Laptop fixed?

Laptop fixed?
Our hardware specialist at work, and laptop repair guy extraordinaire, Assad, had fixed my laptop - I think. He reseated the grpahics card and tightened up a bunch of screws, and it seems stable for now - but before, it would be ok for a while then suddenly flake out, so I'm gonna test it some before getting too exctied. But its certainly a step in the right direction

[Listening to: DJ Doboy - Trancequility Volume 30 ]

Getting annoyed

Getting annoyed
For the second week running now, some little !£$^@"£$& has stolen my FOR SALE sign from outside the front of the house. We're having enough problems trying to sell in a slowed market already, without that happening. Looks like I'll have to call the agent again tomorrow morning and get another one

Movies on the move

Movies on the move
Installed a couple of movie players on my Orange SPV C500 SmartPhone. I now have PocketTV for MPEGs and BetaPlayer for AVIs (inc DivX). I just need to get a bigger memory card now!

[Listening to: MFG - New Kind Of World ]

Funeral

Funeral
Today I attended the funeral of a friend's father. While I have attended cremations in the past, I have never attended a burial. One thing that did surprise me was how short the service at graveside actually is. A persons life summarised into around 15 minutes.

My friend had originally intended to say a few words, but grief has finally taken a hold of him (he has been so busy arranging the inevitable practicalities that come with the death of a relative), so he asked me to speak on his behalf - at about 5 minutes notice. I hope that I did his father justice with my words of remembrance.

Here's to you Albert, hope you find some well-earned rest now.

Sokoban

Sokoban
A friend at work is writing a Soko Ban style game as a programming exercise and asked me to work on some graphics for him. I've designed a couple of block tiles so far, will do some more bits later. Hopefully he'll finish it and let me post it up on this site

Basic block
Block on its target
Soko
Soko on a target
Boundary wall


Its quite fun to see what you can do artistically in 16x16 pixels, especially since its years I've done sprites!

You can see the tiles on the level maps here

[Listening to: Cerror Axel Mystra Prime - Always Show Respect For the Ladies ]

Got my toy back!

Got my toy back!
Got my replacement handset back and it doesn't have the problem witht he battery cover! I'm back in business and have already customised my ringtone and text message alert

Smartphone Programming Blog

Smartphone Programming Blog
Found a nice SmartPhone programming blog made up of a series of articles, and compiled into a (sort of) book. Quite useful if this kind of thing floats your boat....

[Listening to: Tao/Cream - Breath 2000 ]

More Smartphone development

More Smartphone development
I've been doing a bit more work on programming my Smartphone (which is currently back at the suppliers, but I still have the development kit which has an emulator for testing apps), and have made some progress with my Tetris clone, PhoneTris. Here's a screenshot of work-in-progress - the final version will have a better user interface (score, next block shown, background graphics etc).

Eek! Phone update

Eek! Phone update
No, I haven't managed to get my Windows phone to Blue Screen of Death. I've managed to get Orange to agree to replace my handset due to a faulty catch on the battery cover. It mostly stays on but only requires the lightest touch for it to come off.

Means I'll be without my new toy over the weekend though

More on the Orange SPV C500

More on the Orange SPV C500
Having had last night to get to grips with my new Orange SPV C500 Smartphone, I must say that on the whole I am pretty impressed. The screen is big and clear, the system is quite easy to navigate around the menus (once you get used to it!), the camera quality is satisfactory (ok, its not a megapixel camera, but I've got a digital camera anyway) and the sound is good (polyphonics suck when you can use wavs and wma files!)

I've also been experimenting with writing applications for the phone, using the built-in .Net Compact Framework and the Smartphone 2003 SDK. I initially just wanted to test the development and deployment tools, so the old standard Hello World program got another airing, but I'm quite pleased by the results :-



I hope to do something a bit more complex when I get some time.....

New phone arrived

New phone arrived
My new Orange SPV C500 phone arrived today. Initial impressions are good but it'll take me a while to get used to all its menus and functions. Will do a mini review soon.

Atari Coding tutorials

Atari Coding tutorials
Found a site with another bunch of demo coding tutorials, with a big Atari section