Nick.

We’re in Japan now, but Heidi and I spent the last few days at the Navalai River Resort in Bangkok.

It’s on the Chao Phraya in “The Old Siam” area of Bangkok, which is a bit touristy (particularly Khao San Road), but with some classy places moving in (such as the Navalai!).

The Navalai website is pretty awesome as well. Everything on it is true. For example, Heidi and I totally did:

Enjoy the optimize of the relaxation, the hip design and the desire of the perfection.

The coolest thing about the location of the hotel was that there was a riverboat station at the back, and it was easy to go down to Sathorn and hop onto the BTS Skytrain to head down to Silom or Siam Square (where I picked up some cool shirts).

Here’s a view from our hotel room:

It was also pretty close to Chinatown and the wedding shop… which I’ll post about next. 😉

I’m on holiday. To Thailand and then Japan. It’s awesome. More details soon.

OneTwenty has been down for around a week. I would have posted about this earlier… but it was down.

I really need to move the server somewhere other than… at home on my ADSL internet connection. It’s a bit too flaky really. This time my port on the Amcom DSLAM died and the new hardware they swapped in isn’t compatible with my router (so I had to get a new one). 🙁

Jim brought over his old Dreamcast so that we could check out the K-Project Beta. We then decided to play some old games such as: Daytona USA 2001, Marvel vs. Capcom, Space Channel 5, and Crazy Taxi.

Unfortunately, his Dreamcast kept randomly resetting. Irritated, we dug up my Dreamcast and gave that a go. Same problem! Ack! I know that this is a common issue and decided to check the Internet for a solution.

I came across various solutions involving different levels of screwdrivering and the like, but this solution stood out:

For those of you without the bandwidth to see the video; it basically indicates that you should give the Dreamcast a few quick smacks on the backside (“naughty console! stop resetting!”) to make it behave. It worked a treat!

Conclusion: Victory!

BTW: Crazy Taxi is still awesome!

These days I only seem to post to this blog when I have something to tell my friends and family. Thankfully, it’s generally good news!

I’m now a Vice President at Interzone Games, in charge of Australian operations. This means that I’m responsible for operating the Perth Studio and managing the game development team here.

A year ago, I never thought that I would be so personally invested in the company. I was a programmer who wanted to work in games, but also adamant that I wanted to keep my work and personal life separate. I still do keep things separate to a degree, but my commitment to the success of Interzone and my responsiblities to employees are always on my mind.

On a more personal note, work and the people there are a huge part of my life. It’s been fantastic watching the company grow into what it is now, and I’m proud to have been (and continue to be) a part of that.

Neat 1989 Japanese instructional film on how to make animations using an 8mm camera.

via the awesome motionographer

More after the jump.

Continue reading “How to Make an Animation (Oldschool!)”

We’re currently hiring at work. Some jobs aren’t yet listed on the jobs page, but we are after:

• 2x Flash Developers (at least one with a strong programming background)
• 1x Web API Developer (Python and Pylons experience preferred)

to start as soon as possible.

If you live in Perth and want to get into games development, Interzone is a great opportunity. We have a large multi-disciplinary team and there is a lot of room for growth within the organisation. Plus, you know, we make games!

To apply please email jobs ‘at’ interzonegames.com.

Update: If anyone is reading this from outside of Western Australia, we will consider relocation for the right candidate.

I just listened to Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s delivery of the Australian Government’s apology to the Stolen Generations on the ABC website.

I was very surprised by Rudd’s speech. It was very straight-forward in terms of accepting responsibility (for Federal Government Policy) and it didn’t close the door on compensation (rather it asserted that this apology is the first step in reconciliation). I did not expect anything so responsible and dignified. In stark contrast, Opposition Leader Brendan Nelson’s response was very defensive; not so much about resolving past mistakes, but more concerned with insulating the government from future responsibility.

Although this is an important landmark in Australian history, I think it’s clear that an apology isn’t enough. I feel that a lot of people who argue against the apology and against compensation see this as an issue between us (non-indigenous Australians) and them (indigineous Australians). That is entirely not the case; this apology is between the Australian Government and those that it has wronged. The Australian Government must take responsiblity for its actions regardless of whether its current members, or the populace that it represents, were directly involved in prior government policy.

Imagine if we found that a large corporation was responsible for child abuse over 50 years ago. Chances are that no member of the current board would have been directly involved in the child abuse, and the company shareholders may have had absolutely no knowledge of it. The corporation would still be responsible for compensation. Why should the government be any different?

Update: It looks like the government has closed the door on compensation. That’s very disappointing.

via electro^plankton.

This post is more-or-less what my last post started out as… before I got side-tracked explaining why I have a PS3 in the first place.

Shortly after getting the PS3 I started looking for a way to stream videos to it. I learnt that the PS3 requires a UPnP compatible media server and found this helpful blog post explaining how to setup MediaTomb.

The MediaTomb download page has packages for various flavours of Linux, but none specifically for Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon (which I run at home). Fortunely the Ubuntu Feisty Fawn package works fine.

After installing that package and following the instructions linked above I still had to make a few changes to the MediaTomb config file:

~/.mediatomb/config

to ensure that the PS3 could see my computer and play DivX files (a new feature of the recent PS3 v2.10 firmware update).

In the server section I had to add a few things including an explicit IP address (which will be different depending on your machine configuration):

<ip>192.168.0.3</ip>
<protocolInfo extend=”yes”/>

And a new mapping to the mappings section:

<map from=”avi” to=”video/x-divx”/>

I’m not sure why it needs an explicit mapping from file extension to MIME type; it seems like assuming that all AVI files contain DivX movies is a bad idea because it’s not always true. However, streaming wasn’t working otherwise. I didn’t look into it too deeply.