Civilization IV

I had spent many hours developing civilizations back in the dark days of computing of the early 90s. The game "Civilization" came out after the other hit; "Sim City" had started to lose its shine. The games are similar, but different enough to warrant buying and playing both. If I cast my mind back even further, there was a textmode war game that I spent many hours on called Empire which had a slightly similar feel to Civilization's battle system. A big thanks to Bryan at Textmode for continuing to host programs such as that.

I was in the Philippines and had some time to kill because a coup had me flee the country a little earlier than I had planned. I spotted the latest incarnation of Civilization in the airport and made the purchase (after checking the net to ensure that I wasn't getting ripped off).

Civilization IV has some nasty minimum specs which exceeded that of my 2 year old laptop (Toshiba A10, 2.2GHz Celeron, 768Meg RAM). I was faced with a dialogue telling me "Your machine is below minimum specifications. Civ4 will not run on this hardware setup." So I spent some time downloading the latest drivers (of which I had already it turns out), just to make sure it wasn't something simple. No. The problem is that the game needs some nifty little hardware based rendering features on your graphics card or you will get this error. LIES! It ran OK on my machine despite this. Sure it was a little jerky and slow, but that just completed the nostalgic trip for me.

Civilization IV is the same game as the 1991 version but with a lot slicker interface and some very sweet music. I did not try the online play, mainly because I do not think that I would be as ruthless with other real life players. Plus you can't trust people. At least with the computer AI you know that the friendly nations will generally tend to do friendly things. So until I play the multiplayer version I cannot give a complete review, but I don't think that will happen anytime soon.

Civilization is a turn based game, so you do things in turn, wait for the other civilizations to have their turn and then start all over again. So you play it at your leisure, considering each move as you develop your world. You build towns, who can build a unit (eg: soldier, missionary, worker) or upgrade (city walls, banks, hospitals). You have a directive of sorts which heads your civilization to create new developments (eg: iron, electricity, theology, communism etc). You trade with other civilizations through a very easy to use interface. All rather complex, and difficult to fully explain without becoming a manual. The game actually prompts you when it thinks you have been neglecting something, and many of the units have an auto-mode so they can go about happily developing or protecting your civilization without you having to micro-manage them.

This game is full of joy. Building towns that flourish, satisfying your people so they spontaneously celebrate your leadership, building relationships with other civilizations that you like, and the cold shoulder to other civilizations that you know you are going to have to "take care of" later; oh they may beg for mercy, offer tribute, but they never seem to want to hand over half their cities for peace, they would prefer the inevitable complete destruction that I only too willingly hand to them.

I had forgotten that you spend ages developing this civilization, the towns, the diplomacy with other governments. Then the damn game ends and it is all gone. Oh the hollow feeling, the loss, the futility of it all! OK, maybe not that bad, but very similar to reading an excellent book, getting to the end and wishing there was more.

This game rocks. But like last time, I may only play it one more time. Not too bad value if you consider the cost of the game and the number of hours you spend on it. If you want to get your own copy I would suggest you check out eBay but make sure that you get an unused serial number or you won't be able to play online. Make sure you download and install the latest update, done from within the game.

The Face Transformer

Apologies for the extra long image down the side but I thought that the output of the transformer software was so very cool that you would have to see it for yourself, and these are probably the only pictures of myself that I am truly happy to have on the internet. Hurrah for digg popping up little gems of goodness such as this.

Take an image of yourself looking straight at the camera, upload the image, specify what sex, age and ethnicity you are, box the head area, indicate position of eyes and mouth, then let this very neat little java applet transform your image in a number of ways.

You think you are hideous now, wait until you see what this baby produces.

There were some slight errors so I touched up the images a little with Photoshop but not so much that you'd notice - I can't help fiddling. I also merged a bunch into one graphic for this article and shrunk them a little. Conversions of an image of my neice came out at 398 x 466 pixels; not too bad.

Of particular interest to me are the artistic interpretations but the racial transformations are also quite good. The abstractness of the artistic images probably stray a little too far from the original to be recognisable but none the less maintain a certain similarity.

The results are ideal for avatar creation. You know - those little images you can have in online forums and chat programs.

Who needs artistic talent when you have software able to do this for you. Having an artist produce hand drawings similar to the images produced with the transformer would take the artist many hours to complete. To have something like this done in a few seconds is wonderful. Way better than the standard filters available in photoshop.

The major drawback to this software is the limited output resolution. It would be nice to have something produced with much higher resolution so it could be printed and framed ... makes me want to hunt down some of the cool photoshop plug-ins I had noted in passing and check out various effects software for something that may produce similar results.

Transformer | digg story

Queensland traffic signs

Being the Christmas holidays I have managed to do quite a bit of traveling around the south-east corner of Queensland over the last week or so. I have traveled to and through many areas that I am not familiar with and so I had to rely on brief glances of maps before leaving and traffic signs while on the road. Unfortunately, traffic signs in Queensland are terrible. Being a long time resident of the region, I already knew this, but driving about really highlights many of the problems. Simply driving around Brisbane, the capital of Queensland, you notice quite quickly that there aren't always street names when you come to an intersection, also road signs are often obscured by plants or other road signs.

When I was heading North to Noosa, I would often come to round-a-bouts and have to guess which was the most likely turn as there was no signage at all before the turn. Often the signs are 20m to 50m after the turn, kind of a "congratulations, you guessed well" type sign or "sorry, you chose unwisely, I hope you enjoy the next 10km of unnecessary detour".

Although I always got to where I wanted to go, it was not without some danger because of sign placement causing you to do some last second lane changing. Sure, the locals know the way, but this is really very troubling for tourists.

When traveling through New South Wales I noticed straight away the doubling of speed signs. Excellent because you sometimes miss the first notification of a speed change. The regular use of the "60 ahead" type signs are an excellent warning of speed reduction that a weary driver appreciates. In Queensland, you are lucky if you are told once. I know there are some side roads that you can travel down and join onto another road that has a different speed rating but there are no signs to tell you of this change. I guess you are assumed to be a local if you travel down side roads, and thus know all the road speeds by heart.

Along our freeways we have these variable message signs that display messages like "wear a seatbelt or die" and "tired drivers are homicidal maniacs" or something like that. They also, sometimes, tell us almost useful things like "Congestion after Mains Road" which is excellent in theory except that the information is almost always out of date, the congestion is usually right in front of me, not 5km down the road. It would be nice to have some metrics like "estimated time to city is 45mins" and you could make a judgment to get off the freeway at that point. As they stand, these huge signs are mostly useless. Worse: they are embarrassing, the variable message signs seem to always have some sort of malfunction, with pixel errors all over the place. These signs look hideously expensive and yet their effectiveness renders them as little more than huge piles of junk mail advertising. The whole system reeks of lowest bid contract with poorly defined responsibilities. Seriously, at this point in time the city would have been much better off without these signs and investing in tidying up the standard traffic signs instead.

Privacy and Fly Buys

In Australia, like elsewhere, there exists a system where you get "rewarded" for using credit or buying at certain retailers. Usually this consists of gaining points for money spent using a particular credit card and/or dealing with specific companies who participate in these programs. Sounds reasonable. As long as you don't change your purchasing habits (ie: spend more) then you seem to be getting part of the profit back. Some of these programs will also keep track of exactly what you are buying and when for marketing use. When I signed up for "Fly Buys" I was very dubious of the system. However I was assured that this information is kept confidential and that my specific information was to never be given to anyone. Over the years I have cashed in my points and enjoyed some free accomodation in excellent hotels, and many free movie tickets. Nice.

However, the privacy policy is changing. As of 2006, the big corporations want the information that was collected by the Fly Buys company. They will also be able to disclose this information

"within their corporate groups (and to their service providers)".

That is just scary; how many companies belong to the "corporate groups"? What the hell is a service provider?

The notification of these changes were sent to me along with all the other pieces of junk paper that this program regularly seems to send out. I usually toss it all in the bin without looking. As would most people, I'm sure. However the leaflet "Important news about your privacy" caught my eye and the alarm bells went off. After careful reading, it seemed that I could tell them not to share my information and everything would be OK. However, I checked the policy on the flybuys website which states:

"If you do not wish to be bound by these changes, you can withdraw from FlyBuys."

If you don't like the changes then you're out. Fine by me. Just to confuse things the next paragraph says

"You can, at any time, tell us not to disclose your name to Coles Myer Ltd (and its group companies) or National Australia Bank Limited (and its group companies). You can do this by writing to us or by calling 13 1116."

So I called the number and, when I finally got through, I told them that I don't want anyone getting my details ever, and the lovely lady confirmed that this would indeed be the case. What of the people who are just now joining up - do they have the option to opt out? What of the hoardes that don't do this?

This change in policy is major. However a leaflet in a bunch of junk mail, and a privacy policy buried deep in their website shows that the company is doing the bare minimum to ensure you are informed in the hopes of taking advantage of consumer inertia. You are subject to the changes if you don't say anything. I hate that. If there are any changes then you should be required to sign the new policy. THEN you would see the front page of their crappy magazine and web site covered with SIGN HERE NOW type things. Our governments should be making this law: no changes to contracts unless you specifically sign up, no automatic contract changes.

I know that people are usually willing to sell their privacy to the corporations for a few movie tickets a year, unaware of the issues that can rise from access to your data. Just like we so easily give up freedom and hand the law extreme powers to be safe from exceedingly rare acts of terrorism. One of the real problems is that the issues around privacy are complex and the adverse affects of having your data spread around the corporations is not immediately obvious. People far too often don't care who does what with their information. Disasters can happen when people examine information and make incorrect conclusions then things can really go wrong, especially if other facts are forced to fit by authorities that we are supposed to trust with information. There are issues of unauthorised access to a database that may cause problems. Then there are also issues where the database holder proves that they are untrustworthy, often sharing or selling your details without permission.

The way the cunning company avoids trouble is exactly what Fly Buys are doing now. A company makes changes to their privacy policy and hope that people don't take too much notice.

For me, this new policy changes everything. I don't trust them. Game over, I'm out.

Microwave popcorn kills!

"Eating microwave pop corn may expose people to chemicals that break down to produce PFOA, a suspected carcinogen."

Some background is required here for the uninitiated. Teflon (a brand name of Dupont) is a polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) that is supposed to be safe, but when heated to very high temperatures is known to give off toxic gasses. One of these toxic gasses is perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA or C8) and is thought to be a likely carcinogen (causes cancer). Other gases given off allegedly will kill small birds and cause polymer fume fever in people (flu like symptoms). The temperature for these gasses to be emitted was reportedly very high and Teflon (PTFE) was deemed safe for cooking.

However, the safe temperature may not be that high. There is a lot of research in the works to measure just how low the temperature has to be for Teflon to start giving off toxic gasses at an unsafe level. Apparently microwave oven popcorn bags are turning up very nasty results indeed. Allegedly pans are not a major source of PTFE fumes, but does that mean they are safe? Are any non-stick surfaces safe? Not according to bird owners but the research continues.

There are other reasons to avoid Microwave Popcorn. Eight workers contracted a rare deadly lung disease that CDC investigations determined was induced by exposure to the fumes from microwave popcorn flavouring. These workers were exposed to large amounts of these vapours but authorities were quick to say that there is no evidence that these vapours are harmful to consumers in the low levels that people are exposed to. This is simply scientific weasel speak saying that they don't know. "There is no evidence that this chemical will harm you" is a long way from "This chemical is safe". Do you really like microwave popcorn that much that you are willing to risk it. It is quite easy to make your own popcorn without a microwave - and MUCH cheaper.

I thought that it would be a simple matter to just avoid any teflon coated products. My pan was due for ditching anyway as the surface was looking like a four day old cricket pitch. So I went to the local stores in search of a new pan. Not surprisingly, nearly all of the pans in most shops are Teflon (or similar) coated. There is this new ceramic titanium coating which looked really neat, but was very expensive. I was just after a nice stainless steel job. Not too hard to find. A nice thick base for even heat distribution and a good long handle for ... keeping the burnt offerings of an accidently incinerated frying incident at a good distance I guess. Cleaning stainless steel is a LOT easier than I thought it would be, non-stick aint the only easy to clean game in town. I am exceedingly happy with my Chef Inox 28cm Professional stainless steel frypan and there are many other brands out there that I am sure I would have been equally pleased with.

However, getting a stainless steel or ceramic rice cooker or bread maker seems to be impossible. I contacted Brevile, who made my current model rice cooker, and they replied back that they had no stainless steel equivalent. Nothing in the works? Hmmm. I checked around and there are plenty stainless steel rice cookers but the bowl is always non-stick coated, just the shell is stainless steel. Bastards! I didn't even bother with bread makers.

I predict that PTFE toxicity will be a big thing. In the meantime, throw out your non-stick (PTFE) coated pans, and don't eat microwave oven popcorn. Or possibly not.

read more | digg story

Is microwave popcorn the new asbestos?
Why you should not cook with telfon

RIAA President: Sony Has Acted Very Responsibly

The impartial and well informed president of the Record Industry Association of America (read USA) says:

"The problem with the SonyBMG situation is that the technology they used contained a security vulnerability of which they were unaware. They have apologized for their mistake, ceased manufacture of CDs with that technology, and pulled CDs with that technology from store shelves. Seems very responsible to me. How many times that software applications created the same problem? Lots. I wonder whether they've taken as aggressive steps as SonyBMG has when those vulnerabilities were discovered, or did they just post a patch on the Internet?"

The full interview is available at CP NewsLink.

SonyBMG are being forced to act (at least partially) responsibly. In response to the exposure, SonyBMG lied about the effect of the installed software. The EULA incorrectly described what the software would do. SonyBMG dragged its feet in coming up with a response and made the removal solution cumbersome to implement, relying on the well known inertia "I give up" response of Joe Public. SonyBMG tried to dismiss the security issues as trivial, and that nobody really cared. There are a plethora of legal suits against Sony right now, which I postulate is the real reason for Sony heading in the right direction. Check RealTech's take on the matter.

The full interview has the RIAA president using a lot of fragile analogies, misinterpreting points of law and producing unsubstantiated factoids. A propaganda genius that I have not seen the like since Telstra sent me a full email explaining why they are increasing the line rental so much. Don't read this article unless you are familiar with what he is talking about, you may be influenced to believe. If you do end up on Cary's side then avoid Scientologists at all costs!

"Sony Has Acted Very Responsibly" ... to it's share holders. And in the end, that is what is important, right? The shareholders' dollars over the rights and freedoms of the client. Public relations from Sony sucks. Always has. Apparently they have to change PR firms very regularly.

I am sure people are getting tired of this, I know I am. Kicking Sony was more fun when I would do it and people would wonder what I was talking about - you know, the really poor quality items they sell and the exceedingly poor after sales service. I didn't mean to post yet another entry for SonyBMG DRM evilness as I am more in the habit of updating older entries. However DIGG has this new "blog this" feature that I had to try out and I wanted to test it on something that I could say more on. I recycled the graphic. See, no new pixels were harmed in the making of this blog entry.

read more | digg story

Eggnite

I was wandering about the local shopping centre last Thursday, doing nothing in particular. Noticed a whole pile of cylindrical cannisters with pictures of a glowy round thing plastered on the front. Said cannister proclaimed to the world that it contained an Eggnite. "What is this thing you earth people call 'Eggnite'?" I hear you say. Eggnite is an egg shaped blob of translucent plastic that glows and changes colours. The egg has an internal NiMH battery (which the documentation claims to be Ni-HM ... but I'm going with NiMH) and comes with a charger plate upon which the device can sit. The charger plate has a standard tiny power supply (7.5V 300mA) that barely gets warm.

The damn ball glows and changes colour! Rich reds, deep blues, intense greens. Oh the joy! What a gloriouis piece of home art, symbolising the unification of all colours of the world joining together, glowing with hope, encased in plastic crap that is probably toxic as teflon and will soon kill us all but in the meantime we glow! A tribute to LED technology, rechargable batteries and their heavy metals, and, of course, the petrochemical industry without which we would live a whole lot longer.

Eggnite is made in China of course. But then, isn't everything? The company who exploits the poor Chinese workers in the hopes of greater profit from selling these wonderous eggs is called Smash and is 100% Australian owned, based in Melbourne. They make some other plastic crap but the Eggnite is truly stupendous and worth your visitation to the local enourmousW.

There is some similarity between Eggnite and the more internationally available Oggz, probably enough to get some lawyer excited.

Now I need a LaserPod, lava lamp, plasma disc, and basically the whole inventory of Think Geek.