XNA Book Takes Shape

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Coming to all good book shops....

I've been uber-busy over Christmas and New Year getting the last parts of the book sorted out and preparing the sample programs (all 54 of them) for the companion web site. Today I got the final design for the cover, which I think is really cool. I've asked for one tiny change, to remove the S from the middle of my name. It works for Hunter S. Thompson, but I don't really have enough syllables in my name (not to mention writing ability) to carry off a middle initial just yet. The book will be going to print real soon, and should be in the shops by March.

This is a bit later than we had planned, but I think it is the first XNA 2.0 book out there, which is nice.

But What a Sound!!!

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I've spent some of today making sound effects for the demo content for the XNA book. Great fun. I've been sampling things using Audacity and I tried to export a little bit of a waveform to make the tick sound for a clock that I've made. Except that I exported all the tracks at once. The resulting sound however is fantastic. Take a listen here and try to keep a straight face all the way through.....

..just think how much I've saved

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Went shopping for clothes today. Went very well, got a couple of jackets and some jeans It might not seem much to you, but I'm only able to buy clothes a couple of times a year and this was one of them. I'm not telling you how much I spent, but I saved loads...

The weather was kind of interesting and wintry. Asked number one son to poke the camera out of the car window during the journey.

So he did.

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The first shot he took

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True Grit

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Not quite an oil painting, but it could be..

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As could this...

New Year at Hornsea

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We always try to go to the seaside on new years day. We've done this for years, and we are still not sure why. The thing is, sometimes the weather is great and you can get some superb pictures.

Then you have days like today. It was quite cheering to find that there were a few other plucky souls who had ventured out into the horrible weather. I, of course, took the camera to record the occasion.

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Nobody was swimming.....

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Teddy bears

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Snakes and Ladders

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We spent a pound here. In two pence pieces....

Playing Unknown Songs

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Number one son brought home a copy of Guitar Hero 3. This is the new fangled one with the wireless guitar, which is very nice. It also has a very wide range of different songs supplied with it. Hardly any of which I've actually heard of, which is a bit of a problem really.

The first Guitar Hero was packed with tunes that I knew. They were not the original versions, the weasel words "..as made famous by.." appeared next to most of the artist names, but that didn't matter to me. At least they were covers of stuff that was familiar.

The new version seems to have gone the other way. Rather than copies of very well known material they now use original versions of stuff that nobody knows. So I end up trying to pick may way through a tune that I've never heard before, and don't particularly want to hear now. They've also fiddled with the two player mode and added stupid battle modes where you can snap your opponents strings and overload their amplifier, which all seems really silly to me. Add to that some daft duelling parts in career mode and I think we are talking about video game franchise that is in the process of jumping the shark.

Mass Effect

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Some modern computer games are deep. Very deep. Mass Effect is like this. Far too deep for me. It is a role playing game where you have to interact with a whole bunch of people to get the job done. What happens to you do depends on what you do, and how you treat other people.  This aspect of the game is very impressive. To someone watching the gameplay it looks very natural, and the feeling of actually being there talking to the other characters is very strong.

Number one son bought a copy of Mass Effect for the Xbox 360 last week, set himself up as a straightforward, honest and caring engineer, and went out to right a whole bunch of wrongs across the galaxy.  He doesn't like the inventory management, but he does like the gunplay and the plot is quite compelling. I've seen the game on sale for less than 25 pounds, which represents fantastic value for something which could keep you busy for a rather long time.

Enchanting Enchanted

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I quite like some kids films. They have fewer bad things happen in them and, give or take a bit of singing, they are usually great fun. A well written one can be a treat, with slapstick for the kids (which I love) and some quite zingy dialogue (which I love). Enchanted hits the spot on both counts. It gives a nce take on fairytale vs. real life with some funny moments and some genuinely touching ones too. You get a standout performance from the princess and the ending is a properly happy one. Well worth a look.

...or you could buy an iPhone

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I love my iPhone. It is a highly covetable device which is a genuine pleasure to use. It is just a pity that it is not quite as useful as I'd like. I end up having to put the sim into my Smartphone when I want to do something useful like manage my email or work with Word documents.

But I've been doing some sums and playing with other toys and I've fallen over something very interesting. An iPhone costs around 270 quid, and you have to sign up for a scary 18 month contract that will cost you at least 35 quid a month. Scary money. For roughly the same outlay you can get a SkypePhone, an eeePC and a cheap USB Bluetooth adapter. You get all the internet you can eat for around 10 pounds a month and you can walk away when you like. And the eeePC is not the same as an iPhone from the style point of view, but it is a whole shed load of useful.  It works a treat over Bluetooth with the Skypephone to give a proper 3G browsing experience. You don't have quite the posing power, but you can do everything that the iPhone can do, plus an awful lot more.  Worth a thought I reckon.