]> http://www.applefritter.com/blog/3057 en http://www.applefritter.com/node/7515 I've just heard that Les Carter's band Abdoujaparov, who did the great track Pop Pop Pop for Airburst Extreme are going to be trying something novel at their May 18th gig at the Water Rats in London. Les recently got himself an iPod shuffle, so Abdou (renamed iDou for the gig) will be using the shuffle for their backing tracks, but playing the entire gig in shuffle mode. This means that even the band won't know what song they're going to be playing next! Should be an excellent gig! Fri, 29 Apr 2005 10:58:20 -0700 http://www.applefritter.com/node/6981 Still suffering jet lag, but I'd like to give an official thumbs up to the Big Apple (and the Big Apple Apple Store). Popped over to meet up with the guys from Freeverse and do meetings and such. While I was over there, I got some more feedback from users on a couple of bugs in ToySight Gold. Enough to work out what the problem was and we've got a patched version ready to go. Given our usual speedy website updates (and the need to move the ToySight.com stuff about a bit this week), it might make it this week. Hopefully. Maybe. On a gloomier note, I'm pretty annoyed to have spotted that some people are actually greedy enough to be trying to crack ToySight Gold or use cloned codes on it. If they're that cheap that they can't spend money on paying for a $10 game, I'd suggest they sell their Macs and buy a cheaper platform. I've heard you can get a really good game of noughts and crosses for the Pen and Paper platform. Sat, 19 Mar 2005 17:17:38 -0800 http://www.applefritter.com/node/6382 Despite a slight glitch at TNT, I got my Mac mini! It's brilliant :) I went for the base model without upgrading the memory so we can use it as a testbed for our games and so far I haven't found anything that doesn't work well with the 256 megs base memory (Nanosaur chugs a bit in places, but hey). One upgrade I did specify for it though was an Airport card (I ordered it before the combi-APE/BT option got cheaper, but a £10 USB BT Dongle works fine) so one of the first tests was to sit it next to the downstairs TV and stream a movie to it over Airport Extreme from one of the Macs upstairs. Works great :) I've just registered Salling Clicker on it now too so that we can avoid any level of exercise and remote control it from my phone ;) With the problems I had with the delivery (the Mac mini part of the delivery got lost somewhere at TNT) I can see one minor problem that Apple might have to educate its couriers on. When you ask the average warehouse person to look for a computer that's gone missing, what sort of size box do you think they're going to look for ? It'll be similar to the problem they must have had when they started shipping Apple ]['s and warehouse managers all over the world were looking for boxes the size of houses and ignoring the TV sized ones. I think I may have spotted a trend with the Mac and the iPod too. First we have the iMac and the iPod, then we had the iPod mini and the Mac mini, now we've got an iPod shuffle. I'm now predicting that the next major Mac release will be the Mac shuffle. It'll be about the size of an iPod and will only run apps in 'Shuffle' mode, thus removing the worry and stress over what app to run next. Sat, 05 Feb 2005 03:46:55 -0800 http://www.applefritter.com/node/6283 Went on my annual trip to the gym today and while I was on the exercise bike, I noticed that the amount of power I was generating, was 85W, just enough to power a Mac mini. I can see a cunning business plan here, combined server/health farms. People pay us to host their stuff on Mac minis and other people pay us to come and get fit (while powering the Mac minis in the bargain). It's only a matter of time! Sun, 30 Jan 2005 07:15:26 -0800 http://www.applefritter.com/node/6077 I was really impressed with the specs and price of the Mac mini when it was launched last week. I've ordered one for testing duties and to use as a render box and watch the odd film on. I've been speculating along with a lot of other Mac users (and a lot of PC users who will soon be Mac users) about some of the other things the Mac mini might be able to do apart from sit next to a PC and emit RDF waves to convert hardened Windows users. Some of the ideas have already been discussed on various forums, such as building a small and cheap supercomputer using Mac minis. While the 100baseT ethernet and 4200rpm laptop type hard drive would limit the effect of a cluster, I'm guessing that a small cluster of them could still be quite effective, especially as the external PSU means you can easily keep the PSU in a separate area for heat dissipation. The major potential with the mini for developers though is in its capability as a cheap add on render box. Much like the Amiga won awards back in the 90s as a Mac add on (when used as a Lightwave renderer), the Mac mini gives you an inexpensive way of adding a G4's processing power to XCode, Logic Pro, Cinema 4D or any other apps that let you use network nodes. Even though the ethernet on it isn't gigabit, we've found that running a G4 under 100baseT as a node for Logic or XCode does take some CPU load off the main Mac and speed things up. If you're a developer playing with XGrid, the Mac mini looks like being a really cost effective way of building up your grid and testing your clustered apps. If you're using software like Apple's Remote Desktop 2 or open source ones like VNC, you can run the Mac mini (or stack of them) headless and just use them remotely to run extra tasks, which you can do even when they're running as network nodes for other apps. I expect we'll soon see other elements designed around the mini. My guess is that the first will be a FireWire/USB2 hard drive that is the same shape as the Mac mini and sits underneath it. More radically, I'm expecting someone will try and do a 6" LCD to fit on top and battery pack to sit underneath to give you a portable video rig similar to the ones used by video documentary teams for quickly previewing their work and like the various screen and battery kits you can buy for the Nintendo GameCube. There's also been a lot of talk of using the Mac mini as a PVR. Elgato and ATI's new EyeTV Wonder collaboration might work on the Mac mini. Most of the debate is on whether the Mac mini will be fast enough to do the compression on the fly for TV recording. In theory it should be able to cope (although I'd probably stick 512mb of memory in it) as I've done similar recording with G3 iBooks at slower clock speeds, but we're not talking HDTV here ;) What it will be good at though is sitting on your TV to play movies that you've previously made in iMovie or from DVD. As it's only a single monitor connection to the TV and you can use a bluetooth mini keyboard and mouse to remote control it, it's easy to just pick up a Mac mini and plonk it on your TV. The big thing that hit me about the Mac mini was something I thought of last night though. In the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adam's was very clever at introducing some seemingly random concept in one book and then hitting you with a surprise relevance of it in a later book, such as why the bowl of petunia's said "Oh no not again!". I was looking at my G4 Cube, stalwart of many games projects and still used as a server, XCode network node and test machine. I've steadfastly refused to put a CPU upgrade in my Cube as I didn't want to ruin its silent running style. Then I realised what the dimensions of the Mac mini really mean, and why it's subtly rounded... The Mac mini fits *exactly* in the air space under the Cube! You can sit a Mac mini underneath a Cube and not ruin the Cube's artistic style (other than it not looking like it's floating anymore), but have a much faster Mac running underneath it. I probably wouldn't recommend running the Cube at the same time though, as (a) there isn't room for any cables connecting to it and (b) with the air intake blocked underneath it would overheat. There has been a few suggestions that the Mac mini's case design didn't have any of Jonathan Ive's influence on it, but the fact that it seems to be designed to fit into the base of a Cube seems to confirm that the hand of Ive is in the design somewhere :) Sun, 16 Jan 2005 09:35:15 -0800 http://www.applefritter.com/node/6059 Managed to release ToySight Gold during Mac World San Francisco, and working on a new game now. Adam even updated the website! We've had a bug report of the camera input sticking on a low spec G4 from one user, but no others so far. Hopefully I'll be able to track that one down quickly :) Sat, 15 Jan 2005 10:37:20 -0800 http://www.applefritter.com/node/5954 I've just got to remove the last test cheat code from ToySight Gold and it's done :) On the subject of cheats and easter eggs, they can be fun if they're not too easy to do (check out the people trying to get the robot characters in Airburst Extreme on the forums! :) ), although sometimes a well hidden cheat or easter egg can stay undiscovered for ages. I'm really surprised that nobody has found the hidden "turn player characters naked" cheat in ToySight. Maybe they were just too embarrased to tell anyone about it :) Mon, 10 Jan 2005 09:29:19 -0800 http://www.applefritter.com/node/5923 Quite a nasty storm last night. Our roof tiles have been shuffled but still seem to be there :) Sat, 08 Jan 2005 07:41:11 -0800 http://www.applefritter.com/node/5922 Currently in the middle of a Force 9 gale (just off being a hurricane in the UK) with winds gusting up to 90mph. The roof is making some really ominous noises, including a couple of loud cracks and we're losing tiles. The Macs have been put in safer places and hopefully we'll still have power in the morning (just seem a bloody big flash from the power lines down the road). Fri, 07 Jan 2005 22:39:27 -0800 http://www.applefritter.com/node/5916 At last! Airburst Extreme patches are going up on the Freeverse servers as I type :) The ToySight Gold FlySight demo is done now too :) Fri, 07 Jan 2005 13:38:28 -0800 http://www.applefritter.com/node/5900 Just bolted the last of the bits of graphics into place in AirHeads, so my Bug and ToDo list is now just a Bug list :) Thu, 06 Jan 2005 11:18:30 -0800 http://www.applefritter.com/node/5889 as long as they have Mountain Dew. Unfortunately the Dew is difficult to do in the UK as it's not sold here (at least not at normal prices). I have to get my stash of Dew off [url=http://www.cybercandy.co.uk]smugglers[/url] who land it in wooden boats off the Cornish coast. Getting stuff ready for MacWorld is always fun. The plan is to have the official release of the ToySight Gold demo (a playable demo of FlySight) on the Freeverse servers by Friday sometime, so that it's ready for when the guys are at MacWorld. I don't think we'll win Best Game of the show like last year, but an 8 player Rendezvous connected, camera and voice controlled fighter dogfighting game must be a first :) Wed, 05 Jan 2005 19:03:18 -0800 http://www.applefritter.com/node/5866 Up til late last night fixing the collision code that I broke so that we could do some test video of FlySight and MarsLander today. Adam's sorting the models for AirHeads, so I'm having a brief rest until they're ready to use. There's an old saying that an Infantryman sleeps whenever he can. I think that applies to programmers too :) Tue, 04 Jan 2005 09:38:00 -0800 http://www.applefritter.com/node/5839 Testing Testing, 1,2, 3, 4. Seeing as it takes us ages to get around to updating the Strange Flavour website, I thought it might be an idea for me to use my Applefritter blog to keep people up to date with what we're doing (at least the stuff I can tell you about). The good news on the Airburst Extreme front is that the updaters are now in testing at Freeverse, so should be downloadable very soon (I'll be pestering them this week to try and get them released this week if they test OK). ToySight Gold is getting ready for MacWorld SF. The testers have been playing with the beta of the FlySight demo (despite my managing to totally break network play just before Christmas). The rest of TS Gold is looking pretty good too :) Sun, 02 Jan 2005 07:00:41 -0800