Nick.

As you may have read on Jason’s blog, I have a Wii… and it is awesome… revolutionary even. That is all for now, but expect detailed reviews here and at Aeropause in the next few days.

Update: spinboy has put up some videos on his blog.

I decided to mention here (rather than at the OneTwenty Events blog) that OneTwenty will be at the Perth Massive 2006. We’re even listed on the website as a community group:

Minh and I are planning on making shirts this weekend by screenprinting. Any OneTwenty members planning to attend the Massive should meet us this weekend and bring along an item of clothing for printing on (We’ll send out more details via email). Anything will do: t-shirts, polo shirts, business shirts, jackets, skirts, trousers, jumpsuits…

OneTwenty stencil designs available for review after the jump.

Continue reading “OneTwenty at Perth Massive 2006”

A few months ago on my old blog (currently offline) I mentioned that I pretty much have everything I want and encouraged people who wanted to buy me a birthday present to donate money to one of my preferred charities instead. It didn’t really work out; No one donated. 🙁

Undeterred, I’m giving it another go and trying to figure out what went wrong. Maybe people felt that a donation isn’t present-like enough, or my list was too long (offering too many possibilities), or people didn’t want to give their credit card details out to a charity (odd, since many would trust an online store).

Bearing in mind the factors above, I’m asking anyone considering getting me a gift this holiday season to buy me something from Oxfam Unwrapped.

From the website:

Are you sick of giving socks, bath salts, or token gifts? Is this festive season going to give you gifting grief? Yes, trying to choose gifts for some people can be quite an ordeal – and that’s why we’ve developed Oxfam Unwrapped. It’s a unique collection of gift ideas that help you give something special to your friends or family and give something extra special to people who haven’t got much at all.

Basically, they use your money to provide items to those who need it and they send a card (explaining the gift) to the friend of family member that you are buying on behalf of. It’s present-like, it’s got the interface of an online store, and it’s the only thing on my wish list for the holidays. So, please consider it; I honestly can not think of any gift that would make me happier.

Note: Thanks to my name is not deenie for posting a link to Oxfam Unwrapped on her blog (that’s how I found out about it). Hopefully it’s the answer to my wish list conundrum.

OneTwenty web services were temporarily down earlier today, possibly due to an attempted hack. The kernel caught a TCP window shrink attempt:

TCP: Treason uncloaked! Peer 220.128.54.50:2072/80 shrinks window

This page has a few explainations of what the problem could be. The http site at the IP address in question looks to be a vanilla Mandrake install. Running a reverse DNS lookup reveals that the computer is somewhere in China (that is, if it isn’t a masqueraded IP).

Anyhow, the kernel caught the problem and I used iptables to automatically drop packets originating from that IP address. Anyone else have something like this happen recently?

Update: Installed OSSEC per Steve‘s suggestion. The latest version (0.9.3) installs easily (following the instructions in the manual) and even creates the /etc/init.d/ossec file for easy use in Ubuntu!

Martin pointed out on the IGDA Perth internal mailing list that it looks like Interzone Games has decided to come to Perth. His reasoning is that Melbourne is no longer listed as a possible location on their (rather minimalist) website. (All the job descriptions list “Perth, WA” as the location.)

This should be good news for the local games development industry.

Seriously! I think I’m having some sort of adverse reaction. I’m sure I’ll get over it though… by the time that I wake up tomorrow.

It tasted so good; why does it make me feel so bad?

(Image from Wikipedia.)

Everytime I’m at a fast food place, I’m amazed by the amount of packaging that is used solely to transport food from the kitchen to your mouth, and then discarded. It’s clearly incredibly wasteful, but nobody seems to notice or care. Fair enough (most people aren’t immediately concerned), but shouldn’t there be some legislation against such gross waste?

A few places make inconsistent efforts to provide plates and cutlery. Nandos will put your food on a plate if you’re dining in, but they will often include some unnecessary packaging as well. For example, they will wrap the burger in grease-proof paper, or place the chips in a bag and then on the plate. What’s the point? Are their plates dirty or something?

I think the general perception would be that it’s crazy to make fast food places provide plates and glasses for dine-in, but I really feel that this has just been trained by familiarity (rather than based in logic). Other types of restaurants serve food on reuseable crockery; Why not fast food restaurants? When I was in Thailand, KFC served food on a special food tray (like a plate with sections) and drinks in glasses. It just made sense.

I’m amazed by the apparant success of advertisting campaigns that are completely incompatible with the product being sold. I’m not talking about ads that seem to have nothing to do with the product (eg. those ones that consist of unrelated overtly sexually imagery accompanying a product logo), I’m talking about campaigns that read like serious cases of self-denial.

Take the “campaign for real beauty” from beauty products manufacturer Dove. What are they saying? You’re beautiful, but still buy our Natural Glow and hair care products? That’s totally insane! How can people take it seriously? Who buys beauty products when they are entirely happy with how they look?

And then there’s McDonald’s recent focus on presenting a healthy lifestyle full of nutrition and exercise. What do french fries and soft drinks have to do with a healthy lifestyle? Sure they have introduced some “healthy options” to their menu, but who goes to McDonald’s to buy a salad?

Normally, I’d think “you can’t be serious, no one would actually believe these campaigns“, but they seem to be working. So who are these campaigns appealing to? I think Dove is selling to people who previously figured that they were too unattractive to bother trying. They’re are now presented with a redefined version of beauty that they can acheive (if they buy the right products)!

What about McDonald’s? They want to convince people that going to eat at their restaurants isn’t necessarily unhealthy. They want to impart a feeling that they know all about health and are personally concerned for your well-being. You can have the peace of mind to walk in knowing that you could get something healthy, but chances are you’ll walk out with a quarter pounder with cheese meal. Upsized.

Note: I like what Max Barry had to say about McDonald’s “make up your own mind” campaign:

The word “condescending” springs to mind.

I started a new blog for local events of interest to OneTwenty members and similarly minded people. Check it out at http://events.onetwenty.org/. I’ve also added it to the OneTwenty Feed Reader (http://feeds.onetwenty.org/) so people can keep track of events that way as well.

Minh is helping me with content for the site and we will be posting information leading up to events, and then writeups afterwards. At the moment, we have categories for next month’s Perth Massive and Nullarbor Mixer. Please visit and comment on posts to let us know what you want out of these events. If we’re helping to organise the event, we’ll take it into account; If not, hopefully the organisers are reading as well!

The IGDA Perth Chapter and OneTwenty are proud to invite all aspiring digital artists and programmers interested in developing entries for next year’s Nullarbor Demo and Game Development Competition to a special event designed to help people form groups and get organised!

Since next year’s Nullarbor competition will be part of the GO3 Electronic Entertainment Expo, this is great opportunity to showcase Perth developers to the world. If you haven’t already started it’s not too late, and we want to help you find the right mix of people to create that perfect game!

Mixer details:

• Time/Date: 2pm – 5pm, Saturday 16 December 2006
• Location: Room 13.225, Building 13, ECU Mt. Lawley campus
• Contact: RSVP to perth@member.igda.org (as artist or programmer)

I’ve planned a few things to make finding and talking to people a little easier, and it’s very important for people interested in attending this event to RSVP (for catering and organisation purposes). There will be computers available for people to demonstrate their previous work to their peers, and space for people who want to bring laptops or portfolios.

I’ve included the invite sent out to the IGDA mailing list after the jump.

Continue reading “PC demo and game development mixer (16 December)”