Unsurprisingly, there’s been a lot of talk about the iPad since its announcement yesterday, the majority of which seems to be very negative. I probably won’t buy an iPad (yet…), because I don’t think the iPad is aimed at me. Infact, it’s probably not aimed at the majority of people who have been slamming it. I do, however, know the perfect customer for it: my mum.

My mum has a Windows-based netbook, which she keeps in the lounge so she can check her emails, eBay, Facebook (or whatever social network she’s keeping tabs on me with this week) and no doubt some other sites she frequents. She loves pictures, she takes crap loads, and shows them to everyone. She also reads A LOT; she’ll get through a few books a week.

Now, although she’s computer literate, she doesn’t want to be worrying about it too much. Infact, not long ago I spent a day removing a virus from her netbook. She’s also not getting any younger, and although the netbook is good for portability, the screen size and resolution isn’t the best for her eyes. It’s these sort of headaches she doesn’t want from a computer. She doesn’t want to be thinking or worrying about using it, she just wants to use it. Enter the iPad – right? She’s the perfect person for the it.

As far as I can see, the iPad is the computer for people who don’t want to worry about computing (at least, not all the time). The market exists, I’m just not in it.

Update: My mum rang me last night to tell me how tempted she was by the iPad, without me even mentioning it to her. Admittedly she decided it’s too expensive at the moment to replace her netbook (which she’s only had less than a year anyway), but when the time comes she will most likely be getting one.

Just a quick link to a project of mine I’m currently working on. Watch this space.

http://www.fretlesshq.com

Before I start, I want to make clear that my knowledge of the gaming industry is pretty poor, but I think the assumptions I’ve used in this post are fairly sensible. If not, please let me know!

I want to talk very briefly about Pro Evolution Soccer, a game which I and many others have bought and enjoy playing. I’m sure this game cost a lot of money to develop – most games do. Traditionally, of course, this cost has been recouped by selling high volumes of games at a price which is around the standard for that console. So, for example, I generally expect to pay between £35-40 for a game for the PlayStation 3. This model has been around for a long time, and I’m assuming it works, since the game industry has managed to continue to thrive.

Pro Evolution Soccer appears to be bucking this trend. I don’t know whether or not it is the first, but the game has a hell of a lot of advertising in it. The boards on the side of the pitch change with adverts (for example, we have seen ones relating to upcoming games which are to be shown on ESPN), and on the pause menu there is often a small advert in the top right of the screen (I can understand advertising on the boards, but on the menu?). I can’t be sure, but I think the sponsors on the team shirts change as well (this is an assumption based on seeing a foreign team with a British non-multinational logo on their strip). There may well be other, more subtle advertising that I’m missing.

Don’t get me wrong, this is fine. We’ve learnt to ignore advertising online, we can learn to ignore it on the PlayStation as well. What does annoy me, however, is that this is obviously a second revenue stream for the developers/production house. I’ve already paid £40 for the privilege of playing the game, and as I have said, traditionally this should be enough to keep the game going through to the next version. Had the game been set at a much lower price point, and it was obvious that the advertising was there to ensure the survival of the company, then I wouldn’t mind so much, but since it was priced at the regular level, it seems that the advertising revenue is just a nice added bonus. To me, it seems a bit odd to charge full price for a product, and then make more money by selling advertising space in that product – though it could obviously be a very lucrative model.

Is this the future of gaming? Will we see more and more advertising within games? If we do, are the prices of games going to come down to reflect the reduced need for income from direct sales? Only time will tell.

My housemate and I have just watched Return to Forever: Returns, which he bought me for Christmas. We got into RTF late last year after I discovered Romantic Warrior in my music collection. I thought I’d take a moment to express how incredibly amazing these guys are. The music ranges from the sublime to the mental, and all the while it’s so incredibly complicated and well executed that us mere mortals have no chance. It’s things like this that make me wish I’d spent longer learning guitar properly (why oh why did I choose Computer Science?!).

Off the back of this I’ve ordered Al Di Meola – A Guide to Chords, Scales and Arpeggios, which, I’m hoping, is likely to become my musical bible.

Here’s a clip from the DVD of them performing The Dual of the Jester and the Tyrant. Enjoy!

A friend pointed me to this page today, which has some really awesome business card designs on it. I thought I’d choose a few of my favourites to post here.

In a similar vein to my previous post, here’s my 2009 in Twitter updates (although I only joined twitter in February).

• Wondering what all this is about…
• Might be slightly addicted to Rocky bars, can only eat them in pairs. Could just be strange OCD.
• Pleased that Drongo came third in Battle of the Bands. The best is yet to come!
• Amused that Drongo Sealion Magic were described by one female radio presenter as “more exhilarating than my sex life”
• Not sure how I’m feeling. Should probably be very upset, but just feel quite numb. The sadness will come
• I want to write a song called “Soft Porn and Nazi Sharks.” Lord knows what it would sound like…
• Mom’s having a girl’s night so I’m trapped in the back room. Why can’t they just get drunk and play PlayStation like men do?
• I’ve decided to move to Australia and take lessons from Paul Wardingham for a bit.
• I take that back. Any chance we can get Paul Wardingham, Greg Howe and Todd Duane together to teach me?
• Did you know that activity-dependent presynaptic facilitation was non-Hebbian? Me neither. They should really teach these things at school.
• The flat fell through at the last moment. Within an hour, however, we had applied for another one. How quickly we move on!
• I’m now with iPhone, but without motivation. I may have overworked yesterday. Time for Mitchell & Webb, then bed methinks.
• The Searle-Churchland debate on AI would be really interesting if I didn’t feel the impending essay question doom.
• Got the mid-revision new gear itch. Last time it was my Engl cab and Maverick 7 string, currently trying to resist a Blackstar HT-5.
• Might be listening to Uncle Moe’s Space Ranch too much. Dennis Chambers is infiltrating my brain, and he might be pushing out the revision
• Advanced Topics in Algorithms – who would have thought this module was completely insane?!
• ROADTRIP!!!
• SCOTLAND!!!
• EDINBURGH!!!
• T-Minus 1 day til exams. ACTION PONTENTIAL!! LINEAR ASSOCIATOR!! PORTER’S 5 FORCES!! COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE!! SYNAPTIC CLEFT!!! Hehehe, cleft
• Sugar sugar sugar sugar sugar sugar sugar sugar. This isn’t helping me learn. Lame.
• Filled up my last pad with revision, so can’t continue until Tesco opens. That’s part laziness, part procrastination. And I’m loving it.
• Happy. Life is really good at the moment. Yes. Griff is content.
• Can’t believe someone stole the aerial off my car. What kind of person does that?!
• Just launched my first twitter mashup: http://twipestry.imaginaryroots.co.uk – let me know what you think!
• Full of pasta, so going to sit down with a beer and play Gran Tourismo. This is the life.
• NORTH SEA JAZZ!! Excited
• Best bits of NSJ: Jonathan Kreisberg, CTI All-Stars, George Duke, Etienne Mbappe & Lee Ritenour. John Zorn is scary.
• Really enjoying RoR now I’m over the initial installation issues. Is this better than Cake? Hmmm, maybe.
• Consulting “Getting Real” by 37signals. This thing is like a bible to me.
• CORNWALL!!!!
• Just been writing some “music”. Al is going to hate me.
• Argh, I suck at guitar. Wish I could un-learn all the bad things about my playing. Need to sit in a room with a metronome for about a month
• Well proud of my little sis! Soon she’ll be a dirty lazy student.
• Great band practice, but perhaps too much rice. Should probably be sleepy time now
• R.I.P Pouches, 2007-2009. Hope you enjoyed your time with us, you will be missed.
• Job accepted. London, here I come! (In a year or so…)
• Vegas time!! See you next week
• Why is installing the MySQL gem on OSX so freakin’ difficult?!
• RIP Stan Pedley. You’ll be missed, but I’m glad you’re no longer suffering
• Time to bite the bullet and fill in some tax returns.
• Moving house this weekend. Let the hunt for boxes commence!
• Annoyingly, there is only one module this year I don’t want to take. Everything looks so interesting!
• Moved out, keys surrendered. Bye bye, Area Griffty One. We had fun!
• Slowly figuring out the Extended Kalman Filter. I’m pretty sure Uncle Moe’s Space Ranch are helping.
• Had a lecture on teleportation in which I won a chocolate bar. Today is a good day!
• Introducing the Griffkins Diet: you can eat only pasta, waffles, rice and toast. Preferably all in the same meal.
• Relearning #Cappuccino for an idea I’ve had. Really love the way it works – refreshingly different and incredibly advanced.
• Pumped, and a little scared for our poster presentation. Lidar, lidar, lidar, lidar, slam slam slam.
• Massive snow in the Netherlands means we can’t travel No Dutch Christmas for me, it seems!
• Screenwipe is reminding me how incredibly quickly this year has passed

I thought about using the application, but it’s a bit lame, so I thought I’d do my own (this is obviously a subset of my statuses…). Enjoy!

James ‘Griff’ Griffin…

• is enjoying Shawn White’s Snowboarding and Tomb Raider. Business essay? What Business essay?
• is bored of looking at seg faults
• is possibly a little obsessed with Greg Howe at the moment
• has much shorter hair now
• has just launched http://catorcactus.imaginaryroots.co.uk
• came third, and is pretty pleased with that DRONGO!
• will be a resident of Leamington Spa on the 2nd April
• has settled upon “Area Griffty One” as the name of his new pad. Thanks be to Paul
• realizes, after a night out, how little women appreciate men who can correctly identify the beat
• submitted. It’s over!!! Now for the rest of the work…
• got hit on by an old woman, had a conversation with Scott Dacko about guitar, and had his boob signed. Good evening!
• has survived his first visit to the gym. Now to counteract that with a chip buttie
• starts exams tomorrow. ARGH.
• has finished!! And, unfortunately, is massively allergic to mom’s new kitten
• is in love with his Blackstar HT-5
• is soupy, so he is.
• is not in Holland (yet…), and really enjoyed Miracle on 34th Street.

Not long ago, I attended a seminar by Chris Date at Warwick Uni DCS on the topic on the advantages of the Closed World Assumption as opposed to the Open World Assumption. I wont be talking about these here, but I’ll just give a quick introduction. In the closed world assumption, if a set of data exists in a database, then it is assumed to be true (for example, Employee Steve has ID 1 and earns 20K). If a set of data could exist in the database, but doesn’t, then it is assumed to be false. In the open world assumption, however, this data can be either true or false – the assumption is that it doesn’t exist in the database because we don’t know if it’s true or not. It’s a very interesting topic, perhaps I’ll talk about it some other time.

The talk was incredibly interesting, but there was one thing he said which really struck a chord, and that was:

The most important property a database can have is that its data is correct.

This struck me in particular as a result of a number of issues I’ve had with recent projects whereby the entire website was crippled because of a couple of bit of incorrect data in the database. Could this have been avoided? Definitely. I could have added lots of constraints to the database, and I could have performed more unit tests on the code itself (I’d only just gotten into doing unit tests at this time, so they weren’t quite as robust as they could have  been). It got me wondering, however, whether it would be useful to unit test that database design itself. It’s all good having “correct” code, but if the underlying database will allow inconsistencies, then there’s still a risk that the system can break. I’m not sure if unit testing the database design at a level below the code would be worthwhile, but it’s something to think about!

I’ve recently finished the first term of my final year of university, and for probably the first time, I’m actually sad to have completed one of my modules. The module was entitled “Research Directions”, and is (apparently) fairly unique to Warwick University. It’s organised as a series of graduate seminars, meaning the module as a whole covers a wide range of subjects, mainly being taught by guest lecturers who are experts in their particular fields. This meant that we were given decent groundings in areas including Quantum Computing, Bioinformatics and Trading Algorithms. Each member of the group presented a topic taken from the Communications of the ACM, which gave us brief introductions to more topics such as Smoothed Complexity, Probabilistic Databases and Model Checking.

What made this module great? It was relaxed, free-flowing and interesting. What more can you ask for? If only all modules were like this.

The degree I do at Warwick is very theory-heavy, in that we learn a lot of algorithms, techniques and equations, but put very little of it into practice. I quite enjoy the theory part of it, but it’s always fun to do the implementation (after all, isn’t the general perception of Computer Science that it’s a degree in programming?). Today, I got one of those wonderful moments where the theory is put into practice outside of the modules, when I had to implement Bresenham’s line drawing algorithm as part of our group project. For some reason, I found this really exciting! Of course, I had to look up how to do it, even though the module was only last year…