Last-minute or short deadlines are similar to the modern fast zombie, a-la 28 Days Later or Left 4 Dead. Same description as the above, but moving at an incredible pace, a more immediate horror. Attempting to complete a writing task under a Fast Zombie Deadline is best described as an incessant scream, undercut with the sound of a keyboard being worked furiously, as though typing is all that is holding the assailant at bay. On an unrelated note, The Typing of the Dead was awesome.

Assignments without a defined deadline are like ghosts. Ghostly deadlines are invisible and easy to forget about, right up until the point that they float up through the floor, shout “BOO” and possess you until you’ve completed their unfinished business.

All deadlines are like vampires in that if you’re not careful they’ll suck your blood, leaving you an empty husk.

An apt name, for some.

Let’s take the RAGE release problems as an example. id Software are traditionally one of the premier PC game developers, and yet here we see PC gamers taking the brunt of the crippling defects. At the least, gamers are experiencing significant texture pop-in and screen tearing. At the worst crashes and hard locks. Gamers that chose to take a look at the Battlefield 3 beta were required to install a set of crazy-ass beta video drivers from their manufacturer of choice, which don’t play nicely with RAGE. In fact, they reportedly have a 100% crash rate. These gamers are subsequently required to roll-back to the latest stable release, then install an entirely new set of crazy-ass beta drivers. This all in order to play a game that they purchased on Day 1, such was the height of their excitement.

I’m not laying the blame at id’s feet, by the way. This situation is just a product of the current state of the gaming industry. Given the level of connectedness that publishers and developers have to consumers, pushing patches out is a relatively simple procedure. Massive defect remediation cycles have died in favour of hitting publisher-set release dates on time, whether the products are finished or not. It wasn’t so long ago that defects left undiscovered once a game goes gold, remained present for the life of the product. Therefore, it behoved developers to find and fix as many defects as they could before release, in order to defend their reputations. That said, perhaps the blame should rest with the gamers themselves? As Bice rightly points out, it is a sad fact that many gamers would rather take a buggy game two months earlier, than wait for the stable release.

Whatever the reason for the state of new release quality today, it is up to consumers to enact change. Raise your voices, change your purchasing habits, and make it clear that you won’t stand for sub-par quality in the very titles that should be standing as examples of gaming at its best for curious observers and dismissive decriers, both.

I agree that abbreviations and emoticons are changing the way that we communicate. I agree that subtlety, nuance and meaning are rarely considered when it comes to short-form communication. However, I put it to you that these forms of communication are not the place for subtlety. It’s hard to read between the lines when your sentence contains but one line.

In light of this, I present to you my condensed list of emoticons and abbreviations and their appropriate uses. Hopefully this will shed some light on these common phrases and will help you to understand why your doting grandmother is laughing out loud at news of the recent passing of your family pet.

If I’ve missed any, shout out in the comments and I’ll revise the list.

• lol = Laugh Out Loud
  A misnomer if you ask me. The brazen lie of this abbreviation becomes obvious when working in an office that allows it’s staff to use instant messaging to communicate. Very rarely does “lol” actually mean that the loller is in fact physically laughing out loud, it simply means that they acknowledge that something is funny. (Lots Of Love is the deprecated definition of this abbreviation. Can make things a little awkward: “Sorry to hear about your dead pet lol”)
• haha/gahaha
  On par with lol.
• LOL = Laugh Out Loud (no, for reals this time)
  The capitalisation of the acronym should be used to imply the presence of actual laughter.
• ROFL = Rolling On The Floor Laughing
  No, generally users of this abbreviation aren’t actually rolling on the floor. This is simply a grade above LOL in the funniness stakes.
• HAHA/GAHAHA
  On par with ROFL.
• ROTFLSHMSFOAIDMT =
  Rolling On The Floor Laughing So Hard My Sombrero Fell Off And I Dropped My Taco
  Does this really need an explanation?
• TL;DR = Too long; didn’t read
  Used to provide a reader with a cliff-notes/short version of the longer body of text. For example, “[Huge wall of text complaining about the weather] TL;DR It was raining today. I didn’t like it.” Also often used in a dismissive fashion to note that a piece of text is too long.
• brb = Be Right Back
  The user will be afk for a short period of time.
• afk = Away From Keyboard
  The author will be online, but away from their keyboard until further notice.
• afaik = As Far As I Know
  As far as the author is aware.
• :)
  When used at the end of a sentence, the presence of a smiley face informs the reader that the preceding text was meant to be taken positively.
• :P
  When used at the end of a sentence, the presence of the pokey-out-tongue face informs the reader that the preceding text was meant in jest and not to be taken seriously.
• :(
  A sadface informs the reader that the author is unhappy about the current subject of conversation.
• >:(
  The author is both sad and angry.
• >:)
  The author is being cheeky/devious.
• ಠ_ಠ
  Look of disapproval. The author disapproves of the subject of conversation.
• (yಠ,ಠ)y
  The Y U NO guy.
• \m/>.<\m/
  Dude throwin’ up the horns. Rocking out. Rock and/or Roll.
• ..|.,
  You just got given the finger.
• *
  Used to repair a mistype in a recent IM message or similar.
  E.g.
  “I like caek. It is yummy.”
  “*cake”

The new handset is pretty great. It has apps, plays music, connects me to social media and tells me about the weather. Maybe you’ve heard of it?

Nope, not an iPhone. I’ve taken a risk and become an early adopter of the newly released Windows Phone 7 operating system, specifically an HTC 7 Mozart handset.

*Pretend headphones NOT included

Windows Phone 7 is a complete departure from the Windows Mobile 6 of old, and a welcome one at that. Having turned on the handset and completed the initial setup, I was presented with the default Start screen as customised by HTC. A lot of fuss has been made by Microsoft about their new Start screen and Live Tiles. Each of the tiles that you can see up there in the above stock image are Live Tiles which update with information pertinent to the application, person or website that they’re associated with. For example, my mail tile will show the current number of unread messages in my Inbox. A Live Tile added for a person will show their photo, periodically display their name and latest Facebook update right there on your Start screen. Your Photos Hub tile will display a photo from your collection and other applications can display data like the current weather forecast, application updates awaiting approval or even your Xbox Live Avatar.

The Start screen also included a bunch of pinned applications including the HTC Hub and the Photo and Sound Enhancers. The HTC Hub is quite nice as long as you’re ok with sitting through an indulgent, albeit pretty, animated loading screen. After the load, you’re left with the clock and calendar widget that any user of an HTC Sense UI branded phone would find familiar, and the same list of suggested applications present in the Marketplace hub. Swiping to the right also provided a detailed weather application with animated weather effects designed to mimic the current weather in your location. I decided to drop the HTC Hub in favour of a lighter weather app as it simply took too long to display the important information.

One of the things that I love about this operating system (and the hardware requirements laid out by Microsoft) is that the experience is silky smooth. None of the jerky, laggy scrolling and swiping that we’ve become accustomed to on older smartphones. The clean lines and bold, open typefaces were the initial things that attracted me to WP7 and I’m happy to report that they’re part of the reason I’m staying. When it comes to choosing between the three major operating systems in this space (Android, IOS and WP7) you need to make your decision based on things extra to the core functionality of the products as they all essentially do the same stuff. They all make phone calls, they all send and receive SMS and they all have 3G internet connectivity. The first step of my decision was to dismiss Android. I like the concept, I like the openness of it and I absolutely believe that it should exist. It’s just that I wanted something less cluttered from my smartphone. I wanted an app marketplace that had some control around it so that I could be confident that a minimum level of quality was in place. This left me tossing up between the iPhone 4 and the HTC 7 Mozart.

On one hand, I had the iPhone 4. An absolutely known quantity – I knew that it was an awesome device and worthy of it’s current market share. A safe bet. On the other hand, the feature previews that I’d been reading from people who’s opinion I trust were throwing great praise WP7′s way. Enough to cause me to think long and hard about whether or not I was willing to risk becoming an early adopter of what could turn out to be another example of Microsoft’s apparent malaise regarding mobile technology. The panoramic design of the “Hubs” that have been shown off since early in the OS’ marketing cycle were one of the first things to intrigue me.

Your handset is a window into a wider UI

When navigating the phone’s primary functional areas, you are presented with these hubs – panels of content which are wider than the handset’s display. The last few pixels on the right of the display let you know that there is more content to be seen by giving you a tantalising glimpse of what is on offer, if only you would swipe your finger to view it. This impressively intuitive interface innovation removes the necessity for deep nested menus and allows the interface designers to present the same information and options in a much clearer fashion. It is interface decisions like these which solidified the decision to go with WP7 for me. The phone does all of the things that I need from a phone, while presenting them in a fresh and clean manner.

Adding contacts to the phone was a fantastically simple process. I inserted the SIM card from my previous phone and logged into my Windows Live, Google and Facebook accounts. The phone does a great job of automatically matching people with their many accounts. After 10 minutes of manually tidying up the few links that the phone wasn’t confident enough to work out on it’s own, I had a list of all of my friends and contacts each unified to single contact cards containing all of their relevant account information. Quick and simple. (Side note: Due to the difference in SIM size between Amy’s old phone and her new iPhone 4, she had to manually input all of her contacts)

Some quick in-built app notes: The messaging application is very similar to that on the other smartphones, using the conversational speech bubbles that you’re most likely already familiar with. The email application is simple, yet functional and fully compatible with Exchange, Gmail, Yahoo and Windows Live accounts. The new mobile version of Internet Explorer is absolutely functional and includes pleasant features such as the ability to concurrently load multiple tabs, Find On Page and integrated page sharing via SMS or email. It is snappy, non-mobile specific pages are viewable and are easily navigable. Flash is not supported, however. Copy and paste is still a “forthcoming feature”. The calendar app features push and happily syncs with your Google, Windows Live, Yahoo and/or Exchange accounts. The “Music & Video” hub is quite simply the same as the software that runs on any Zune device, with a few extra features. For instance, any videos watched on Youtube (via the Youtube app, thanks lack-of-Flash) will appear in your recent list of music, videos and podcasts on the Zune hub. Tapping one of these will return you to the video at the same point on the timeline that you left it.

All of this WP7 goodness is contained in a solid little handset that feels good in the hand and under the fingertips. The HTC 7 Mozart is a well built device with a removable battery, 8 megapixel camera and a Xenon flash. Power and cable-based synchronisation is delivered via an annoyingly obscure micro-usb port. The handset sports a user-replaceable battery, the cover for which manages to fit with the overall aesthetic of the phone. The touchscreen is accurate and responsive as proven by cross-hatch drawing tests. A pretty serious battery problem (which seems to be endemic to Telstra) has been plaguing me until recently which was causing serious frustration. The phone would require charging twice daily and would go flat overnight. After some furious (in both senses of the word) Googling, I came across a temporary workaround which has improved battery life dramatically. I now only need to charge the phone once over the course of a 48 hour period.

Xbox Live integration will obviously only interest those with an Xbox Live account, and a device with which to endow it with cheevos. The application allows you to send and receive messages from your Xbox Live friends, view your list of games and achievements, compare achievements with friends and make changes to your Avatar(!). It also comes in very handy when I run into Bice in meatspace and want to remind him of my ever-growing lead.

All in all, I am very happy with the device. There are a few quirks that should be ironed out as time passes. Considering their track record in this market and the fact that this is the first revision of the operating system, Microsoft have succeeded to produce a viable contender in the smartphone market. An achievement that should be celebrated in the traditional fashion.

Having noted in my response that I was, however, impressed that they were investigating social media in a fashion that stood above simply creating a Facebook page and linking people to it, I received another request to review SnapIt; Digeus’ tool for creating quick and simple screenshots.
This is an application that I would potentially use with regularity in my Quality Assurance role at Insight4, should it live up to my altitudinous standards.

SnapIt is a simple tool for quickly creating screenshots by hitting a hotkey and dragging a box around the content that you wish to capture. The selected portion of your workspace is immediately stored in your clipboard, ready to be pasted into an application of your choice. The user may also right click on the SnapIt icon in their system tray and choose to save the most recent captured image as a file.

The Properties panel provides the user with a few options for changing the default behaviour of the app.
These options allow the user to change the hotkey associated with the creation of a screenshot, the save location of files created by SnapIt, the image type (jpeg, gif, tiff, png or bmp), the automatic generation of filenames for saved captures, a filename prefix.

The most useful feature is (arguably) the option to have SnapIt automatically save images the your specified file path, rather than asking you to use the Save As dialog. This means that logging a defect for a piece of software which will require the creation of multiple screenshots is simply a matter of hitting your selected hotkey and dragging a box around the content to be captured. A file will automatically be generated, allowing you to hit your hotkey again to create your next screenshot. This saves the user having to hit print screen, open an imaging application, paste the screen capture, crop the image, save the image and upload the image, before they can move on to the next capture.

Having said that, the application currently has a few problems. Twice during the time I needed to spend with it to write this review it simply stopped accepting my hotkey presses. To resolve this I simply had to close and restart SnapIt.
It’s biggest failing at v3.7 is that it doesn’t handle multi-monitor, multi-resolution set-ups very well. At work I’m currently using a laptop with a 17″ widescreen display on the left and a larger 22″ monitor on the right.

If I attempt to trigger a capture on my bigger off-hand monitor, SnapIt gets quite confused and attempts to display the laptop’s view on the larger monitor, shoving what I actually want to capture out of bounds to the right.

These issues are somewhat frustrating, but I’m sure that a future release of SnapIt will address them.

There are other screenshot applications out there, but most are either more expensive or lack key features.
The long and the short of it is that SnapIt is pretty good. It doesn’t blow my mind, but it certainly makes the job of easily capturing multiple screenshots a much speedier affair. Once the issues that I’ve noted above are fixed, it will most likely become a high-rotation piece of software for me and my team.

I have also been asked to note that anyone else that posts a review of the application on their blog/Facebook/Twitter/forums will also receive a licence key by contacting Julia Taylor with a link.

You’ll find posts there from Bice Duncan and myself which will contain accounts of our own personal opinions on games and gaming. Please check it out.

For your listening pleasure, I am going to be presenting the next Atlassian webinar entitled “Complex JIRA Workflows with a JIRA Ninja”.

Details can be found here, including a link to follow if you’d like to register to listen in and ask questions. If you’re available at 9:30am AEST on Friday September 10, please come along and listen with bated breath as I attempt to educate while avoiding discountenance.

Limbo (XBLA)

Winner of the Visual Arts and Technical Excellence awards at the Independent Games Festival for 2010, Limbo has successfully navigated its way through the dark forest of small budget independant game development and into the neon-bright halls of XBLA’s Winter (Summer for those of you on the other side of the equator) of Arcade. Limbo is a powerful, foreboding experience which pits a seemingly helpless young boy against a barbarous world, the few inhabitants of which ready to pounce on any and every misstep.

Loved

Loneliness: Limbo is oppresively atmospheric. The entire game is rendered in a black/grey/white and from a multi-plane 2D side-scrolling perspective. There is very little text in the game outside of the main menu, even to the exclusion of any sort of objective. The player quicly learns which objects in the environment are dangerous, though mostly thanks to have been brutally ravaged by it previous to being dropped back at one of the game’s frequent checkpoints. The game’s soundtrack is incredibly sparse, the most common sound effect being the depressingly lonely footsteps of the protagonist. Music is all-but absent aside from a subtle score presented as though from the oversized horn of a phonograph.

Tactile: The way that the protagonist moves just feels right. Timing jumps, climbing both up and down ledges, ladders ropes etc are all very intuitive. You will never find yourself dying thanks to unresponsive controls, there is little here for a poor workman to blame. Limbo is not complicated, control-wise. Move with the left analogue stick, A to jump, B to interact. Complexity comes with how the protagonist is able to interact with the world, and perhaps more aptly, how the world interacts with the protagonist.

If At First You Don’t Succeed: The game’s ability to chew you up and spit you out (sometimes, quite literally) would normally result in many players frustrated by the difficulty. In this instance, the game checkpoints very frequently. This means that you will most likely not need to replay a difficult section after being perforated immediately by the one following it.

Moreish: I found this game incredibly difficult to put down. There is a lot to drive you forward here, from the beautifully terrifying scenery and the new and interesting puzzles to the reveal of a new, shocking expository story element. The game is short, but I think that plays to its strengths, much like a certain other short, brilliant albeit cake-obsessed puzzle game.

Hated

Creepy: The art and audio direction of the game is surprisingly horrifying. Deaths are visceral. I generally hate this term thanks to its over/misuse, but in this case it is both literal and accurate. Not for the fainthearted.

Very Little: I guess it’s kind of short? Clocks in at around three hours. I struggle to find fault with this game.

Playdead is to be commended for this title, preferably through the purchase and recommendation of the product. Limbo is an absolute must-have for Xbox 360 owners.