Information Doesn't Want to Be Free

Not a review by any means, I don't have the time today. I've just finished listening to Cory Doctorow's Information Doesn't Want to Be Free audiobook, read by Wil Wheaton.

It's the first audiobook I've ever listened all the way through - I have Homeland as well, sorry Wil. After having done so I can say with authority than reading works better for me. I better retain stuff and I can easily go back and find the passages I want to refer to to better understand a point. Also reading is less anti-social. My brother is a great fan of audiobooks and listens to Iain Banks stories regularly, but then he drives to work in his car, on his own - I would say this was the perfect environment in which to listen. I don't drive, and even on the bus, tram or train, I find I need to keep interrupting Wil's voice and Cory's words to reply to someone or to hear an announcement, making it a less than satisfactory experience.

Anyway, what I wanted to say was that the content companies seem to be metaphorically running around saying "Aaaargh, we're being attacked by bees!" and cutting down all the flowers so the bees die out rather than supporting the bees and being rewarded with honey. It's not a good enough metaphor and I shall ruminate on a better one over the Christmas break.

Thanks Cory for a brilliant book that has succeeded in making me very angry, and Wil for an excellent reading. I did find myself distracted on a few occasions by the musical stings and didn't really like them in here, but since I'm an audiobook neophyte, perhaps that's an aural punctuation I don't quite get yet.

I really hope (but unfortunately doubt) that your book is read/heard by some of the execs you mention Cory, and that some common sense will come into play.

Information Doesn't Want to Be Free is available from Cory's site for $15. I strongly urge you to check it out.

Review: Picross 3D

I really enjoyed playing the 2D version of this when it came out. I picked it up as a bargain knowing little about it and didn't play it for a while then got really hooked. Not only that but I also got my wife hooked on it. So when the news of a version in 3D filtered out, being that I work in 3D as well, I was very pleased.

I bought this new version as soon as it was available in France. I was pleased to see the four slots for players but the stylus-only navigation was a bit slow. Playing the games themselves was fine - you have to chip away at a large block gradually revealing the shape concealed within using logic and deduction. Since you only have five chances, you cannot simply guess at whether a block can be destroyed or not.

Rather than the patterning given in the 2D version, where a column would be headed by a sequence of numbers (3, 2, 5, 5) and you would have to determine where the spaces lay, with Picross 3D you are only given one digit on a side of a block and that digit carries through the row, column or side. There are two exceptions. Numbers in circles represent not a solid block of the number shown but split into two not necessarily equal halves. Numbers in squares mean that the group is split into at least three sections. Now for a 2 in a circle or a 3 in a square this is simple enough - you know that the blocks on either side of a block you have selected cannot be used, so they can be destroyed. It gets more complicated when you have larger numbers in circles or squares and usually you find them by process of elimination - once you have cleared the single section blocks they become more obvious.

Sometimes you can recognise the object you are slowly revealing and you can chip away knowing that the object is symmetrical, but in the later levels the objects cannot be counted on for their symmetry. Often times in later levels you have no inkling of what you are trying to uncover so only brute force can reveal it. Obviously, in later levels where the puzzles can consist of as many as 1,000 blocks you are going to need to be able to navigate in rows and columns in the interior of the block to uncover your object and a red and blue slider will help you narrow down the sides, but there is no third slider to go from top to bottom.

The game is very addictive, like its predecessor, but it feels like more of a grind - you spend ages robotically using the sliders to go through the block picking off individual blocks or marking them up and sometimes it just feels like a slog - it doesn't stop you from playing hence the addictive bit, but the other downfall is that the progression is very stepped - the order hasn't been arranged carefully enough to give you a real sense of achievement, some of the puzzles on the very last level feel easier than ones two levels down. Of course, it may just be that by the end you are such a Picross expert that the levels just "feel" easier, but that still shouldn't be the case. Also, I had completed two levels of the tutorial right at the start of the game and it said "congrats, the easy puzzles are now open", so I went and did those, then the Normal ones and then the hard and yet although I had competed the game, there were some puzzle collections that were incomplete and I was at 344 puzzles when the box said "over 350 puzzles" and I wasn't sure why. Upon revisiting the Tutorial section after attempting to tease out the remaining puzzles from the game's Random Puzzle function, I found that there are in fact additional levels to the Tutorial section and a total of 369 puzzles to play.

If you have finished the game, it's still not over since you can build your own puzzles with the included editor or go for some downloadable content in the form of additional puzzles from Nintendo or other players and challenges online (I haven't tried those although I have reduced my router to having no security for WiFi for the time it takes to download a new batch of puzzles before putting the WPA2 PSK-TKIP walls back up).

I've written a lot of words for a game that left me less satisfied than the 2D original. It's still a very addictive game but I guess I wanted more from it - not more puzzles, but more challenge. 3/5

PS. There is a website where you can try bits and bobs and see a trailer for the game

Review: Logitech Performance MX mouse

My Mx 1000 died on me about a month ago. It was the finest mouse I'd ever used, so I wanted to get another. Of course, the march of time waits for no man and Logitech had ditched it and gone with an update, the MX-1100, which didn't seem to be an improvement to me. Nevertheless as a Logitech stalwart, I thought I might give it a go and I noticed that Logitech have a very cool offer on their UK, France and Germany site that gives you a postage paid label to send back your old Logitech stuff and they'll give you a 20% discount voucher on any purchase made from their site of €50 or more. There was a problem with my voucher and when I called up the nice folk at Logitech they checked it from their side and apologised and sent me a new voucher by email for 35%. This meant I could justify getting the €100 Performance MX mouse.

First impressions
The box the Performance MX comes in is very nice and contains the mouse, the universal USB receiver and a little leatherette carry pouch for transporting the mouse, dongle and charging gubbins around - a nice touch. The mouse has a non-standard USB port at the top end (where the cable would be on a cabled mouse) and the supplied USB charging cable can either be plugged into your computer or into a small electrical plug. Obviously, if you don't leave your machine on all the time you'll use the electrical charger more than using your machine to recharge the mouse, but you can still use it attached to the USB cable, so you could just pretend you'd bought an extremely expensive cabled mouse while charging.

The build quality is very good, with nice travel on all the buttons, but there is a slight problem with the wheel tilt as the following pic will explain:

It means that while it's easy to scroll left, pushing the wheel to the right is a more delicate operation that often means an unwanted LMB click. Also missing from the MX-1000 are the cruise buttons that were on either side of the wheel. The freewheeling wheel that replaces them cannot be assigned different functionality depending on its state so you've lost two buttons. You do get a "zoom" button below the Forward/Back navigation buttons and then there's also the Performance MX's Application Switcher button, which is embedded into the thumbrest on the left side of the mouse (this is a mouse uniquely for right-handed people).

Operation
Like the MX1000 before it, this is a very comfortable mouse to use. The thumbrest is ideal for an adult male to use and the additional buttons speed up workflow a lot. I'm even getting used to using the Application Switcher rather than alt-tabbing (or Win-tabbing), since it gives a more OS X Exposé feel presenting all your apps where you can simply move your mouse over the app that you want to switch to and it gives you the name of the app as well.

On the other side, the option to switch between a clicky scroll wheel and a freewheeling one seems a little more gimmicky to me - it's not often I'll be scrolling through massive long documents trying to find a specific passage, and even if I do I'll use the Find function.

The Performance MX uses a "Darkfield" sensor, rather than the visible red light we are used to seeing under optical mice and apparently it will even work on surfaces like glass, which are notoriously difficult for normal optical mice. This may be true, but it's not something I tested extensively.

The other topic worth mentioning for everyday use is battery life. The Performance MX comes with a user-replaceable 2000mAh AA Li-Ion rechargeable battery, much better than the MX-1000's sealed unit pill-type battery. I've been using the mouse for fairly long days for about a week with needing to recharge so far, and the battery level indicator is on two bars out of three.


Software
The Perfomance MX comes with SetPoint 6, rather than the 4.8 I've been using for ages and the best new addition to this software suite is the ability to set preferences for individual apps, however, don't uninstall UberOptions just yet since you can't assign some of the buttons differently for different apps using SetPoint:

Oh yeah, and the other thing that SetPoint 6 does is update all the imagery onscreen for when you change volume, skip forward a track, mute and so on. Where previously everything was 90's TV-looking and bright green, now it's all grey and flash.

Conclusion
The Performance MX is a very nice mouse - would I have paid €100 for it? Almost certainly not, although I would probably have spent the fifty on the poorer replacement for my MX1000. I shall have to see if in the longer term it's a good replacement for the MX1000, especially since the lack of button customisation using the default Setpoint isn't great. 4/5

Review: Microsoft LifeCam Cinema

Please excuse me Microsoft for just stealing an image from your site, I just want to say that my last two purchases from Microsoft have been excellent value for money - first Windows 7 Home Premium with both 32- and 64-bit versions for fifty quid, and now the camera you can see to the left for fifty euro.

I only needed a new webcam because while the Logitech one I had was fine it was too big to sit on my monitor, which is sitting under a shelf with only about 5 cm clearance, meaning that any video conversation I had with someone involved me having to look to one side of the monitor. I have had Logitech webcams since webcams were an everyday thing to have on a computer (to go with my Logitech mice and keyboards) and have been very happy with them, so I didn't buy one from another manufacturer lightly...




Unboxing
Too much packaging, but very nicely done. It takes a while to get the camera out of its nest of plastic and cardboard, and then the usb plug has the end covered with a friendly reminder to not unsheath it until you have installed the accompanying drivers. My machine runs 32-bit Vista Home Premium still since I haven't yet installed my Windows 7 in 64-bit and I do not know if this camera's software will run under 64-bit (I have seen reports on websites that suggest it will).


Hardware
This camera oozes quality, even at the price. While you probably won't be fondling it all the time unless there's something odd about you, the aluminium construction is solid and sturdy and a nice thoughtful touch is that the flexible strap for the back of the monitor can also double as a stand for the camera if the monitor top is just a bit too high (as it might be in my case, not sure yet). The cable to the USB plug has a built-in plastic wire tidy that's very nicely done too. The camera captures 720p video at 30fps according to the blurb and the built-in microphone situated on the top of the camera has noise cancelling features that seem to have worked well in test conversations I have conducted with innocent vict willing test subjects.

Software
The Lifecam 3.0 software weighs in a just over 300 MB on the CD, which seems excessive even for those used to Logitech's bloatware, but the Camera settings that pop up on the taskbar whenever the camera is in use - I will be almost exclusively using it with Skype - allows quite a few Augmented Reality-type tricks, like the stars that rotate above my head wherever it is in frame as shown below:

 

These, along with pan and tilt and zoom controls are available through the little settings window that appears when you left or right click on the taskbar icon. As you can see I have made my head teeny here:

 

You can get a much better impression of these in motion obviously. There is an odd lack in the software however. My Logitech camera offered the possibility to reverse the image to make it easier to indicate things without having to think too much (since we're all used to our mirror images), the Microsoft software doesn't have this feature.

Conclusion

This is a lovely bit of kit. Skype's video quality depends on processor power as well as camera quality meaning that since I don't have a superfast machine, the video I have displayed to others on Skype calls isn't very high resolution or sharp and so hard to judge against my previous camera. Even so, the fact that it can sit above or below my monitor and the quality of the built-in mic meaning I can do away with the headset if desired meaning that it was a worthy use of my money. 5/5

Review: Max and the Magic Marker

 

It's not often I buy a WiiWare game. For my money the only one worth the Wii points has been World of Goo (though I did buy Swords and Soldiers and Bomberman Blast). World of Goo is now joined by Max and the Magic Marker.

Max is the story of a young boy who receives a marker pen in the post without any explanation to its function. He draws a monster with it and this monster comes to life and escapes from the paper! Max now needs to get him back and you might need to use that magic marker to help you with the puzzles along your way...

The game is ideal for the Wii. It uses the Wiimote as the marker pen, and the Nunchuk as the joystick to direct Max where you need him to go. Its standard platformer action is good enough as it is, but then there are areas that are too difficult to reach with the normal jumping behaviour and this is where the magic marker comes in to play. You can draw a staircase for Max to climb, or a block to drop on the head of the pesky purple monsters. It gets more intricate though, if you draw multiple lines that cross they get "glued" together to form a single object to enable you to go a bit further with the designs needed and then there's another twist. You can hold down the A and B buttons to freeze the action whereupon the graphics transform into a kid's drawing style. At this point you can draw at your leisure and when you unfreeze your drawing is in there already. This allows you to jump in the air, freeze, draw a box under Max, unfreeze and have him land on the box. He could then jump again, you freeze and draw an additional platform under Max's feet and so climb up the screen in this way.

The learning curve is well-adjusted. My son Finn who is nearly seven loves it and it makes a nice change from shooting games. With the simple introduction of the puzzles including signposts giving you a hint what to do the first few times you encounter a new puzzle, the fun of the game is not tempered by the frustration of failing to know what to do to reach your objective.

The game has crashed a couple of times, and a couple of times the camera has zoomed off to an area where you can no longer see Max or your marker and your only recourse is to restart the level you are on, but even this doesn't stop the game from being extremely polished in only 40MB (the maximum allowed on the WiiWare shop). The graphics are pretty and clear in both the normal and frozen "kid's drawing" versions, and the sound effects and music are very well-chosen.

Lastly, on the Press Play website there is a demo of Max playable on your computer (not on the Wii itself), that uses the free 3D engine Unity. Have a look and I'm prepared to bet that you too will shell out the 1,000 Wii points necessary to buy the game... 4/5

Review: Humax Foxsat-HDR

Intro
We live in France, so normally UK TV is unavailable to us through the aerial. However, the satellite that feeds Sky TV in the UK also feeds most of western Europe with other channels, so equipped with a secondhand Skybox, we have been able to watch the FTV and FTA channels broadcast to the UK. This was fine in so far as it went, however, recording something was a bit of a palaver. First we had to set our DVD recorder with hard drive to record the AV1 channel, the one Sky came into the box on, at a specific time, then we had to make sure the Sky box was on the right channel and lastly, and perhaps most importantly, we had to switch off the DVD recorder, because otherwise it wouldn't record. Yes, you could record different channels at different times without supervision because you have the autoswitch of the Sky box and you could set up multiple recordings on the DVD recorder, but it wasn't exactly easy or intuitive. Our Sky box is on its last legs, it sometimes takes ages to change channel and it gets locked onto Channel Five at times so we needed something new and shiny. I had considered going the HTPC route with MythTV, but that might be the next tech refresh for now I am very happy with the Humax Foxsat-HDR.

Review
Right, so onto the Humax and why it's great. To give you a better idea of what exactly this box is, it's a PVR (personal video recorder) designed for FreeSat, the UK satellite-based equivalent of the aerial-based Freeview. It gives you all available BBC channels, all ITV channels, Channel 4, E4 and more4 and Five, but not Five US or Fiver yet. It has twin tuners, so really benefits from a quad LNB setup (not that I have one, but more on that later). It has a 320 GB hard drive and a week-long EPG.

Unboxing
First up, getting it out of the box reveals not only the Foxsat itself, but a nice selection of cables - some AV CVBS cables; a SCART lead; HDMI lead. You get batteries for the remote, in short all you need. Well, all you need bar a loopthrough lead if you are going to one use it with a single LNB. With the Sky+ and Sky HD+ boxes these days you have multiple cables coming from your satellite dish because the receiver at the end of the arm in front of the actual dish (the LNB) contains multiple inputs, each of which travel down a cable, allowing to record one channel while watching another, etc. The FoxSat allows for this but doesn't force it on you. It has three socket F connections at the rear. Either you use connections 1 and 3 for your Quad LNB cables, or you just use connection 1 and a loop of cable between 2 and 3 for a single LNB. That's what we've got being an old Sky setup, so that's what we used.


You need to be careful to remove the plastic coating off not only the door at the front of the Foxsat, but also on the screen at the front of the box behind the door. Otherwise the remote has a hard time getting through. The remote that comes with is nice enough, but since we have a Logitech Harmony 525 I only used it for long enough to work out where the buttons that we'd use regularly were and then set up the Harmony.

Setup
When you first turn on the Humax, after you've screwed in the connectors for your single or quad LNB, there is a short set up period where the box reads the satellite and gets the channels it is able to. This read-through of available channels is extremely rapid in comparison with our old Sky box, but then it was over ten years' old. The Foxsat asks for your postcode to determine what BBC and ITV regions you should watch. Although we live in France, we still remember our postcodes for several of our previous UK addresses, so we only need to choose the one we wanted.

The Foxsat is obviously designed for the UK and is designed to watch UK TV, so the clock on the front, when shown, reports UK time - GMT or BST. This is not a problem and since recording is done merely by visiting the EPG and pressing OK to record the programme you want to (or the whole series), so the time is somewhat irrelevant compared to the juggling needed for recording previously.

EPG
The  EPG deserves a paragraph to itself. While it is supposed to be more technical than the SKY+ guide, I really don't mind, being of a more technical bent myself. The layout is clear and tabs across the top of the screen have different-coloured edges, and you hit the four coloured buttons to get to them. If you click OK on a programme you get a box pop up that offers you the choice of watching, recording a single programme or the series. If you choose Watch the FoxSat will switch over to your chosen programme when ready. If, however, you choose Record, the Foxsat won't necessarily turn over channels on you, it can record in the background. Best of all, even with a single LNB cable, you can record a second channel, and even watch a third simultaneously, the channels just need to be the same polarity and Graham Thompson, a user on the AV forum who has created a superb spreadsheet that shows exactly what you can record and watch simultaneously.

Recording/Playback/Time shifting
The real test is the way the FoxSat is able to handle recording and playback, but as yet, I've only had this machine a day or so so it's too early to tell, however, all the "synthetic" tests I've conducted have worked brilliantly, the real test comes tomorrow morning when I need to record Five in the morning and something on ITV1 that has a fifteen-minute overlap. The theory says that both should be recorded with no problem, if not my life may be at risk. If I don't post on this blog ever again you'll know that there has been foul play involved in my disappearance.

Conclusion
The DVD recorder we bought last year was okay. It does what it says it can do, pretty much. It has problems recording to DVDs now and the hard drive can "hitch" so I am happy to relegate it to purely being a DVD player. One of the best things about the FoxSat box (although untested as yet) is that I can send SD video out of the SCART on it to the DVD recorder, meaning that even if we recorded HD video, we can give someone a disc of it (in SD since DVDs don't support HD video, plus HD video is protected and cannot be copied). All in all, this FoxSat by previously-unknown-to-me Humax is an incredible bit of kit. If you live in the UK and still pay Sky a monthly subscription, this is a way out if you can afford the single outlay of 250UKP, and can give up some Sky-specific channels, like Sky One. If you live in Western Europe and want to watch and record UK TV this is ideal again. Right now at least, I am happy to give it 5/5

Review: Superplexus

Superplexus is a 3D maze toy that involves you turning a plastic ball around and around on all axes trying to get a ball bearing from 1-100. Although it was a flop for manufacturer Tiger Electronics when released in 2002, it's an excellent pastime for "grown-ups" who are waiting on a render, or want to concentrate on something away from the dreaded computer. I will do a video to put on this post as soon as I can figure out the best way to do it - I'm currently thinking of strapping the camera to my head - because with the ball bearing not being very big, it can be difficult to see in the crowded interior of the ball. All I can say with certitude is that this is something that everyone ought to have a go at.

I've had a look on eBay in the US, UK, France and Germany and there are all examples available there for less than 30 (£|$|€), so go to it!

To learn more about Michael McGinnis, the inventor, or Superplexus itself, go to: http://www.santarosa.edu/~mmcginni/myart/invention/superplexus/

Review: Canon Digital Ixus 95 IS

We've had a Pentax Optio for a few years now. It replaced our Fuji that was our first digital camera, so the immediate leap in resolution, screen size, speed and image quality amazed us. This replacement comes faster on the heels of the Pentax, but even so, amazes us in its own way. One of the reasons we needed a new camera was that the Pentax's startup time was seemingly an age - when most of your photos are of kids it's very easy to lose the moment, so the fact that the Canon is ready to go in less than a second is more a necessity than a luxury.

We're not photographers so by leaving it in full auto we don't feel limited and actually appreciate the speed at which it reacts to new subject material (such as going into portrait mode when it detects one or more faces). It does mean that the camera is never silent as it busily whirs to change the focal distance and aperture, but it's good that it's busy trying to make sure I get the photo I want.

Hardware
The camera is smaller even than the Pentax we had before, but feels very solid in use. The zoom control is the twist-around-the-shutter-button type, while I preferred the Pentax's dedicated button, but by the same count, the switch on the back between full auto, program and video means you don't have to go into menus to video something like you do on the Pentax. The screen on the back of the camera is also accompanied by an optical viewfinder if you'd rather make the battery last as long as possible, but since it's not TTL and you don't have the same info overlay you do with the screen, I don't think it's really a worthwhile addition to the camera. The macro on this camera is from 3cm compared to the Pentax's 10cm, which makes for better shots of insects and the like (not that I've photographed any yet to find out if the autofocus places emphasis on just the wrong part like the Pentax did). The camera apparently has the same Digic 4 processor as Canon's high end DSLRs looking for faces and other subject types the whole time and the camera certainly feels responsive. There is also red eye correction while shooting or afterwards that works very well in most cases, although eyes that are side on get left a little red, as is usual. Lastly for me, the fact that the camera supports Canon's PictBridge system (as might be expected) means that you can hook the camera directly to the printer and print out perfect shots.

Software
I didn't install the CD that came with the camera, but it's the usual mix of Canon stuff: the picture navigator and so on. They are okay as far as manufacturer software is concerned, but I have no need of them. So let's turn to the way the camera's UI is organised. First off the Play button on the back allows you to simply turn on the camera to show pictures you've taken, without "extruding" the lens and when in program mode, the different settings are easy to reach through a simple menu system. It's a shame that you can't do a rule of thirds display in auto mode (seemingly) since that would really help with composition since you no longer need to worry about exposure, white balance or anything else, but this is a small exception to an otherwise well-organised camera.

When you're connected directly to a PictBridge printer, a new screen pops up to allow you to select one or more shots to print out. My only gripe here is that although the printer displays a panel saying "let your camera choose settings" you still need to set the paper tray on the printer, otherwise you get lovely photo prints up in the corner of an A4 sheet if you're not careful, this however is almost certainly an EBKAC rather than a problem with the camera. Even so, what's the point of asking what paper size you want in the camera without at least verifying that there's paper of the requisite size in the printer, and where?

Conclusion
We bought the camera for 199€ and it came with a Canon case and 4GB SD card, about the same price we paid for the Pentax four years ago, and half what we paid for the Fuji in 2000 and it's certainly a fine camera for the money - lightning fast in use and producing some great-looking images, particularly when printed. One of the reasons we settled on this specific camera was thanks to a very in-depth review on the Photography Blog website and I recommend you go there to see example images taken with this camera since they set up specific test cases including chromatic aberrations, macro tests and more that I really don't have the time or inclination to do. Overall, this camera is great. There is very little to complain about if you have a PictBridge printer as well for very quick, good-looking snaps. For more serious photography, why are you even looking at a compact camera? 4/5

Review: acekard 2i

The acekard 2i is a card for running homebrew DS software. It sits in the slot where you'd normally put your game of choice and can be used quite successfully to run dodgy copies of games as it turns out, but my main reason for getting it was to get reading material on my DSi. The acekard 2i I bought came with a 4GB microSD card and a USB adaptor for same to enable reading/writing on the PC. I bought it from the UK to take advantage of the strong Euro and so it cost about 25€ instead of the 35€ asked for locally. In the thrill of getting it I also downloaded some pirated games; Colors; Lemmings and the DSReader software.

Pirated games
Obviously, the main reason these cards are decried as pirates' playthings is the ability to put multiple games on the memory card, so let's get this pernicious aspect out of the way first. I wanted to see just how easy it was. A search of Google later and I had Sonic Rush, a game I didn't own, on there. Because I put Sonic Rush on there and played it, it meant I went out and bought an original copy of the game within a day (above all for Finn since it's just too fast for these tired old synapses), and thus ended my experimentation with dodgy software.

Colors
This is a natural paint package that uses the pressure sensitivity of the DS' lower screen in order to paint images. You can save your progress as an animation with some amazing results having been uploaded to the Colors site, like this astonishingly-lifelike polar bear and cub. The controls are intuitive, I just wish I was more artistic to be able to profit better from it.

Lemmings
Yes, this is exactly the Amiga classic. There are a couple of rejigs to suit the smaller screen real estate available to the DS, namely a zoom in function that allows you to get up close and personal, but otheriwse this is the complete Lemmings and the Oh no more Lemmings add-on level pack.

DSReader
This is the only homebrew reader I could get to work nicely. It only works with standard US-ASCII text files, doesn't give a page number or progress bar for where you are in the book and doesn't support more advanced page layout, such as provided in the XML-based ePub format. That said, it displays across both screens (holding the DS as though you were playing a game, rather than a book), supports size-adjustable, anti-aliased TTF fonts, can invert the screen and keeps track of up to three bookmarks per book. I tried several other ebook readers - namely the ascii text reader built-in in the acekard OS (didn't handle para breaks as nicely as DSReader, not anti-alised, but on the plus side screen orientation is user-definable), ReadMore (Bjorn Geisler's stalled alpha version doesn't support screen interaction on the DSi), DSLibris is defunct seemingly and I didn't like the look of TextReader. I really wish I could code, or knew someone who worked for Nintendo so I could propose a legitimate DS cartridge, with a microSD slot in it, like the acekard and a kick-ass ebook reader. The DS would kick seven bells out of Kindle, etc. and ebooks could be sold on the DSi store in additon to the MicroSD card being readable elsewhere. The reader would need to cope with a variety of ebook formats since there isn't a settled standard yet (apart from maybe ePub) and support page orientation, Unicode, font anti-aliasing, etc.

Other
As I posted in a previous rant, the DS is ripe for more useful software than just games. As Colors shows, the possibility to be creative doesn't depend on a large screen and Windows or OS X. Even Nintendo's own sound tool, while gimmicky, encourages the creative side of users. I did try a couple of other apps. DSOrganize, while promising also suffers from the same inability to use the touchscreen on the DSi, Moonshell seemingly didn't offer anything over and above what the acekard OS could do since it wouldn't play the dpg movie I converted and while DSVideo might have worked I balked at using 2GB on the card to store a paltry 90min movie in 256x192 resolution!

I've since found other software, but I cannot access my MicroSD card on the PC for some reason. While it still works fine on the DS and I am in the middle of a couple of books I shan't reformat the thing to see if that cures the ailment, otherwise I will be stuck with what I have forevermore (or until I buy a new memory card - isn't it amazing how cheap and tiny MicroSD cards are?!)

Since this is a review, it needs a score. If only I was a coder I would happily give this 5/5, but since I am but a n00b and have to wait for others to give me what I want, it has to just be 4/5. That said, if you are a coder, please get one and get in touch so we can make beautiful ebook reading together? And if you want to use your DS for more than just Mario in all his guises and you want some of this get the acekard 2i, get it now. Now, can I get back to reading Crime and Punishment please?

Review: Gremlins (1984)

This film still had a 15 certificate on DVD, so I was a little worried about watching it with my son, but really the rating is a little confusing. The only bad language in Gremlins217 is someone getting called an asshole, and the violence is nothing worse than Doctor Who and a lot less realistic. Finn, who is six found it an amusing romp and loved when Gizmo drove the car. For me, it's impressive to see how well the effects stand up today, with large crowds of the evil mogwai marching down the road and a clever trick in the cinema where I would say that they filmed the seats three times and then projected two of the filmed occasions on screens on either side of the seats to give the impression that the cinema is much larger, and more full than it is. As is now common in our jumpcut! faster! more! world, it does seem a little slow, but it's still good. Zach Galligan and Phoebe Cates were shining stars when this film came out so I wondered what they'd be doing since. Phoebe Cates married Kevin Kline in 1989 and basically retired from acting, and Zach Galligan is still in films today, but not ones that garner major box office for Amblin... 3/5

Review: Picross

Picross? Pic-crack more like. This is a very simple game, a bit like the old logic problems, but reduced to even simpler aims. There was a game on the GameBoy Advance called Mario's Picross originally, and this is a DS version with all the abilities that the DS brings. In smaller puzzles, like the starter 5x5 grids, or the basic 10x10 grids, the puzzle is presented in its entirety on the lower screen, where you mark boxes with squares or crosses in order to bhuild a pixelised picture of something. In the later levels, grids are 15x15, 20x20 or even 25x20 on the last level and at that point, the ability to either put down a square or cross is joined by a scroll function and a zoom function to grant you an oversight of the entire puzzle, like the top screen (not something I use often). In normal mode you are increasingly penalised when you make a mistake - with your first mistake two minutes are added to your total time, then four, then eight and eight and eight and so on. If you go over an hour you have failed. With free mode you get no penalties, but also no help - you have to keep rearranging your pieces until you solve the puzzle. This was a game I got from the supermarket because it was on offer cheap. I also got it to try and get Fona playing a little on the DS. It didn't take for a couple of months, but now she loves it.

This may be simple, but like the best puzzle games it doesn't need to be any more complex to keep you engaged, sometimes for hours at a time. Best of all, if you wish to try it for yourself, you don't need a DS or to spend money. While looking for images to pepper this review with I found a site called wiipicross where you can play the games for yourself. Try it, but don't blame me if you become less productive... 5/5

Review: Blast from the Past (1999)

Blast from the Past (219) is a sweet little film. The story revolves around Christopher Walken's character Calvin and his pregnant wife Helen, played by Sissy Spacek. Calvin is a scientist who makes his own fallout shelter in the garden of his house because of growing nuclear tensions. There is a party in the house, the night Kennedy makes the Cuban speech on TV and so Calvin gets rid of the guests and he and his wife go down into the fallout shelter. At that moment, a US jet fighter has engine trouble and the plane falls on the house leading Calvin to think the bombs are falling, so he locks the door and sets the timer for 35 years... Their son Adam is born and brought up in the sheltered environment of the well, shelter, and is taught French, German and Latin by dad, and dancing by mum. When the 35 years are over and the locks automatically disengage, Adam gets sent out to find supplies and a girlfriend and comedy ensues. The film is not a great classic, but it is a little gem, sweet and perfectly-formed. There are all manner of time-related misunderstandings and Adam has baseball cards and stocks worth millions (though he doesn't know it). The score I give it might seem low considering how much I like the film, but it's not really worth more... 3/5

Review: Donnie Darko (2001)

Not your average teenage film... Donnie Darko is like a piece of jazz, it plays all the right notes, but not necessarily in the right order. That doesn't stop it from being an enjoyable experience by any means, but it does mean that when the film ends you will more than likely be nonplussed by its giant non-sequitur nature. This is the theatrical version, so apparently a little more obscured than the later director's cut version with its extra twenty minutes of story, exposition and clues. The story goes something like: Donnie is sleepwalking and plagued by a giant, scary bunny rabbit called Frank who tells him to do things like flooding the school and burning down someone's house. He's asleep on a golf course when his house gets hit by a falling jet engine. He gets a girlfriend called Gretchen with whom he goes to an old lady's house. He enters the house by the cellar door and disturbs two burglars who turn out to be the school's resident bullies. Gretchen gets pushed into the road and run over by a guy called Frank, who is wearing a scary bunny costume. Donnie goes home with the dead Gretchen in his arms and steals his sister's car keys and drives up to a high point overlooking their home and sees the engine fall...

In short, this isn't an easy film and if my synopsis has made it confusing, then this isn't the film for you. However, if this synopsis intrigues you, watch the film then go to this site and read through. Oh and don't bother going to www.donniedarko.com because it was long replaced by one of those phishing sites, you can go to the Wayback Machine at archive.org and take it back to roughly 2004 and you can play on the site. 4/5(220)

Our films

We have 440 DVDs in our collection. I have a note of them all on my Palm and we have them arranged on bookcases around our living room. The ones in the portrait photo are in "Finn's collection" and on the other shelves they are in ours. Since we have all these DVDs, and since there are a couple still in their shrink wrap(!) we decided (well I did) that we should watch them all at least once to make their purchase worthwhile. Now, this is not a problem with the films in Finn's collection, so I struck those off the 440 to watch at least one recorded time. Also, TV series on disc would take a disproportionate amount of time to watch, so I knocked those off too. That still left us with over 260 to watch. With my work the way it is now, it's not always easy to find time together to watch a film, but one of the strictures placed on this watching was that we both had to watch the films, even if it was topics we didn't care for.

Anyway, the Star Wars films are part of our collection, so watching TPM and AotC counted against the total we had to watch, so even though they are really bad, there was one good thing that came from watching them, we're now down to 220 left to watch (and with eps 3-6 still to go, that'll be another four off the list). I shall try to remember to do a little review of the films we watch on here in case gives the reader (there's probably only one, right?) the incitement to watch a film.

Goodbye Lenin 4/5(223)
This is a lovely film. It starts as a farce, with the mother of a young guy (Alex) in East Berlin going into a coma (bear with me okay) just before the Berlin wall falls and so missing the changeoever to a capitalist society. Alex is allowed to take her home to recover when she wakes, but on the understanding that she is subject to no shocks, so Alex rearranges the flat back into its communist state, getting rid of all the new furniture they bought and so on. He enlists his wannabe film director friend in helping to make fake news bulletins to cover up lapses in the deception and the humour is based around these cover-ups. At about the 2/3rds point, another event occurs that changes the tone of the film to bittersweet and it plays out beautifully. 5/5

PS. Pics taken with the DSi camera

OMG why are Star Wars Eps. I and II sooo bad?

Crikey,

What stopped me from noticing the first time around? Finn want to see the Star Wars movies again, so we watched The Phantom Menace (TPM)(222) yesterday and we've just finished watching Attack of the Clones (AotC)(221) this afternoon. What a terrible start to TPM, the text is scrolling up the screen and already I'm yawning. Jar Jar Binks has not aged well, from his tennis ball head that actors can't seem to stare at, to his ridiculous "Uncle Tom-esque" mannerisms. And then in AotC he speaks to a whole senate of several thousand delegates?! And as for that film, from the text onwards... okay, if several thousand star systems are seceding from the republic and since the republic hasn't yet completely collapsed that implies several more thousand star systems are still loyal, exactly how many Jedi are there to police them? No wonder they are feeling overstretched...

Yes, seeing Yoda leaping around after Count Dooku is fun, but it's not that fun. And what is it with Jedi? Once they become teachers, they completely lose track of the Force? From Qui-Gon Jinn saying he felt nothing out of the ordinary while his padawan Obi-Wan Kenobi was jumpy at the start of TPM, to then completely ignoring the very obvious danger signals while his padawan Anakin was suggesting something might be amiss in the chase sequence with the assassin? Bah, still at least our great minds thought alike on a possible suggestion for why everything in the 1-3 trilogy seems far more advanced than thirty years later in the 4-6 trilogy. It's the war innit? If you think back to the glowing and glorious 1930s and then the austerity after the second world war, it's kinda similar, no?

Anyway, George Lucas: EPIC FAIL

ps. I know it's been ten years since TPM came out, so I possibly a little late with this opinion piece, but I'm not sure it can be said enough.

Review: Gake no ue no Ponyo (Ponyo on The Cliff)

Just back from seeing the sublime "Gake no ue no Ponyo", known in English as "Ponyo on The Cliff" and "Ponyo sur la Falaise" in French. It's a hand-drawn animation that really shows up CG in the opening sequence with thousands of moving elements (shoals of fish swimming). In terms of intended audience age the story is pitched between Totoro and Kiki and there were several nods to previous Miyazaki films with the flooded road being reminiscent of Chihiro's flooded railway, Fujimoto resembling a thin male Yubaba, and the baby they meet being a normal-sized version of the big baby (no, not George Dawes) from the same film. The story goes that a five-year old boy called Sosuke rescues a goldfish trapped in a discarded jar and names it Ponyo. The goldfish is actually the offspring of Fujimoto and the goddess of the sea and when Ponyo is in Sosuke's company she realises she really wants to be human too. There are plenty of extended wordless sequences that just allow you to appreciate the quality of the animation and the film is never boring. Where it sits on my chart of Miyazaki films? Difficult to decide just on one viewing, but it's up there with Totoro and Laputa for sure. The only fly in the ointment is that there's no release date for the UK for it, and although this is not even a really widescreen production (I would say 1.76:1 at most) it really deserves to be seen on the big screen. 4/5

Review: Monsters vs. Aliens

We've seen this film twice now, once in 2D once in stereoscopic. Before I proceed onto a potted review of the film itself, I just want to talk about the difference seeing it in 3D made - not much apart from a lighter wallet. Seeing it in stereoscopic added another 9€ to the costs of the tickets and didn't actually add much to the experience. Sure, there were the ooh bits where the scientist in Antartica played with the bat and ball game and a few other such moments but in the main it didn't really add a lot to the film.

Onto the film itself. We saw it in French so some of the dialogue was no doubt lost to us, but it was a fairly standard plot with the creature from the black lagoon, the blob, the 50' woman, the fly and Gamera all of whome have been captured by the government and put to work defeating an alien invasion. Lots of stuff for grown-ups familiar with the genre, from the Close Encounters theme, Steve McQueen's baseball throwing to the initial missiles from the attacking warplanes hitting a shield à la ID4. The quality of the animation is splendid as you'd expect apart from a couple of the vehicles in the Golden Gate bridge sequence where it looked like the previz models and animation got left in final compositing! Bob (the blob character) must have been a swine to animate but his seamless nature never wavered.

All in all, enjoyable, beautiful, but nothing startling. 3/5

Review: Nintendo DSi

Just trying to write a post on the blog from the DS itself. Obviously, typing isn't much fun, and although the DS has a camera I don't know if there's a way to upload a pic.

There is handwriting recognition but it is very slow although it does recognise 'natural' writing, rather than using glyphs like the Palm. Too tiring to continue...

Okay, so carrying on on the more normal format of the PC. Onto generalities first.

Build
The new DSi is not as high, slightly wider and the same depth as the DS Lite and rather than the lacquered finish of its predecessor the DSi is matt black (or white, if you're a girl). The power button has been moved to the left side of the screen inside the clamshell, and the volume slider that was mounted on the front of the DS Lite is on the left side of the console. The power supply socket is different to the DS Lite's and it also won't get into your DS Lite case. I never used the Gameboy Advance slot in the front of the DS Lite, so I don't care that it's not on the DSi, but apparently those that like homebrew software for their DS are disappointed. The acekard 2i I just ordered apparently works just fine for this purpose (I bought it to play MP3s and read books, believe it or not).

The buttons are less raised (with the exception of the shoulder buttons that now stand proud of the console rather than being flush with the case as in the DS Lite. I'm not sure why this decision was taken as it makes the console less comfortable for these hads to hold, especially in Mario Kart. The buttons also now have an annoying micro-switch click meaning that late night gaming sessions in bed are annoyingly loud.

It is nice that you can hold down the select button and use the volume controls to raise and lower the brightness of the screen in-game, rather than having to turn the unit off to do so, and the quit hit of the power switch that returns you to the main menu is also appreciated.

Software
The DSi has an updated interface that is far more "iPhone" than the DS Lite with icons you can swish around, and has three major new additions, one of which is the main reason for buying the DSi. These are a camera (or pair of them, one inside, one out), a sound tool and a web browser (that I used to post the start of this post). The browser is the same Opera-sourced browser as the Wii has, only rejigged a bit for the smaller screen real estate of the DSi. It has a column mode to read web pages adjusted to fit onto the two screens and scrolling up through them. Overview mode by contrast uses the top screen to show the whole page in miniature with a red box on it showing the area shown on the bottom screen.

The DSi shop is like the Wii shop on that console. The first reason to go there is to get the browser (free of charge) and to claim your 1,000 DSi points to spend on other software. You cannot limit access to the DSi shop meaning that small fingers can go there and download software without your wanting to. The Parental lock only affects what games can be played on the DSi, a serious oversight in my opinion. The DSi shop also uses its own "currency" DSi points, that don't seem to be interchangeable with Wii points or DS stars, resulting in a overcomplex system.

The built-in camera and sound software means that the DSi might get used less for playing actual games than playing around and both offer some nice features. I particularly liked the face tracking in the camera software to put a moustache or glasses on a face, and the sound playback altering pitch and duration always raises lots of giggles from Finn.

Conclusion
If it hadn't been for the ability to browse the web (using a WPA2 wifi connection) and use an SD card for storage I probably wouldn't have looked twice at the DSi. The DS Lite is a fantastic little game console and hard to improve upon. The DSi is not for everyone in my opinion, if all you want to do is play games then you don't need it. With the problems with the parental controls and buttons I can't give it more than 3/5.

Review: Logitech Z-5500 THX 5.1 sound system

I've wanted an amp and speaker setup since our Aiwa stereo packed in two years ago. That was only Pro-Logic, but there wasn't an easy replacement for it. Either we went for a dedicated tuner/amp and speakers or we were faced with having to buy a separate DVD player with amp and speaker combo, which I really didn't want to do. Then I spotted this set and found a few very positive reviews on it. Logitech's top-of-the-range speaker system has been around a while now (I found reviews from 2007), and I can see why in this age of rapid turnaround and obsolescence that is so. The Z-5500 handles Dolby Digital, Pro-Logic II, dts and is THX certified. The connections on the back of the control unit are one SPDIF optical, one SPDIF coax and three 3.5mm connectors. These can either be used for one direct 6-channel input, from a computer for instance, or three separate 3.5mm inputs - I have two used right now, one for an Airport connection and one for the Wii. There's also one 3.5mm input on the side for connections that aren't as "permanent" and a 3.5mm output for headphones.

The four main speakers are identical, while the centre speaker looks similar, but is on its mount horizontally rather than vertically. The Z-5500 comes with standard speaker cable for all five speakers in 4.5m lengths for the two front speakers and centre, and two 7.5m lengths for the rear speakers. The cables all connect to the sizeable and weighty subwoofer unit, as does the control box into which you plug the outputs from your sound generating devices.

We've tested the speakers with several movies now (Constantine, Kronk's New Groove and The Fifth Element) and speech was clear (apart from one sequence in Constantine we had trouble hearing in the cinema as well indicating a deeper-seated problem than just with this sound system), the surround was excellent and the bass was certainly rumbly enough. For playing music through iTunes (via an AirPort Express connection) was okay but seemed a bit thin until I swapped the effects mode on the amp to "Stereo x2", which duplicated the front speakers with the rear speakers. The Wii also outputs sound through the amp now and Sonic Unleashed (the only game I've tried so far) sounded great.

All is not perfect with the system. I would like it if the speakers didn't have their bases attached - the centre speaker is quite obtrusive in front of our TV. The 1-3 speaker switch isn't very well explained until you actually look into the manual, making the quick install sheet less useful, but the biggest problem for me is that considering Logitech also make a universal remote in the Harmony, the commands for the amp aren't very good. The effects switch between DD, dts, Stereo and Stereo x2 doesn't have discrete commands, but rather a simple toggle to switch between them meaning that you need to keep pressing that Effects button until your desired mode comes up, rather than simply hitting "dts" or Stereo x2 for instance. Considering the lack of feedback possible because the remote is purely a sending device, it seems daft to actually make it harder to know what Effects mode you are currently in.

Even with this black mark, the Logitech Z-5500 is an outstanding system. It may have been conceived purely for a rich kids' PC but it works for my needs as an AV amp admirably. 4/5

Review: Philips 37PFL5603H 94 cm/37" LCD TV

Remember how I said I'd review the TV once we had it all set up? Well here we go.

Looks
This television looks fantastic. Its monolithic black construction might appear huge if not palliated by the fact that because it's so thin it doesn't seem to take up much space. The gloss black finish does mean it attracts dust like students are attracted to the Glastonbury festival though, so an anti-static cleaner is a must (or a Filipino maid on hand). Although we use our universal remote control (a Logitech Harmony 525), the remote supplied with the TV is a very no-nonsense understated black job.

I/O
This TV comes with three HDMI ports (two on the back with space for another, and one on the side), two SCART sockets, component and composite (on the side). The TV is a full HD set at 1920 x 1080p and has a built-in DVB HD tuner meaning that we get HD French TV. It also has a USB port on the side that you can put pictures, music and firmware upgrades on.

Performance
The first thing to do when you get the set is to turn off all the "intelligent" colour and brightness settings. They make the picture just too vivid, too saturated. Other than that picture quality is good, even on SD material and a good DVD really shines. The HD signal is something else entirely and it is amazing to see. Because our TV gets DVB, the French version of which is TNT, it means that some programmes, notably films, have multiple soundtracks, much like DVDs, so we can actually watch films that would normally be dubbed into French in their original English on French TV. Channel changes, particularly between HD channels feel very slow.

Conclusion
We bought this TV and then found that there was an offer in another shop that basically got the 42" version of the same TV for a little less than this cost, but it had only SD TNT and 42" would really be too big for our lounge I feel. So I am pretty happy with this set. It's still early days to be able to see how well it performs over an extended period and we haven't really explored all its features yet. It's our first HD set, so we might be overly amazed. An HD signal is great, but DVD brought over improvements than just resolution over VHS, so I'm still expecting to see something else - the fact that digital TV can have more language tracks and so on means that you do get additional features, but these are related to digital TV, not HD.

We are getting a Freesat HD box in the post shortly so I will update this review once we have that. 4/5