An old git remembers #2 - first computer

When I was 12 (1982) my parents bought me my first computer. It was a Sinclair ZX80 that had had a ROM upgrade to be almost identical to the new ZX81. It was £50 second-hand, a lot for my family, and I had really no idea what I was buying. It was small, and white, with an awful touch-pad keyboard and it plugged into my black and white tv using what I'd later call an RF cable.

I was immediately hooked. I could type in things and see them appear on the screen! As you typed the screen flickered off, the machine unable to poll the keyboard and maintain a screen image at the same time. But that didn't matter, that was normal.

If you read my blog on storage space, you might remember that we travelled back to the days of the 5.25" floppy disk, which held 160,000 bytes of information. Whilst solid storage is something different to Random Access Memory (RAM) I mention this in comparison: the ZX80 had but 512 bytes of RAM - the storage your computer uses while on but loses when you turn it off. That's enough to hold 512 characters of text and not enough to hold any graphics or sound - something the ZX80 was incapable of anyway - and much less storage than could hold the text in this article. In fact, as you typed, the screen grew shorter and shorter until you were typing into a single line and could see no other, as screen memory was shared with your RAM.

It didn't matter. I endeavoured to learn how to program in the simple BASIC language that was part of the operating system (although I certainly didn't understand it in those terms at the time). Variables, loops, conditional branching all opened their secrets to me until I had a fairly well-defined idea what programming was. Not that I could do much, not because of the RAM limitations as much as my inability to save and load anything. The ZX80, you see, used a standard cassette desk to save and load to standard tapes. I wasn't alone in never getting it to work - that ability would come with later machines.

I'm also not alone in suggesting that the limitations put upon programmers at this time led to better levels of coding. We learnt to be amazingly Scrooge-like in how we used our limited resources, which led to better, faster, more compact code. The code-monkeys today with their acres of memory, graphics memory, hardware 3D capabilities and suchlike are simply spoilt. Or maybe I'm just jealous. It's like anal sex that way.

Niggers, Injuns and Huckleberry Finn

No, not the title to my most inflammatory blog yet, more the intro to a quick message regarding the new imprint of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn by NewSouth Books. Put together by Professor Alan Gribben - eminent, no doubt - this offers all four volumes in the same edition for the first time and a little bit of specific text editing. It's the latter that's caused all the problems and negative reactions.

Professor Gribben has seen fit to change the terribly offensive N-word (Nigger) with the apparently less offensive word 'Slave' and the I-word (Injun) with 'Indian'. Frankly, when you've enslaved one race and stolen the other's country it's only right to be polite to them afterwards. The Professor's reasons are rather different however, he believes that the repeated usage of the offensive terms has led to the story not being read by African Americans -his full reasoning behind his decision is reprinted here.

I respect his choice, which he is after all free to make, more than many of the knee-jerk responses I've read. It seems reasonable to me that someone who has been on the wrong end of an offensive racial epithet may not enjoy reading a book - however good - which uses that epithet every page. You can explain the historical context of the words to people so effected until you're blue in the face, they're still going to feel bad reading Nigger or Injun constantly and just go and read a different book where it doesn't occur.

I'll let you into a secret. When I wrote the title to this blog I was a knee-jerk reactionary - historical textual purity was all I'd really considered. But after reading about it, looking at people's responses, and the Professor's eloquent introductory explanation, I've changed my mind. As long as pure copies are always kept, and people know how NewSouth Book's edition has been edited, I no longer see it as such a terrible thing. Who'd have thunk it?

There is a complete (virgo intacta) version of this book available for free on the Kindle store (software for viewing Kindle books is available for free on many platforms) - Niggers and Injuns best avoid. Gulp.

An old git remembers #1 - storage space

I just got an email from Ebuyer, they're offering a 2Tb Western Digital "Green Caviar" hard disc drive (hdd) for £69.99. This is an impressive price for an impressive amount of space. Sorry for the techie bit, but 1 byte holds one of 256 numbers 0-255, and this is used, for example, to signify a text character. 2Tb is just over 2,000,000,000,000 bytes.

Like anal sex, this got me thinking. My first ever hard disc was bought in 1988 (as far as I can remember) and cost £400 for a mere 20Mb of storage space. That's just over 20,000,000 bytes, fact fans. To put that into perspective, I have single MP3 files that are bigger than that now, and high definition videos that are thousands of times bigger. The punchline? I bought it second-hand at that price.

Further back than that - I'm guessing around 1983 - my mate Mark (Teddy) Edwards who had a rich dad and a remarkably flat face bought a floppy disc unit for the astonishing price of £800. This huge lump of a machine held around 160,000 bytes on a single side of a 5.25" (very) floppy disc and was very, very slow. But it was a joy to use besides the awful cassette tape storage solutions of the day, I was very envious.

So, from around 1983 to 2011 we've gone from an £800 unit to a £69 unit that holds over eleven million times the information. It strikes me that in many areas I've been disappointed in the progress of technology during my lifetime - where are the retinal scan goggles, the virtual reality recliners and the holographic 3D technologies I dreamt of as a lad? - but in the world of storage things have been different. They've shown fast progress which has easily kept pace with the average amount of storage we all need - or even superseded it.

Happy new year.

Gran Turismo 5 (GT5) update 1.05

Yes, I'm reviewing a game update. Why? Because I can, and because I'm quite impressed with what it offers. As you'll know if you've read my previous review of the game itself, I was pretty pleased with it though there were some problems. This update doesn't address many of them but it really doesn't matter. In the intervening time I've really fell in love with the game and play it regularly. This update offers a lot more functionality and fun. I'm still shit on-line, mind you.

By far the best thing in 1.05 is the ability to backup your save to a USB device. This essential omission was rendered vitally important by the fact that going on-line can result in lock-ups that occasionally corrupt your save. Whilst the lock-ups happen a lot less now it's still great to know your progression can be saved. You still can't swap saves with others, which is good, but it's not known whether they are locked to account or PS3 unit - pretty vital if you change PS3s and want to keep your save.

Seasonal Events are brilliant. They offer a lot of fun, close racing and lots of credit and xp. They are updated regularly, are open for around two weeks and let you race, time trial or drift. They tend to have very strict regulations and most of the race events restrict you to a single vehicle that you can hardly tune at all. This leads to very close, tough racing. I can only get silver at best but it's great fun trying to find just a second or two more out of a track.

The new Hot Car dealership offers you access to 12 cars (and trucks) that will help complete particular events. These will be occasionally updated. In addition, you now get credits and xp for on-line races where your distance driven and number of wins are now saved. Mine still reads 0. Oh, and the shadows have changed - they're slightly smoother but still pretty shitty.

Finally, until January 11th, we get more rewards for doing A- and B-Spec events. A really good gesture to wrap up a really good update. What's impressed me most is that these additions, for the main part, are neither fixes nor things they wanted to put in the game, they are genuinely new things to do. And they're a lot of fun. Nice one Polyphony Digital.

Playstation blog on the update.

Gran Turismo 5 (GT5) Review

I come to this game, as I do all games now, with the mind and body of a 40+ old gamer with very little twitch muscle left and all manual dexterity fading with age. Whatever enjoyment I can find in a game tends to be tempered with the idea I can never do well at the higher levels of the game and the fact that I'll not be winning on-line. So enjoy your read ahead with that in mind.

GT5 is the racing game that Jap studio Polyphony Digital have been making since before the Playstation 3 launched. Its tag is the real driving simulator and it's by that that it must be judged. Don't expect flashy explosive graphics, tracks with spurting lava, boosters and so on - this is a sim and it deals with real cars going around realistic -often real - tracks.

So how did they do? Well, they did pretty well but the game is not without some problems.

The menu system, for example, is an annoying piece of shit that should of been changed completely shortly after design with the subsequent public torture and execution of the designer and his entire family. It's unintuitive, doesn't group things where you would want them and forces you to endlessly traipse backwards and forwards as you just want to race.

The graphics and sound are great. With the exception of the trees which are a bit polygonesque and the shadows which are as bad as anything from the PS2 you can imagine. The engine does run at 1080p 60FPS though, so perhaps it's easy to understand why some compromises had to be made. Sound, on my system at least, comes out as Dolby Digital 5.1 48k and is as crisply appointed as one could want. The music on the other hand is techno, lightweight synth jazz, cheapo classical and generally a bit shitty and uninspired. Like it was chosen by someone who doesn't like music very much. There is no option to use your own music in the game - for shame, Polyphony Digital.

There are over 1000 cars in the game - one of its unique selling points, and due to implementation one of its critics' biggest bugbears. There are around 200 premium model cars and therefore around 800 standard model cars. The difference? The former are modelled in detail, look amazing and offer custom dashboards if you like to race inside the car. Standard models contain less detail and no dashboard. That said, they actually look quite good to my eye, just a little plain at times - it depends a lot on the specific car.

Damage modelling comes in two flavours in GT5: costume and mechanical. Both become progressively unlocked as you increase your level. Costume looks a bit crap, with areas of your car taking on a sort of distorted plastic look. Mechanical damage unlocks quite late on and actually effects your racing performance. So I can't tell you much about that apart from to say that update 1.03 just became available tonight which adds mechanical damage to on-line racing via the options.

Handling is a fucking dream, thank fuck. This is the very core of any racing game, without which any amount of snazzy graphics, explosive damage modelling and car tuning options would completely fall apart. It took me 3-4 days for the handling to click into place for me, and when it did it was a pure joy to be able to sling cars round corners, powerslide and all the other cool car stuff we love. It is not forgiving though, muck up your line or braking at a corner in a powerful car and you'll spin or go off-course - this is just how it should be in a sim.

GT5 is played in one of three main modes: GT Life, Arcade and On-line. GT Life is the full experience and involves entering races to win money and experience points to go up levels to get you faster cars which can enter more races, etc. You start with a small amount of cash and no cars and have to make your way up the rankings. It works well. Arcade gives you access to most courses and cars and is standalone with no xp or money involved. On-line is currently unstable and can cause your save game file to corrupt - though maybe 1.03 has fixed this. There's no info currently.

Two salient points here. The AI is rubbish. You'll either win by miles or be all but last, depending on the relative speed of the car. And the B-spec mode, where you build up a fictitious racer and issue race commands to him, is a massive time and credit sink and nothing else.

This is a massive game, I've only scratched the surface myself and have only been able to write of a few of the more important areas and more annoying issues. I've not told you about tuning, the used car dealership, special events, replay and photo mode, paint, race mods and so on. Sorry about that, but did you really want to read much more?

GT5 is a game that excels - mostly - in the areas that are most important to it: driving a car around a track. It offers little panache or flair and has some problems that are really unforgivable in a game with such a long development. That said, they appear to be listening and are bringing out updates at a rate of knots. I'm impressed, I enjoy the game and would suggest anyone with an interest in driving games buys it. I wish they'd fix the on-line though, that really is cuntish corrupting your save file.. oh and you can't back it up, it's copy-protected.

UPDATE: I was wrong, you can use your own music. It's hidden away in options/audio. Works well, called 'Personal Music' inside the game. Online seems much more stable to me with the new patch (1.03).

Musical Biographies #1 - Cheesie Knicks and Thickwood Muck

Formed in Them Days by an aging Mick Thuckwood and his Green Peter, Thickwood Muck started out peddling blue songs for crack cocaine to angry negroes in the bayous of pre-Colombian Venezuela. Their breakout hit Albatoss - written about masturbation in Scotchland - is an acknowledged blue classic. Mick, dissatisfied with his rock crystals, immediately set upon a quest to find ever refined levels of cocaine use.

With pop-stardom threatening, Mick dropped his Green Peter like a hot melon and along the way met an elf-child, a pixie and a pair of grim swingers who he invited into the band. They were united by a shared interest in the coca-leaf and the by-products thereof. Many tracks were laid down in the studio and all were snorted up as fast as possible. Critical reviews were made and the band soon found they preferred Peruvian flake. Some music written.

The elf-child found it could sing. Although the sound was ever-muted due to the billowing clouds of pink fairy dust (see above), cotton candy and acres of lace. Pupating into female form she lived in a huge fluffy castle full of unicorns, curtains and lots and lots of cushions. Persistent vaginal infections led to a substantial amount of brie and Mick found himself finally able to dub her with her name to this day: Cheesie Knicks.

Ode to cocaine, Oh You Make Bumming Fun written.

Hit followed hit, tour followed tour and before long mild-mannered cretins everywhere were being soothed and tweaked by Thickwood Muck's brand of super-jizzy pop-tastic pseudo-rock twadge. The band suffered, having to write and perform music was eating into valuable cocaine enjoyment time. They resolved to write one really big hit album that would pay off their dealers in one go and give them more time for their relaxing hobby.

Tango in the Shite was born. It was very smooth and less divertingly interesting than anything they'd recorded before. With absolutely nothing to trouble their minds, remedials everywhere lapped it up like little puppies with advanced brain tumours. Everybody was wildly happy, especially the dealers.

One more tour was planned. By now every band member was legally divorced from every other band member at least once and they refused to share the same continent with one another. This made touring difficult but a resolution was found when Lindsay Fuckingham the pixie-boy suggested each band member had their own trailer, stadium and three roadies devoted to blowing the coke up their arseholes all night.

Inevitably the situation couldn't continue. The swingers took permanent exile into a caravan park outside Lowestoft, Fuckingham grew his ears until death threatened, Cheesie disappeared up her own cunt after a roadie sucked rather than blew one night and Mick himself took to rocket science in a bid to find the first supplies of space cocaine. He remains very tall.

Casual Games for Sad Old Fucks #1

Three reviewlets of three games I've been playing recently. All were played on the Playstation 3, all are available on the Xbox and probably the Wii as well. Who knows, some might even be out there for the PC (one is). All are casual games, because that's what I'm playing at the moment, simple as that.

Monopoly Streets
£30 at Amazon
My latest purchase, what can I say, it's Monopoly. It's presented in 3D with excellent cartoony animations, it's all hopelessly family friendly and there's plenty of boards and pieces to earn to add to the interest (probably not enough pieces, truth be told). There are various game modes, from Official rules to Fast Game to Jackpot offering various rulesets. Graphics and sound are fine. So, is all hunky-dory in the Monopoly Streets world? Well no. Whilst it plays a great game you can sometimes get lost amongst the tight, close-in shots and feel a bit disconnected. But far, far more importantly, there's a big problem in the online mode where if one player drops the game ends immediately and you're sent to the main menu. This is shit. Frankly. That it got past QC is a sign that a fuck-witted numbskull was allowed to wank into the mix at some stage and left their stain behind. Patch please, quickly.

Rapala Pro Bass Fishing
£40 at Play, including rod peripheral
So to fishing, or Yankee fishing, without proper baits and that. That aside, this is an excellent game - probably the best fishing game ever, though to be honest that isn't saying much, I know. The big draw of this game is the rod peripheral which uses tilt switches and a reel (fitted either way for the right- and left-handed) to mimic the actions of a real rod and reel. It's not bad either. Obviously there's no feedback (the package is too cheap) but as you wave the rod about to move your lure in predetermined patterns or fight your fish you can squint and just about believe you're doing something approaching fishing. Visuals are great, sound good and the single player game seems quite well balanced and fun. The problem again lies in the multiplayer arena, and this time the problem is simple: there is no multiplayer. This could of been so fun and simple, fishing in a lake against friends or strangers for a predetermined time. Activision are indeed cunts.

Worms2: Armageddon
£13 or so, Playstation Network
This is part of the old Worms series that started in the 1990s, this is the cheapest game by far in these 3 games, this is in 2D and this is by far the best game I'm writing about today. In addition, and least importantly, this is the one game also available on the PC. You know the score, it's the old BBC computer artillery game with amazingly surreal landscapes, weapons ranging from the mundane to the insane and worms; lovely cute little worms with adorable voices. It's savage as hell, especially online where no prisoners are taken. The only problem with this game are the players - so many scurrilous toads are happy to besmirch their good name and honour by quitting games when they're losing that it can be quite rare to finish a game online. Apart from that it's wonderful, gloriously pretty in 720p and most importantly fun as hell.

There you have it, two not bad but flawed games and one prime jewel amongst games. If I had one general comment it would be this: please let me play my own music in my own games. None of the above let you play your own and that annoys the hell out of me. This should be such a simple requirement every game should allow it. The Xbox 360 has had this since year dot at system level. That's probably why these 3 ports don't have it.

That's all for now, poodle-tip.