June 2006

I picked up a DS lite over the weekend.

When they originally came out, I scoffed at the relatively low graphics capabilities and childish games and waited for the Sony PSP. Having a PS 2 in your hand that can play movies and connect to the internet was a huge pull.

Fast forward from September 2005 to now and I’m slowly getting disillusioned with my black gaming brick. I’ve collected around a dozen or so games and I’ve hardly played ten of them. The PSP really lacks ‘new’ games. It has a bunch of relatively poor ports from the PS 2 that don’t translate well on the smaller screen and one thumb stick. Indeed, most FPS games (Splinter Cell, SOCOM Navy Seals, etc) really suffer with just one thumbstick. We’re used to using one thumbie to look and one to move and PSP designers haven’t really found a neat way to overcome that. Splinter Cell has an awful camera system where you have to stop and hold down a shoulder button to turn the thumb stick into ‘move camera’ which means you’re stopping every five seconds to adjust the camera angle. It makes the game virtually unplayable. SOCOM fares a little better but ends up with a vague auto-aiming system which takes the skill out of the game and you often find yourself shooting at things you can’t really see. It’s just not fun. At all. Actually, it’s boring.

The DS lite caught my eye because of the original games. OK, it can’t push out a trillion polygons a second with high quality surround sound and it can’t display a billion colours and it can’t really compete with the pure power of the PSP. And that’s where it wins, hands down. The DS and the forthcoming Wii have some really cool innovative games which are fun because they don’t rely on pretty graphics alone.

I really can’t state just how much fun they are. The DS touch screen is genius, it’s like having a mouse back. Metroid Prime Hunters is a FPS and it works because you use the stylus to move the camera and use the directional pad to move - just like using a keyboard / mouse combo on your computer. Brain Training is another innovative title; you’re asked various questions (such as basic maths, memory tests, etc) and you write the answers using the stylus or say the answers aloud. You can set up your profiles and train every day and graphs show your progress.

On top of that is that Nintendo ‘get’ multi-player gaming. A lot of the titles have ’single-card multiplayer’ mode where you share a game with up to 15 other players. Debbie and I have calculation battles on Brain Training (no, listen, it really is fun) and spent an hour playing Boggle last night (she keeps winning). I know the PSP offers ‘ad-hoc’ mode but you both have to own the UMD game to play which is great if you have PSP owning friends and get together now and again for multi-player matches but not so much fun for couples who don’t want to buy a single game twice.

The DS may not do internet browsing and it may not play movies and it certainly doesn’t do amazing next-gen graphics but it does put the fun back into portable gaming. You’ve got to feel for Sony. Falling interest in UMD movies, falling interest in the phenominally expensive PS 3 and the stupidity of trying to push another media format (betamax or mini-disc anyone?) doesn’t bode well.

Nintendo is Wii-ing on Sony from a very great height.

Despite waiting a week, I couldn’t convince myself not to get a new MacBook (1.83ghz, 1g ram) - so I put through the order last week and just before the weekend a knock at the door confirmed its delivery.

Now, despite being an ardent and self confessed MacTard I didn’t just buy this on a whim and neither did I buy it just because it’s something new with an apple logo on it. It is very shiny, however.

For the past year or so I’ve had a rather ugly PC laptop (or black brick as I fondly call it). It’s an ageing Compaq running Windows 2000 which I use to debug IE CSS and JS in my code. The problem with the said brick is that it only runs Win2000 and isn’t capable of running XP at a decent rate and IE7 Beta only running on XP causes a problem.

I needed a new laptop that can run XP. Enter BootCamp, Apple’s beta software to enable new Intel equipped Macs to boot into XP natively.

Colour me interested.

So, after purchasing a new copy of XP Home edition (with SP 2, no less) I set about installing XP. The great thing about BootCamp is that Apple does all the hardwork  for you. It creates the partition for the windows operating system without the need to reformat the hard drive and it burns a CD with all the required drivers for you (such as video, keyboard, bluetooth, etc).

It really can’t be understated just how smoothly the process went. The most difficult “bits” were the XP installation (scary blue screens, lots of waiting between clicking, etc). After around an hour or so the MacBook booted into XP and started installing the drivers.

It’s quite a sight seeing a Mac running XP natively. I’ve tried emulation before and it’s too slow and too cumbersome to be really useful on a day to day basis. BootCamp enables me to use my MacBook as a PC during the day for work and as a Mac in the evenings.

Naturally, the MacBook isn’t designed as a gaming machine, but most games seem to run just fine on it. Doom 3 runs nicely with a good framerate and detail. XP runs very quickly and that shouldn’t really be a surpise as Windows shows the MacBook as a 1.83ghz Intel machine with 1gig ram. In any case, the MacBook’s airport card works just fine and IE is quick and responsive.

There are a few quirks as to be expected with beta software but none of them are deal breakers. The built in iSight camera is completely ignored by Windows and plugging in headphones or other speakers doesn’t remove the output from the built in speakers. Waking from sleep doesn’t always remember your brightness settings and you need to use [ control ] + [ shift ] + F1 / F2 to change the screen brightness (for a while I figured the brightness keys didn’t work) and I seem unable to wake XP from sleeping after turning it onto standby (although closing the lid puts XP to sleep just fine and opening the lid wakes XP up).

I can’t decide which is more amazing: the fact that XP runs so well on “Mac” hardware or that Apple have made the process so easy and almost flawless. What I do know is that with BootCamp rumoured to appear in OS 10.5 (codename: Leopard), it’s clear that a Mac certainly can change its spots.

Last week, we went to see United 93. For the few that don’t know, it’s a visualization of what happened to the crew and passengers on flight United 93 on the morning of September 11th 2001.

I say “visualization” because it’s not really “based on the events of”. If anything, it’s a reconstruction of that fateful flight.

First off, let’s get the big statements out of the way. It’s hard to say it’s a “good” film because it deals with very sensitive material. It would be imprudent to say “it was a fantastic film”, so I won’t. It’s a very moving and very powerful film that’s ultimately almost too difficult to watch. It’s shot in the shaky immediate style of a documentary which really puts you on that plane. The lack of patriotic flag waving is refreshing and no-one’s a hero. These are ordinary folks in an extraordinary situation.

The film opens on the ‘terrorists’ making preparations for the day ahead. They’re packing bags with modeling clay and electronic toys. They pray. They talk. They’re scared. Controversially, they’re human.

Next up, we’re following the people that are about to board the flight. Thankfully it doesn’t fall into “TV movie” territory by attempting to weave back-stories. Its documentary style merely observes people checking in and waiting at the gate. We follow the cabin crew as they make the plane ready. We overhead their conversations - about looking forward to time off. We see the captain and the copilot walk down the gangway bantering and discussing recent flights and destinations. We’re a voyeur; a ghost just along for the ride.

The movie builds very slowly. We meet the head honcho at the FAA controlling over 4000 flights nationwide. We meet ‘tin-pushers’ barking into their headsets to control traffic over their cities and states. We meet the military barking orders in the dark-light of underground bunkers, talking in code and wearing combats.

Before long, reports of planes being hijacked filter through the different command centers and confusion builds along with the tension. We cut to news reports telling of a small aircraft that’s crashed into the World Trade Center. More confusion. More panic. No one knows what’s going on. More reports of hijacked planes. Tin pushers overhear garbled transmissions from the hijackers.

We cut to the Kennedy air traffic tower as they zero in on a low flying 767 barely scraping the Manhattan skyline.

We cut to the real-life footage of the plane hitting the second tower.

Then silence.

The impact of that moment is reflected on the faces of the ground staff and military as they try and process what they’ve just seen - and this moment is shared with the cinema audience. We’ve all seen that clip a hundred times but in the context of the movie with its build up it’s a really powerful moment and it brings a new dimension to that awful day.

News of the attack reaches the pilots of United 93 and it’s not long before the terrorists are cutting throats and showing their fake, homemade bombs. I can’t fully explain how ‘real’ it all feels and just how difficult it is to watch.

There are many poignant moments. The final phone calls home - based on the real life testimony of the surviving families. The terrorists praying to their god to help them complete their mission and the passengers praying to their god hoping the terrorists don’t complete their mission. The plane spinning and falling out of the sky as the passengers fight back…

The final five minutes of the movie is just painful. We know how it’s going to end but that doesn’t stop us willing for a different ending and when the house lights go up at the end we’re all just sitting there, too stunned to move.