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A Shocking Geolocation Coincedence

Jul 25

Posted by rory in everything else | No Comments

Just tweeted about this.

I’m playing with GeoLocation code, I tested out this example http://bit.lyJEs6h. It gave me the coords of ‘my location’, which actually shows the exact location of the fastcom wifi tower I’m on, a couple of miles away. Fair enough.

The coords came up in a javascript alert dialog which I couldn’t copy, so I just glanced at them, opened up google maps and typed in as much as I could remember. I just wanted to see roughly how accurate it was.

I actually didnt remember the whole thing and ended up typing in numbers that were off by .002 lat and .07 long. Imagine my surprise when google maps showed me my house. The map coords in question were a mere 100ft from my house. In other words, I mistyped both the latitude and longtitude by the exact geographic offsets between my house and the wifi tower.

I am now turning off the computer for the rest of the day, I’m just too freaked out.

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Clearing out deleted playlists in android

Jul 23

Posted by rory in everything else | 10 Comments

Since I got my HTC Hero I’ve gone through 3 software revisions and been relatively happy with it except for one frustrating problem. Playlists synced to the device and then delete from the SD Card are left on the systems internal MediaStore SQLite DB, which all music applications use. In plain english, this means that when I deleted playlists I didnt want anymore, they were still showing up. I tried several apps and posted on several forums asking for help, but no-one could give me a solution.

About 3 days ago I decided I’d had enough and was going to write an app to fix the problem. In a dramatic break from Rory tradition, I actually did write the app, and it actually does work!

PlaylistPurge is a simple android app which deletes any playlists from MediaStore which do not have an associated playlist file on the SD card. You can download the APK here, or the source here.

I hope it helps someone else with the same problem!

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Syncing Music to an Android device on Windows

Jul 10

Posted by rory in android, freeware | No Comments

I’m trying to sync music to hero. Big pain. I want this path ‘Music/AlbumArtist/Album’, so that I can accommodate soundtracks and compilations without fragmenting them by individual artist.
J River Media Jukebox – won’t accept AlbumArtist as a field in the customisable path, just ignores it or creates a folder called ‘[AlbumArtist]‘ – FAIL
DoubleTwist – won’t let me change the path the music is stored in at all – defaults to Music/Artist/Album – FAIL
Songbird – lets me set AlbumArtist in Path, but forgot I did it when I closed and re-opened program. Once I had synced the playlist once, my only option is to delete the playlist from the device, which doesn’t delete the music. Even after physically deleting MP3s on disk, songbird thinks they’re still there and will only re-sync the actual m3u file. SongBird also locks up for about 10 seconds every time I click on the handheld device – FAIL
iTunes – is proprietary spyware that installs all kinds of bullshit I’m not happy with, so I’m not touching it. – FAIL
In the end I decided songbird was closest, so I tried a little harder. Ejected the device, closed Songbird, reconnected device, re-opened songbird. Settings screen screwed itself up, took a while to show me my saved settings again. But in the end, it worked – synced the music to the device in the format Music/AlbumArtist/Album.

I’m trying to sync music to hero. Big pain. I want this path ‘Music/AlbumArtist/Album’, so that I can accommodate soundtracks and compilations without fragmenting them by individual artist.

J River Media Jukebox – won’t accept AlbumArtist as a field in the customisable path, just ignores it or creates a folder called ‘[AlbumArtist]‘ – FAIL

DoubleTwist - won’t let me change the path the music is stored in at all – defaults to Music/Artist/Album – FAIL

Songbird – lets me set AlbumArtist in Path, but forgot I did it when I closed and re-opened program. Once I had synced the playlist once, my only option is to delete the playlist from the device, which doesn’t delete the music. Even after physically deleting MP3s on disk, SongBird thinks they’re still there and will only re-sync the actual m3u file. SongBird also locks up for about 10 seconds every time I click on the handheld device – FAIL

In the end I decided SongBird was closest, so I tried a little harder. Ejected the device, closed Songbird, reconnected device, re-opened songbird. Settings screen screwed itself up, took a while to show me my saved settings again. But in the end, it worked – synced the music to the device in the format Music/AlbumArtist/Album.

All in all, it took about 40 minutes to sync one f**king album to the phone. I really wish the guys behind ImgBurn would take a crack at making music software, I bet there’d be none of this bullshit.

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Android Apps for new users

Jul 5

Posted by rory in android | 2 Comments

I regularly come across people who have just bought android phones, and inevitably we get talking about cool apps you can download. Here’s a list of the best apps I’ve found on Android, stuff that I just can’t get by without at this stage.

  • Astrid - to do list manager, hugely useful. There is a RememberTheMilk app too, but it only works for 30 days then you need to pay for a pro account.
  • Linda File Manager – browse your SD card, install apps from it, copy, cut, paste, move, rename files
  • Seesmic - really great twitter app
  • ChompSMS - way better than the default SMS app
  • Facebook - the official app
  • GMote - control pc / media centre from the phone. You need to install an app on the PC first, but its kinda neat! turns screen into trackpad, so you can actually just mouse around from the couch
  • Meridian - best media player on it – not perfect but better than anything else out there
  • Aldiko - ebook reader. Really good, packed full of neat features and gorgeous to look at and use.
  • Barcode Scanner – scan barcodes and search them on line
  • Evernote - only started using this since I got the phone, but its great! upload notes, photos, sound bytes etc to personal storage
  • pktAuctions - ebay app, not official but very good. You can browse, and bid through it.
  • Google Sky Map – A map of the night sky, uses the built in accelerometer & compass to tell what way you’re pointing. Great for impressing people with.
  • Bump - transfer files and contacts between android phones and/or iphones by bumping them together AKNotepad – simple notepad clone
  • Layar - a neat app which overlays info about your surroundings onto the camera feed,
  • AppManager - lets you uninstall apps, works far better than the standard android uninstaller
  • Flashlight - turns screen white, not particularly bright but better than nothing in the dark!
  • aFile - very useful app which allows you to connect to the phone from your laptop via wifi. If you can’t find the cable right this second but need to download a picture from the camera, you can always email it to yourself, OR you can fire up aFile. Doesn’t always work though
  • NetCounter - essential – keep track of your downloads through wifi or 3g, see how much you’ve used
  • WiFi analyser – lets you see the strength of all the various wifi signals around you
  • DoubleTwist - media player, hooks into desktop client for Windows or Mac, syncs music neatly either from iTunes or other sources. Its a work in progress but very sleek. I still prefer Meridian but I get the feeling I’ll prefer this someday.
  • Qype - Find nearby pubs, shops, restaurants etc.
  • Eirxor - eircom WEP hacking tool, handy if someone you know loses their router password. Thats all I’m saying.
  • Katawa - collection of web comics
  • Twitter - official twitter app. I don’t think It’s as good as Seesmic
  • Epicurious - Recipe app, ties in to Epicurious.com
  • IMDB official app – just launched the other day! Official app for sussing out what the hell that guy is from
  • Grooveshark - streamed music, only works with VIP (Paid) version of GrooveShark though.
  • Shazam - Identify music being played, just like the iphone version.
  • My Tracks – record where you go, how far you’ve travelled and share with friends or keep to yourself

Keyboards:

It’s easy to replace the default keyboard on android, and two stand out as excellent replacements. Swype or Shapewriter. Both use a system where you draw a continuous line through the letters of each word instead of tapping. Both are intuitive and highly useable. Swype has the edge in useability but some prefer ShapeWriter as it can do things like toggle the case (UPPER/lower/Sentence) after a word is written

Far Cry 3

Jun 29

Posted by rory in games | No Comments

Far Cry 3
Seems like I’ve been writing a lot about FarCry 2/3, but I never posted any of it to the blog for some reason. Now that I’ve actually finished the game (finally) I feel like I’m in a postition to actually share my thoughts on it.
Things FarCry 2 did right:
Beautiful Scenery – Nothing looks as pretty as FarCry 2. Probably not even the real thing! =)
Interesting weapons – FC2 was full of weapons exciting weapons. Uzis. M79 Grenade Launchers. Dragunovs. IEDs. Silenced Shotguns. Explosive Crossbows.
Fire – Fire was a dangerous weapon that would often backfire on yourself (no pun intended). Fire is cool.
Immersion – From the map that needed sunlight to be read, to the phone that would appear from a pocket somewhere, I always felt immersed in FC2.
Things FarCry 2 did wrong:
No outdoor friendlies – In the intro we must pass 50 ordinary civilians, and drive through a checkpoint manned by soldiers who don’t fire on sight. Why can’t we have this in the game? All the civilians left in the country are huddled in a handful of buildings. And I would really have appreciated if the ‘checkpoints’ were ceasefire zones. Random gunfights could still have erupted if you drove through too fast, and bandits in their own vehicles could still have been driving around ready for a fight.
Not enough modes of transport – It’s been said before, and it was addressed somewhat in the DLC, but there weren’t enough modes of transport in FC2. Only one (!) type of car, no pickup trucks, no vans, no flatbed trucks, no motorbikes (the quad doesn’t count), no bicycles, no inflatable speedboats, no jetskis… these could have all been in there without changing the fundamentals of the game.
Missions too far apart – For most missions I’d have to bus to one corner of the map, then drive for 5 minutes, then blow up one truck, and then have to make my way the whole way back to the HQ to pick up another mission. Would have saved me a lot of time, and therefore given me more time to ENJOY the game, if could have had a phone which would receive SMS missions or something. Could even introduce an interesting mechanic of having to fit the mission briefing into 140 odd characters, leaving some open to interpretation. You could go pay the contracter a visit to clear up the details of the mission or press on in your own way.
Psychic Enemies / No Stealth – You just can’t sneak up on people in FC2. If you cap someone from half a mile away with your uber sniper rifle, within about three seconds AK rounds will suddenly be smacking the ground right next to you. With a rifle, it should take a few shots before your enemies figure out where you are. Also, it would have increased realism for me tenfold to see soldiers firing at empty bushes where I had been a minute ago, or having weapon jams of their OWN. I could never sneak up on people and machete them, and no matter how silently I killed a guard every other guy suddenly knew about it. The machete brings me to another point
No Dedicated Melee button – Sometimes, I’d come up against an enemy and either have a weapon jam or run out of ammo, and have to either reload, unjam or switch to another weapon. If I wanted to melee the guy I have to switch to the machete while he shoots at me, and then hack him with it. One dedicated melee button would have been so invaluable. Fair enough, it takes time to pull out a machete, but being able to just clock a guy with the butt of the shotgun that just jammed would have been hugely helpful, and more realistic to boot.
Not enough freedom with weapons – Lots of weapons contradicted each other in ways that didn’t make sense. For instance, you couldn’t carry a pistol and an IED at once. That’s a bit odd? Surely I should be allowed to drop a weapon from one of my other slots instead? In that instance, IEDs should probably go in with grenades rather than being in weapon slots, but there are more examples of that kind of incompatibility. It was possible to have an explosive launching weapon in every slot, which was a bit ridiculous. I admire that it was possible, but making it possible meant that it made lots of other options impossible, such as carrying the MGL grenade launcher and any kind of sniper rifle or assault rifle or the shotgun. I’d much rather a weapon slot swap mechanism like in Halo or Modern Warfare
Not enough interaction – While the game was immersive, in that you felt like you were really in Africa, your only outlet of interaction was shooting things, picking up guns, opening doors and driving vehicles. You couldn’t pick up or mess with anything in a building except for Health packs and Weapons. In a town, you couldn’t talk to anyone who wasnt there to give you a mission etc. At the very least, I’d like to see a black market where I can buy and SELL weapons, first aid kits and other equipment.
So to sum up, here are some things I’d like to see in FarCry 3
Easy Stuff
- Friendly NPCs. tired of everyone being a raging psychopath
- More Vehicles. It only takes some modelling.
- Better mission management. a PDA for missions, Or missions via SMS messages. give our guy a blackberry held together by tape.
- Better weapon slot management. Go to a CoD / Halo style universal slot system.
- Proper working stealth. No more psychic enemies.
- Dedicated melee button. let me hit someone with the butt of a jammed gun. extra points if I can use it like a baseball bat.
- More health stuff (food, drinks etc)
Medium Stuff
- even more kinds of guns & weapons than before. Go nuts. more importantly, distribute them all over the place. I want to be able to pick up exotic weapons, not just buy them.
- ability to slap an IED on a vehicle and jump out of it. Rolling bomb!
- more interaction with the environment
- pay buddies to assist on missions; these are MERCENARIES, right? Why can’t I pay them to come do a tough mission with me?
- bribe people instead of killing; would be nice to pay a weapons shipment guy to deliver to my house instead of having to kill him.
- Stun / smoke grenades; Ok, flashbangs are useless outdoors, but smoke grenades could have been useful at times. Even just to create a distraction.
- Play dead. plenty of times I found myself surrounded by the bodies of guys I had just killed, when another patrol arrived shooting. If I could lie in the dirt next to the bodies until the patrol starts looking us over, that would have been wild.
- IED Booby Traps; Far Cry instincts went a bit crazy with unrealistic tree traps, but it would be nice to set up a tripwire or an improvised claymore here or there
Complex Stuff
- more freedom to what you’re allowed carry, maybe an inventory like STALKER.
- more chances to deploy ‘the element of surprise’; taking out the leg of a building on stilts, or sending a stampede of wildebeest in on top of your enemies would be nice
- buddies that hang around all the time, not just when you’re in a pickle.
- Search bodies; They’ll have diamonds, food, health packs, bullets etc.
- Drones. Modern combat is all about drone warfare, so I’d like to see the cheap african improvised version – RC cars, planes and choppers with bombs strapped to them.
- Customize weapons;  I want to put scopes, grenade launchers, laser sights, silencers etc. on whatever I like.

Seems like I’ve been writing a lot about FarCry 2/3, but I never posted any of it to the blog for some reason. Now that I’ve actually finished the game (finally) I feel like I’m in a postition to actually share my thoughts on it.

FarCry 2 was not perfect. It had flaws. Some would say it had more flaws than good points, but I have to say I enjoyed it for the most part. I’m going to cut right to the chase and list what I think it did right and wrong, and what should change for the sequel (if it ever gets made)

Things FarCry 2 did right:

Beautiful Scenery - Nothing looks as pretty as FarCry 2. Probably not even the real thing! =)

Interesting weapons - FC2 was full of weapons exciting weapons. Uzis. M79 Grenade Launchers. Dragunovs. IEDs. Silenced Shotguns. Explosive Crossbows.

Fire – Fire was a dangerous weapon that would often backfire on yourself (no pun intended). Fire is cool.

Immersion – From the map that needed sunlight to be read, to the phone that would appear from a pocket somewhere, I always felt immersed in FC2.

Things FarCry 2 did wrong:

No outdoor friendlies – In the intro we must pass 50 ordinary civilians, and drive through a checkpoint manned by soldiers who don’t fire on sight. Why can’t we have this in the game? All the civilians left in the country are huddled in a handful of buildings. And I would really have appreciated if the ‘checkpoints’ were ceasefire zones. Random gunfights could still have erupted if you drove through too fast, and bandits in their own vehicles could still have been driving around ready for a fight.

Not enough modes of transport – It’s been said before, and it was addressed somewhat in the DLC, but there weren’t enough modes of transport in FC2. Only one (!) type of car, no pickup trucks, no vans, no flatbed trucks, no motorbikes (the quad doesn’t count), no bicycles, no inflatable speedboats, no jetskis… these could have all been in there without changing the fundamentals of the game.

Missions too far apart - For most missions I’d have to bus to one corner of the map, then drive for 5 minutes, then blow up one truck, and then have to make my way the whole way back to the HQ to pick up another mission. Would have saved me a lot of time, and therefore given me more time to ENJOY the game, if could have had a phone which would receive SMS missions or something. Could even introduce an interesting mechanic of having to fit the mission briefing into 140 odd characters, leaving some open to interpretation. You could go pay the contracter a visit to clear up the details of the mission or press on in your own way.

Psychic Enemies / No Stealth – You just can’t sneak up on people in FC2. If you cap someone from half a mile away with your uber sniper rifle, within about three seconds AK rounds will suddenly be smacking the ground right next to you. With a rifle, it should take a few shots before your enemies figure out where you are. Also, it would have increased realism for me tenfold to see soldiers firing at empty bushes where I had been a minute ago, or having weapon jams of their OWN. I could never sneak up on people and machete them, and no matter how silently I killed a guard every other guy suddenly knew about it. The machete brings me to another point

No Dedicated Melee button – Sometimes, I’d come up against an enemy and either have a weapon jam or run out of ammo, and have to either reload, unjam or switch to another weapon. If I wanted to melee the guy I have to switch to the machete while he shoots at me, and then hack him with it. One dedicated melee button would have been invaluable. Fair enough, it takes time to pull out a machete, but being able to just clock a guy with the butt of the shotgun that just jammed would have been hugely helpful, and more realistic to boot.

Not enough freedom with weapons – Lots of weapons contradicted each other in ways that didn’t make sense. For instance, you couldn’t carry a pistol and an IED at once. That’s a bit odd? Surely I should be allowed to drop a weapon from one of my other slots instead? In that instance, IEDs should probably go in with grenades rather than being in weapon slots, but there are more examples of that kind of incompatibility. It was possible to have an explosive launching weapon in every slot, which was a bit ridiculous. I admire that it was possible, but making it possible meant that it made lots of other options impossible, such as carrying the MGL grenade launcher and any kind of sniper rifle or assault rifle or the shotgun. I’d much rather a weapon slot swap mechanism like in Halo or Modern Warfare

Not enough interaction - While the game was immersive, in that you felt like you were really in Africa, your only outlet of interaction was shooting things, picking up guns, opening doors and driving vehicles. You couldn’t pick up or mess with anything in a building except for Health packs and Weapons. In a town, you couldn’t talk to anyone who wasnt there to give you a mission etc. At the very least, I’d like to see a black market where I can buy and SELL weapons, first aid kits and other equipment.

So to sum up, here are some things I’d like to see in FarCry 3. Devs, if you’re reading, I’ve split it into categories of levels of difficulty for you =)

Easy Stuff

  • Friendly NPCs. tired of everyone being a raging psychopath
  • More Vehicles. It only takes some modelling.
  • Better mission management. a PDA for missions, Or missions via SMS messages. give our guy a blackberry held together by tape.
  • Better weapon slot management. Go to a CoD / Halo style universal slot system.
  • Proper working stealth. No more psychic enemies.
  • Dedicated melee button. let me hit someone with the butt of a jammed gun. extra points if I can use it like a baseball bat.
  • More health stuff (food, drinks etc)

Medium Stuff

  • Even more kinds of guns & weapons than before. Go nuts. more importantly, distribute them all over the place. I want to be able to pick up exotic weapons, not just buy them.
  • The Ability to slap an IED on a vehicle and jump out of it. Rolling bomb!
  • More interaction with the environment
  • Pay buddies to assist on missions; these are MERCENARIES, right? Why can’t I pay them to come do a tough mission with me?
  • Bribe people instead of killing; would be nice to pay a weapons shipment guy to deliver to my house instead of having to kill him.
  • Stun / smoke grenades; Ok, flashbangs are useless outdoors, but smoke grenades could have been useful at times. Even just to create a distraction.
  • Play dead. plenty of times I found myself surrounded by the bodies of guys I had just killed, when another patrol arrived shooting. If I could lie in the dirt next to the bodies until the patrol starts looking us over, that would have been wild.
  • IED Booby Traps; Far Cry instincts went a bit crazy with unrealistic tree traps, but it would be nice to set up a tripwire or an improvised claymore here or there

Complex Stuff

  • More freedom to what you’re allowed carry, maybe an inventory like STALKER.
  • More chances to deploy ‘the element of surprise’; taking out the leg of a building on stilts, or sending a stampede of wildebeest in on top of your enemies would be nice
  • Buddies that hang around all the time, not just when you’re in a pickle.
  • Search bodies; They’ll have diamonds, food, health packs, bullets etc.
  • Drones. Modern combat is all about drone warfare, so I’d like to see the cheap african improvised version – RC cars, planes and choppers with bombs strapped to them.
  • Customize weapons;  I want to put scopes, grenade launchers, laser sights, silencers etc. on whatever I like.

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Games For Windows is just awful

Jun 26

Posted by rory in games | No Comments

So yesterday I had some free time while my wonderful fiance made dinner, and decided was going to have a ‘quick’ game of Batman Arkham Asylum. It was a pained and frustrating experience, and here’s how it went.
I fire up my games PC, (hooked up to the TV) and launch BatmanAA from the shortcut. I just installed it a few days ago so I decided at bare minimum I’d have time to play through the cut scene and get my game set up for proper action next time I play. The game loads, plays through the usual company logos and incessant nvidia whispering and gets to the menu. A box pops down from the top of the screen telling me I need to log in to GamesForWindows Live. In a pleasant stroke of luck I remember both my username and complicated password. I fill them in, and tell it to remember my details and sign me in automatically every time, lest I forget said password. I am presented with a message that “this game requires an update. If you decline this update you will be signed out”. Signing out means I can’t save my game progress, so I don’t want to do that. I Do the update. A message tells me my computer “may restart” after the update. MAY restart? I take it I have no choice in it then? It’s a bit vague and misleading. While it continues updating, it sits there with Batman AA in the background, meaning I literally can’t do a THING with my PC until it’s done. No surfing while I wait. No reading emails. Three minutes later its done, no restart required. Lucky me. I relaunch Batman as it has dumped me to the desktop. I have to log in again to GFWL again, though I had already told it to sign me in automatically every time. Maybe I didn’t check that the first time afterall. Oh well. Check it this time for sure. Now I am once more presented with the update message. Looks like it didnt work the first time. I try to update, and it won’t connect, then it kicks me out to desktop. I change tactics and run GFWL from the start menu. That tells me I need a different update, not for the game but for GFWL itself. A prompt urges me to enable automatic updates (for Windows i assume, no I don’t want that – already had it screw up my Nvidia drivers on me once) OR I can download it manually and run the install file. I choose the manual option, and it starts to download the gfwlupdate. I’ve now spent 15 minutes trying to play a game. I Install the update to GFWL, and restart the app. Have to log in AGAIN. Tick automatically sign in AGAIN. Now there’s an error message, a very helpful error 80154002. “Click here to resolve” it says. I do. Launches IE8 even though Chrome is my default browser. It takes me, not to GFWL, but to the Xbox Live site where I am prompted to set up a profile. I know I’ve already done this for GFWL but I’ll try anything at this point. I create a new profile for myself, same microsoft passport login. It creates the profile, redirects to another page and gets suck in an endless loop. After a minute or so it bombs out to the Xbox Live site and tells me I cannot use my profile with this site. At this point I’m trying to remain calm, and I cop that the profile HAS been created so I probably don’t NEED the xbox live site to work, as long as GFWL works now. I close it the IE7 window and start the desktop app for GFWL again which asks me to log in yet again. This time it works, opens a chrome window to an GFWL live site and prompts me to install both Flash (in another IE7 window) and Silverlight (in Chrome, via GFWL itself). Flash installer crashes without installing in IE, reloading the page keeps prompting me to reinstall it. I might add Flash IS already installed for other browsers. Can this really be the company that created Xbox Live? Seriously? Between all this mucking about and documenting it, it’s been half an hour or more. I have GFWL running now. It is cropping its own Silverlight ads so I can’t see what they want me to buy, but I am logged in and GFWL is updated and thats all I can care about right now.
I start Batman again.
Unbelievably, I am prompted  to log in a fifth time. It is now “Downloading profile”. I get the update message for the game. Again. I now realise “your computer may restart when the update is complete” does not mean it’ll reboot, it means it ‘may’ forget everything I’ve done for the last five minutes and start at the beginning again. 45 minutes of Non-Gaming has now elapsed. This time it appears to actually be downloading something. 10  minutes later the progress bar is at about 40% (although there are no numbers). At around 60% it bombs out with error 0×80004005. This turns out to be a problem with my internet connection, as windows 7 has decided that my wifi network is gone, even though XP and android phone are picking it up fine. I go get a 15ft Ethernet cable and hook it directly to the PC and restart the process. Start game again. Log in again (6th time). Download update again. At this point. Fiance has long finished cooking dinner and is wondering why I’m so angry when I got to sit on my arse ‘playing’ with computers while she had to cook. I give up on the game, and we watch The Daily Show. Jon Stewart roasts some american politicians I’ve never heard of, and it’s still very funny. 30 minutes later I check back in with GFWL and it has finally installed. My game is now ready to play, just a mere hour or so after I started the PC.
Rather than just yelling about how useless microsoft are, let’s examine everything that went wrong here.
1. Most Crucially, the system failed to work correctly. It took several attempts to finish the process of updating the game so I could play it.
2. Communication breakdown: error messages were either vague or too technical.
3. A dodgy login system: even though I’m running the GFWL app and logged in, I’m forced to re login to GFWL when I run the game I want to play. It also never remembers my password at any point
4. Forcing the updates: I didn’t NEED the updates in order to play. I could have been given an option to play as is
5. No background updates: Steam will happily update my games in the background while I play others. GFWL not only requires my full attention to install updates, it also locks me out of doing anything else at the same time without resorting to CTRL+ALT+DELETE. And I can’t alt tab on Win7. Updates for individual games are not shown in the GFWL desktop client, and I can only download them once I start the affected game. This means that I can’t play when I want to because the game has to update. In Batman’s case, this update was made mandatory by GFWL threatening to log me out if I didnt do the update
6. Design inconsistency: GFWL on the desktop looks different to GFWL in the game which looks different to xbox live and the xbox live website. Not in mind altering Black is White, Up is Down ways, but different enough that buttons are not where you expect them to be all the time. GFWL login on the desktop looks like MSN Messenger with the numbers filed off, but not the in game or web signups. Sometimes they call it Xbox Live, sometimes GFW Live. One side uses Flash, the other silverlight. Some errors launch in the default browser, others do not. Some show codes, others don’t. UI elements like progress bars and buttons do not sync up.
Games for windows live presents a user experience which is at best third rate and at worst a non-functional nightmare. The fact that Microsoft can deliver an experience like xbox live and then turn around and deliver THIS, is amazing.

So yesterday I had some free time while my wonderful fiance made dinner, and decided was going to have a ‘quick’ game of Batman Arkham Asylum. It was a pained and frustrating experience, and here’s how it went.

I fire up my games PC, (hooked up to the TV) and launch BatmanAA from the shortcut. I just installed it a few days ago so I decided at bare minimum I’d have time to play through the cut scene and get my game set up for proper action next time I play. The game loads, plays through the usual company logos and incessant nvidia whispering and gets to the menu. A box pops down from the top of the screen telling me I need to log in to GamesForWindows Live. In a pleasant stroke of luck I remember both my username and complicated password. I fill them in, and tell it to remember my details and sign me in automatically every time, lest I forget said password. I am presented with a message that “this game requires an update. If you decline this update you will be signed out”. Signing out means I can’t save my game progress, so I don’t want to do that.

baa_update

I do the update. A message tells me my computer “may restart” after the update. MAY restart? I take it I have no choice in it then? It’s a bit vague and misleading. While it continues updating, it sits there with Batman AA in the background, meaning I literally can’t do a THING with my PC until it’s done. No surfing while I wait. No reading emails. Three minutes later its done, no restart required. Lucky me.

I relaunch Batman as it has dumped me to the desktop. I have to log in again to GFWL again, though I had already told it to sign me in automatically every time. Maybe I didn’t check that the first time afterall. Oh well. Check it this time for sure. Now I am once more presented with the update message. Looks like it didnt work the first time. I try to update, and it won’t connect, then it kicks me out to desktop. I change tactics and run GFWL from the start menu. That tells me I need a different update, not for the game but for GFWL itself. A prompt urges me to enable automatic updates (for Windows i assume, no I don’t want that – already had it screw up my Nvidia drivers on me once) OR I can download it manually and run the install file. I choose the manual option, and it starts to download the gfwlupdate. I’ve now spent 15 minutes trying to play a game.

I Install the update to GFWL, and restart the app. Have to log in AGAIN. Tick automatically sign in AGAIN. Now there’s an error message, a very helpful error 80154002.

error_code

“Click here to resolve” it says. I click. It launches IE8 even though Chrome is my default browser. It takes me, not to GFWL, but to the Xbox Live site where I am prompted to set up a profile. I know I’ve already done this for GFWL but I’ll try anything at this point. I create a new profile for myself, same microsoft passport login. It creates the profile, redirects to another page and gets stuck in a redirect loop. After a minute or so it bombs out to a cert error page.

cert error after creating profile

I navigate back to the Xbox Live site and put in the username and password of the profile I just created. It tells me I cannot use my profile with this site.

live_ID_notworking

I google Games for Windows Live and go to the page it was presumably trying to send me to. This page is a giant empty hole where Flash should be.

flash_not_installed

I am prompted to install Flash, despite already installing it when I installed the OS. Flash installer crashes without installing in IE, reloading the page keeps prompting me to install it.

At this point I’m trying to remain calm, and I realise that the profile HAS been created so I probably don’t NEED the website to work, as long as GFWL works now. I close it the IE8 window and start the desktop app for GFWL again which asks me to log in yet again. This time it works, prompts me to install Silverlight.

silverlight_not_installed

I follow the prompt. Silverlight installer launches in Chrome this time, not IE8.

Can this really be the company that created Xbox Live? Seriously? Between all this mucking about and documenting it, it’s been half an hour or more. I have GFWL running now. It is cropping its own Silverlight ads so I can’t see what they want me to buy, but I am logged in and GFWL is updated and thats all I can care about right now.

I start Batman again.

Unbelievably, I am prompted  to log in a fifth time. It is now “Downloading profile”.

baa_profile

I get the update message for the game. Again. I now realise “your computer may restart when the update is complete” does not mean it’ll reboot, it means it ‘may’ forget everything I’ve done for the last five minutes and start at the beginning again. 45 minutes of Non-Gaming has now elapsed. This time it appears to actually be downloading something. 10  minutes later the progress bar is at about 40% (although there are no numbers). At around 60% it bombs out with error 0×80004005. This turns out to be a problem with my internet connection, as windows 7 has decided that my wifi network is gone, even though XP and android phone are picking it up fine. I go get a 15ft Ethernet cable and hook it directly to the PC and restart the process. Start game again. Log in again (6th time). Download update again. At this point. Fiance has long finished cooking dinner and is wondering why I’m so angry when I got to sit on my arse ‘playing’ with computers while she had to cook. I give up on the game, and we watch The Daily Show. Jon Stewart roasts some american politicians I’ve never heard of, and it’s still very funny. 30 minutes later I check back in with GFWL and it has finally installed. My game is now ready to play, just a mere hour or so after I started the PC.

Rather than just yelling about how useless microsoft are, let’s examine everything that went wrong here.

1. Most Crucially, the system failed to work correctly. It took several attempts to finish the process of updating the game so I could play it.

2. Communication breakdown: error messages were either vague or too technical.

3. A dodgy login system: even though I’m running the GFWL app and logged in, I’m forced to re login to GFWL when I run the game I want to play. It also never remembers my password at any point

4. Forcing the updates: I didn’t NEED the updates in order to play. I could have been given an option to play as is

5. No background updates: Steam will happily update my games in the background while I play others. GFWL not only requires my full attention to install updates, it also locks me out of doing anything else at the same time without resorting to CTRL+ALT+DELETE. And I can’t alt tab on Win7. Updates for individual games are not shown in the GFWL desktop client, and I can only download them once I start the affected game. This means that I can’t play when I want to because the game has to update. In Batman’s case, this update was made mandatory by GFWL threatening to log me out if I didnt do the update

6. Design inconsistency: GFWL on the desktop looks different to GFWL in the game which looks different to xbox live and the xbox live website. Not in mind altering Black is White, Up is Down ways, but different enough that buttons are not where you expect them to be all the time. GFWL login on the desktop looks like MSN Messenger with the numbers filed off, but not the in game or web signups. Sometimes they call it Xbox Live, sometimes GFW Live. One side uses Flash, the other silverlight. Some errors launch in the default browser, others do not. Some show codes, others don’t. UI elements like progress bars and buttons do not sync up.

Games for windows live presents a user experience which is at best third rate and at worst a non-functional nightmare. The fact that Microsoft can deliver an experience like xbox live and then turn around and deliver THIS, is amazing.

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Essential Windows Apps

May 27

Posted by rory in everything else | No Comments

After a fresh XP install (and I’ve gone through a few lately with triple boot problems) I have to install almost all of the following.

software_essentialsDoes it take a long time? Yes. Is it worth it? Hell yeah.

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Pixmania : avoid like the plague!

Dec 8

Posted by rory in everything else | No Comments

I’ve been screwed over by pixmania, and I feel like blogging about it.

In July I ordered something from pixmania.ie – a USB to SATA/IDE Converter Cable. Its a little thingie that connects SATA/IDE harddrives to your PC – like a disk enclosure without the enclosure part. It cost me €15 euro. A bargain I thought. How wrong I was.

The thing worked on arrival, but failed within 10 minutes of being used. I returned it straight away (end of July) at my own cost (they claimed they would refund postage costs if I sent them a receipt for postage, but I sent it and never received a refund). In September, I got an email back saying that I the item had arrived in the returns depot, and been ‘accepted’. In supplier speak this means it was merely delivered to the returns depot. By October I had still received no updates on the status of the return. Then in November I received a replacement unit, with no explanation or documentation. “Great” I thought to myself. “It took almost 4 months to process and replace this single, small item, but at least I now have a working one”.

A few weeks later, the replacement unit failed. It had been used approximately 3 times at this point (its not something one would use every day afterall). I tried to return this replaced unit only to discover that the item was still marked as ‘accepted’ by the returns depot. The item status was never updated. There was no way for me to return it.

Their customer service is a bad joke.

Trying to log in to www.pixmania.ie threw a password error, even after recovering the correct password through their own password recovery system. It was only possible to log into www.pixmania.CO.UK. No email addresses are listed on the site for direct email. Contact forms are hidden away and obfuscated under confusing category names (“for partners”, “suggestions?”, “join our team!” etc). When found, they only allow a maximum of 700 words, and despite filling in my complaint under several categories, I never got a reply. I have tried emailing fotovista (pixmania’s parent company), and the pixmania press department, also to no avail.

I logged in again a week or so later to discover that the original order is now marked as in ‘preparation’. Underneath this it says ‘Your package is ready to be sent’. Next to the USB/IDE cable, it now says ‘Discontinued Product’. Both items in the order also show 0 items waiting for delivery. This is further evidence that the side is designed to be misleading and confusing, to discourage users from attempting to avail of any kind of after sales service.

I tried complaining to the National Consumer Agency who told me :

The registered business address for www.pixmania.ie is in France and therefore where consumer complaints relate to companies located outside the Republic of Ireland but within the EU, the European Consumer Centre (ECC) in Dublin can most appropriately handle your query.

Fine. I contacted the ECC (www.eccireland.ie) who were very helpful, but informed me

[]…we depend on the willingness of a trader to co-operate to resolve complaints.

Obviously that’s not going to work, since they couldnt be bothered to answer my emails. At this point, I’ve spent too much effort trying to get a refund for something that only cost me €15 and I’d feel a bit of an eejit chasing it up. However, I’m sure I’m not alone in my experiences with pixmania, so I thought I’d tell my story to warn people away from this dishonest company.

So to sum up, Avoid Pixmania this christmas!

Email campaign to save O’Connell Street!

Nov 10

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A friend sent this around this morning. A last ditch effort to get the John Gormley to intervene in the debacle which is the reopening of O’Connell Street, Sligo to traffic. It’s a plan that has no merit, no benefits, and no support from anyone.

Here’s the letter:

Please copy this message below and email it to minister@environ.ie to save our street..

Put O’Connell Street Sligo reopening to traffic in the subject box and add your name to the bottom of the letter before you send.

Also, don’t forget to put today’s date!

Mr. John Gormley T.D.,
Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government
Custom House,
Dublin 1

10th. Nov. 2009

Dear Minister Gormley,

I kindly request your immediate and urgent support to address the issue of the proposed reopening of O’Connell Street, Sligo to traffic.

This decision is due to take effect on December 9th, 2009.

On Monday November 2nd, the Sligo Borough Councillors made a decision to remove all mention of the Pedestrianisation of O’Connell Street from the 2010-2015 Sligo Environmental Development Plan.

• Sligo as a Gateway City has a strategic objective of pedestrianisation of the City Centre. This decision has ignored the strategic development of Sligo which has been designated a Gateway by Government under the National Spatial Strategy and has benefited from sustained public investment in critical and enabling infrastructure.

• This decision has passed despite being contrary to current and previous Development Plans and National Spatial Strategy.

• This decision has ignored the majority of submissions made during the consultation period into the planning process:
- 60 submissions opposing the removal of the pedestrianised street
- 1 submission was signed by 2850 persons, as opposed to 2 submissions supporting the opening of the pedestrian street to traffic signed by 100 people. This constitutes a 96.5% majority in favor of keeping the street pedestrianised.

• This decision has ignored the business community of Sligo (including Sligo Chamber of Commerce and the O’Connell Street Traders Association) who fully supported the retention of the pedestrian.

• This decision has ignored the expert advice of the following professionals employed by the state:
- City Planners
- City Engineers
- County Managers Report

• This decision bypassed the legal consultation process. Sligo Borough Councillors, including the Mayor of Sligo, Cllr Jimmy McGarry, announced publicly that the decision to open O’Connell Street to traffic was already made. In the September 9th issue of The Irish Times, the Mayor is quoted as saying

“It’s all systems go, all green lights,” said the Mayor of Sligo, Cllr Jimmy McGarry. “The street will be open to traffic on December 9th.”

• This defies the legal planning process under the 2000 Planning Act. Therefore the decision and proposed Development Plan made on November 2nd does not constitute legal process and defies the public’s right to due consultation and transparency on this matter. This is a clear violation of the Planning Act and has eroded the citizens’ faith in public consultation.

• The Borough Councillors have repeatedly failed to provide any valid argument or professional reports justifying removing O’Connell Street as a pedestrianised zone. They have also failed to provide any documented evidence of significant citizen support for this de-pedestrianisation.

I kindly request your immediate support in addressing this matter.

Yours,

Fog in Doorly, Saturday Morning, October 17th 2009

Oct 22

Posted by rory in everything else | No Comments

Fog by the river in doorly

Fog by the river in doorly

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