have my ticket + parking pass. More of the lineup has been trickling out over the last few weeks and I’m most exited to be seeing Slamboree, Lee Scratch Perry and Parov Stelar. There’s also loads of stuff on that I’ve never heard of, so hopefully I’ll bring home some new names to listen to afterwards. Anyone who has not heard of [...]
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I have a… wait for it… binary domain! This site can now be accessed by writing the domain in it’s binary form: 0110010001100001011011100111010101111000.co.uk www.0110010001100001011011100111010101111000.co.uk And yes, 011101110111011101110111.0110010001100001011011100111010101111000.co.uk works too Why? Blame Oliver! @danux the game? or a domain in binary? — Oliver Newman (@OliNewman) April 12, 2012
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