The Story

The Story, by Legs and Cranius is a good World of Warcraft machinima. The song is a remake of Brandi Carlisle’s song of the same name.

Secret Texts 1

I recently finished reading Secret Texts 1 by Holly Lisle. It’s an epic fantasy book with some originality to it, and interesting and believable characters, even if the main protagonist is a bit too good and believes herself to be a bit too bad.

I like the style of the world in this book.

Dragonsblood

I just finished reading Dragonsblood, by Todd McCaffrey. It was quite interesting, and was a bit of a mixture of SF and fantasy just like Dragonsdawn by Anne McCaffrey, his mom.

Installing Skype in 64-bit Ubuntu

Skype unfortunately don’t provide a version for Ubuntu 64. It’s still possible to install the statically compiled 32 bit version using the following commands:

1. sudo apt-get install ia32-libs lib32asound2 lib32ncurses5 ia32-libs-sdl ia32-libs-gtk lib32stdc++6
2. cd /opt
3. sudo tar xjf skype_static-1.4.0.118.tar.bz2

Then just run /opt/skype_static-1.4.0.118/skype

Computer mod

I replaced the cooler on the GeForce 8800 GTS in my computer.

More photos on flickr.

Food

I thought I should follow my brother’s lead and publish some pictures of some food I cook. At least when it’s good looking.

Linktime

For those who like The Matrix: Enter The Meatrix.

The Shock Doctrine

Be wary of what politicians do after disasters. They may well be trying to use your shock.

Game Delivery

I tried Steam a while ago, and it got me thinking about computer games and how we get them.

Free games are normally downloaded and installed. Some very simple ones can be played directly in a web page (using Java or Flash). Commercial games are normally bought on DVD:s and installed onto the local disk. They too can sometimes be downloaded (with Steam, for example).

It took almost a week, the last time I bought a game on DVD, before I had the it in my hand. (The selection in stores where I live is rather poor, so they had to have it delivered to the local store.) The last time I downloaded a game in Steam, that took a day. Neither is fast enough to be convenient, but I like just being able to select a game in my computer and have it automatically prepare it for playing. The downside is that you don’t get a disc; you only “subscribe” to the game, so you can’t lend it to a friend.

A big problem with all types of games, in my opinion, is that they are tied to a specific type of machine and, for PC:s, a specific operating system. You can’t run a Windows game on a Mac. You can’t run a PS3 game on an Xbox, etc.

So how should this work? If we disregard commercial factors (such as copy protection systems), I imagine a game could be kept in a single file, with the code stored in a bytecode format that is JIT compiled before the game starts. The file would also contain all the graphics and sound etc. The advantage of this is that this single file could be played on any computer or game machine that had a game engine that can run this type of game, as long as the hardware is fast enough. Once you had the game engine installed, just clicking on a game file on a web page, or saving it on your local disk and then doubleclicking that, would start the game.

Then just copy the same game file to your PDA to play on the train. (If it’s not a game that requires a lot of graphics and CPU performance.)

The engine could also provide some extra security by only allowing the game to display graphics and play sound, and not allow it to read or write any files or access the network. This would beeasy to do in a JIT engine.

I imagine most modern and old games would only need access to a graphics API like OpenGL ES, a sound API (maybe OpenAL), keyboard / mouse / gamepad / joystick input, and a way to store and retrieve per-user data, like saved games.

Trip to Stockholm

I’m going to Stockholm around midsummer. Let me know if you want to meet up.