Alex Hardy

Looking at my analytics, I’ve discovered the significance of something that I’d not really given any thought to before: trackbacks.

In short - if you link to another site, this may become known to the site you’re linking to. Your blog post might then appear in the comments of a post that you’ve referred to. I’ve recently had visitors both from Vitamin and Circa1977.

This is potentially a good way to drive traffic to your site, but it cuts both ways and requires a certain degree of responsibility. This is my little corner, and I’ll speak my mind as I see fit, but as a blogger if you’re going to say something controversial you’d better have a decent rationale for it or you’ll just make a public jackass of yourself and get flamed to buggery.

Note to self.

… at the weekend. Just the console, and Zelda (of course!).

Y’know, the more I read about Nintendo’s new box, the more I’m looking forward to it. I read the other day that Super Mario RPG is coming out on the Virtual Console. This is actually pretty significant: Mario RPG is a gem of a SNES game, that came out right at the end of the SNES’ life. In fact, it was never released in the UK.

If it’s Nintendo’s plan to make tasty treaties like this available in ways that they weren’t ever before, then that’s pretty exciting stuff. I’ll probably spend a few quid to saunter through Sonic the Hedgehog and such, but I’ve been there and got the t-shirt with those games. I’d much rather have a go at stuff I never got to play…

Rumours abound also that Neo Geo and Saturn games are going to make their way onto VC. Woohoo! Go on Sega, get Mega CD games in there too, I wanna play Sonic CD! I wouldn’t be surprised if a little industry springs up to do translations and VC conversions of obscure titles *crosses fingers*

C’mon Nintendo! Here’s a little wish-list for you to get cracking on!

SNES

Chrono Trigger, Cybernator, Ganbare Goemon 1 and 2 (aka: Mystical Ninja), Parodius, R-Type 3, Rockman & Forte, Secret of Mana, Shadowrun, Starwing and Starwing 2 (rumoured to be completed but never released), Super Tennis, Super Mario Kart, Yoshi’s Island

Megadrive/Mega CD

Micro Machines, Sonic 2, Sonic CD, Vectorman

N64

Blast Corps, Goldeneye, Paper Mario, Perfect Dark, Yoshi’s Story

Saturn

Burning Rangers, Grandia, Guardian Heroes, Marvel Super Heroes Vs Street Fighter, NiGHTS into Dreams and Christmas NiGHTS, Panzer Dragoon Saga, Radiant Silvergun, Sega Rally, Shining Force 3, Vampire Saviour (aka: Darkstalkers 3)

… and that is the problem in a nutshell.

When you work in an agency rather than a development studio, particularly one that frets more about kerning than navigation design, your product is time. You’re not selling a website, you’re selling the time it takes you to make it. As a developer, you fight a constant battle against realities of the business that need you to implement the quick fix today. Work is a series of temporary solutions that will have to do until they become problems themselves, because you’ve already gone over budget.

…part of a site that could be three dynamic pages becomes a nightmare of 80-odd HTML ones because there wasn’t the time to spend on learning a little PHP, that would have saved an enormous amount of time…

As you may have guessed, I’m in just such a situation right now. The solution is a database and simple UI. But there’s no time for that. What is going to happen is we’ll manually edit a truckload of XML files and bodge the id structure because it’s too complicated to be easy for a human to manipulate. Of course, the point was that a human wouldn’t manipulate it, a database would.

As much as I enjoy working in agencies, the variety of it all, I do long to be able to take the time to do things right.

Maybe doing stuff of my own is the only thing for it in the long run.

ChangeThis

All sorts of “manifestos” about entrepreneurial acitivities, business and culture. I particularly like an article I read today “The Seven Principles of Privacy”, which argues that laws (and adhering to their minimum requirements) offer poor privacy protection and that an ethical approach is better.

In a nutshell treat your users with the respect with which you’d want to be treated. Behave yourself, and articulate your stance in simple terms.

I give little regard to laws. I see them as an expression of what a particular society deems to be acceptable conduct at a particular point in time, nothing more. For instance, same-sex couples are able to get hitched these days (and rightly so) when in the past they’d have been charged with a crime. I operate according to my own sense of morality and I’ve not strayed too far yet So that article makes a lot of sense to me.

I’ll be writing my own privacy policy in accordance with that article.

So Steph and I saw Casino Royale last night. I’ll steer clear of writing any spoilers, but here are some thoughts:

• The intro song is appalling. It doesn’t win the Madonna award for “Worst Bond Theme Ever”, but it’s a slice of soft-rock rubbish that you just have to ignore and watch the visuals for a couple of minutes.
• Blimey, that film was the longest Sony advert I’ve ever seen.
• Daniel Craig is excellent. Nostalgia forbids me from declaring him “Best Bond Ever” (that will always be Sean Connery), but he makes the character his own. I haven’t read the books, but the film opens by saying “Daniel Craig is Ian Fleming’s James Bond” - something they’ve not said in so many words before, but here it’s true. This Bond isn’t some poncy “International Man of Mystery”, he’s a nasty piece of work.
• Judy Dench is a much harder-edged M that in the Pierce Brosnan films.
• There’s no daft antics. No Q with silly gadgets (although he has a couple of tricks up his sleeve), no Roger Moore-era girls with names like “Ivana Shagalot”. No Mega-Moonbase for the villain. This is no Royale with Cheese.

I’d say they’ve done a great job of re-invigorating the franchise, and reminding us all that Ethan Hunt, Jason Bourne etc are all fine, but there’s only one Bond.

Between Nintendo’s WiiConnect24 fiasco and Sony’s instruction to users to await updates to fix the shortcomings of the PS3’s UI, does anyone else feel a little nostalgic for the time when consoles didn’t have all these multimedia aspirations, the games came on cartridges and things actually worked?

Ho hum, I guess that’s “progress” for you.

According to Amazon, Okami isn’t out until February 9th… A Wii it is then

I’ll pick up Okami when it comes out, yessir.

I’ve decided to remove the moderation requirement that I’d put in place - at least for the time being. The wee bit of spam I got before seems to have been an isolated incident.

I’ve decided not to get a Wii - not for Christmas anyway.

Instead, I’m going to get Okami. I’ve been waiting for Okami for some months now, and I know that if I bought a Wii so soon I’d probably never get around to playing it properly. Which would be a crime

It’s something of a cliche amongst so-called “hardcore” gamers that the dying days of a console are its creative prime. That by the time the wider industry wants to render a platform obsolete, the most talented developers have cracked the strengths and weaknesses of the system and are making its finest games. Games which in many cases defy popular opinion of what the hardware is capable of.

For instance:

• The SNES had Yoshi’s Island
• The Saturn had Panzer Dragoon Saga, X-Men Vs Streetfighter and Radiant Silvergun
• The N64 had Zelda: Majora’s Mask
• The Dreamcast had Rez and Shenmue

Etc etc…

I’ve had a bit of a love/hate relationship with the PS2. At first I sneered at it for having lousy games, then I resented it for so successfully crushing the Dreamcast, then I gave in and bought one - which I never played, then I sold it and got a Gamecube, then when I moved into the shared house I bought a new one - a slim model mainly to be used as a DVD player.

This last couple of years though, the PS2 has earned my respect. Games like Ico, Fahrenheit, Shadow of the Colossus, God of War etc have delivered on the PS2’s original promise and vindicated all that ‘Emotion Engine’ PR.

And now there’s Okami. I won’t labour the details of what the game’s about, but suffice it to say that it’s an epic adventure and possibly the most beautiful game ever made.

… running on the least powerful machine still in production.

I’m not going to buy a Wii for Christmas because the PS2 deserves its last hurrah before it’s retired to my cupboard.

… that perfectly illustrated the difference between the Mac and Windows, it’s this:

A group of Mac shareware developers set up a competition. They call it My Dream App. An ‘X Factor’ for software if you like, the general public are invited to suggest an idea for an application. The prize: some hardware (iPods, MacBooks etc) over the rounds, after which visitors vote for their three favourites. The winners will see their applications built for real, and get a royalty on each sale.

They get some high profile judges, including J Allard, Steve Wozniak, Guy Kawasaki and some other well known mac developers such as Cabel Sasser and Gedeon Maheux. Respected bloggers and podcasters like John Gruber and Amber MacArthur, too.

The entrants demonstrate fantastic enthusiasm and talent. In the end the winners are Atmosphere, Portal and Cookbook.

A certain Stefan Miganowicz of Leominster, Massachusetts is suitably impressed. He decides to create a website. Called, imaginatively enough, My Dream Windows App. Well… look at it. Seriously. Look at it. They’d probably appreciate the hits.

I thought this post about it on My Dream App was incredibly diplomatic.