grapefruitopia

When news goes wrong

benjymous — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 16:05:00 GMT

Someone pointed me to this amusing story on Yahoo news today:

I'm sure you're thinking something about German tourists.

Maybe you're also asking where's the picture?

A quick bit of googling found the original story on the Reuters site:

You'll notice the difference in wording there...

A bit more research finds the German original story, with picture

Somebody at Yahoo's going to get fired...

Castlespotting

benjymous — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 19:32:00 GMT

Castlespotting! - the new extreme sport!

Cooliris

benjymous — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 21:53:00 GMT

grapefruitopia is now Cooliris enabled for the 365 photo feed - give it a try!

It's full of holes!

benjymous — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 16:00:00 GMT

Apparently Scientists have found holes in the Earth's magnetic field - Over use of magna-doodles in the 80s are blamed.

To help this, you can save the world, with an Ecofont - and save a bit of ink every time you print (or you could just print smaller, saving paper too!)

Is Beyoncé a Sith lord?

benjymous — Sun, 30 Nov 2008 09:47:00 GMT

Weekend Project...

benjymous — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 16:34:00 GMT

...Build your own Trebuchet!

Two Hour Trebuchet

Space Invaders

benjymous — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 16:01:00 GMT

I have no idea what's going on here, other than, it seems, all they wanted was to help us recycle. All that Space Invading was obviously just a front.

Tower of Meeples

benjymous — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 21:04:00 GMT

To be honest, I'd forgotten I'd made this - I just found the stills on my camera :)

Duffy - Please stop playing!

benjymous — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 09:17:00 GMT

This screenshot from the Xbox360 singing game Lips says it all, really.

30'000 dominoes, and a sinister cat!

benjymous — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 16:30:00 GMT

They say they don't make TV like they used to

benjymous — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 12:46:00 GMT

"Oh yes, it's definitely been jumped on, that egg"

Wordle

benjymous — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 13:12:00 GMT

Wordle is a website that'll create a "Word Cloud" from the text (or URL) you give it. Here's what you get when you feed in the contents of all the blog posts, and most of my rant articles:

(Click for a slightly larger version)

What I learnt at the Develop Conference

benjymous — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 12:22:00 GMT

Ok, so I admit, it's been quite a while since I posted anything here, so I'll try and make amends. Last week I was sent down to the Develop Conference in Brighton, so here are some notes of the things learnt.

Bioshock - An underwater art-deco dystopia wouldn't have gone down too well in focus testing, so they didn't bother. Morals didn't matter when the Little Sisters were giant insects. People don't care about killing giant insects. People do care about killing little girls.
Snakes - Recompilation times are bad when adding new gameplay features. Stackless python - good. Python's memory management - good. Fast gameplay turnaround makes all the difference.
Braben - LostWinds came about from an internal "post your game ideas" forum, was prototyped in a week, and fully developed in less than four months. The second-hand game market is a big unaccountable black hole, digital distribution is the way forward. Elite4 will come after The Outsider
Bizarre - Making photo realistic game levels needs lots of photographic reference. And guides to stop you getting mugged on the street.
Sumo - Porting games to other (smaller) platforms is easier if your original codebase wasn't written by idiots!
Atmospheric Scattering - Lots of papers, Lots of maths. Transparency won't work. Fudge the constants. Pretty sunsets. Cheat at night.
Halo AI - Primal games are fun - Hide and Seek. The AI has an internal model of the world. But it's often wrong. Intentionally. Which makes it fun. Mistakes are better than weaknesses. Narrative is fun. Abilities are fun. Especially when the AI uses them too.
Framestore - They've done frickin' everything! Yet another fur system! Cheat wherever possible! Shamefully little usage of graphics hardware.
The Edge Panel - Lone coders can control the vision. EA don't like blood. Statistics are good. Shaders are lovely - let's have a shader party! (As long as we've got enough cash to feed the sheep.) Bureaucracy gets in the way.

Does. Not. Compute

benjymous — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 16:29:00 GMT

Think if you will, of the story of Robinson Crusoe.

A man, shipwrecked on an island. All alone.

What'd make that a bit more exciting?

How about Pirates? Swashbuckling Pirates? Yeah, that'd make it better.

...

Or how about a big 7 foot flipping robot!?

That's wrong on so many levels.

And it's in 3d!

IT'S ON STAGE - of course it's 3d!

*sigh*

The aforementioned robot was stomping around in Newcastle today advertising the panto. Isn't it also a bit early to be thinking about pantomimes?

Photos

benjymous — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 09:40:00 GMT

A Couple of weeks ago we spent a blissful week down in Somerset - The photos have been here for a while now, but I hadn't got round to linking them from the front page.

Somerset & Dorset, May 2008

Yesterday, we got up early, and drove to Loch Lomond, taking a good friend who hadn't been to Scotland yet. Whilst there, I snapped another Panorama of the view of the Loch from Craigie Fort, near Balmaha.

Pierson's Puppeteer

benjymous — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 13:03:00 GMT

After a bit more playing with Spore, I've created this:

(Based on the image here)

Hi Mum! I'm on Telly!

benjymous — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 17:01:00 GMT

(Well, not me personally, but our office...)

Yesterday, we were visited by the BBC's Technology correspondant Rory Cellan-Jones. Clips of this were broadcast during the Breakfast programme on BBC1, Today on Radio 4, and the BBC One O'clock news.

There are also two extended online reports:

How a computer game is made � apparently it�s all art, no programming...
UK Games industry needs more (*juicy) brains. (*might not be the original wording of the BBC)

A bit of a play with the Spore Creature Creator

benjymous — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 13:05:00 GMT

So, after lots of waiting, the demo of the Spore Creature Creator is finally here (giving us a glimpse of what the full game will offer.)
After much cursing SecuRom refusing to start the game (why does a free demo need to have an evil copy protection system included, anyway?) I eventually tracked down the problems to it considering Process Explorer to be a hacking tool!! Sigh.

Anyway, here are a couple of oddballs I created after a few minutes of playing:

Grapefruitisaur and offspring. Bless him, he'll grow into that eye.

Wheelbarrowica's sensitive eyes are high up out of harm's reach.

Now just got to wait till September for the full game!

Random quote of the day

benjymous — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 12:45:00 GMT

The Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals was surprised when asked whether using alpacas was cruel to foxes. �Using an imported South American camel to chase British foxes is so bizarre, we have not even thought about it.�

Alpacas Fend Off Foxes at Highgrove

Sorry for the long hiatus in posting, we were away on holiday a few weeks ago, and have been very busy at work since. I've uploaded a batch of photos from the holiday (some of which you can see in the widget at the bottom), so once I've got them all captioned up, I'll open up the gallery.

Muto - an ambiguous animation painted on public walls

benjymous — Wed, 14 May 2008 13:55:00 GMT

MUTO a wall-painted animation by BLU

Telly Savalas Looks At Birmingham

benjymous — Sun, 27 Apr 2008 11:54:00 GMT

On Saturday morning on Radio 4, there was a great little program called "Telly Savalas and the Quota Quickies".

Back in the 70s, a series of Travelogues were produced by the late Harold Baim, that were played before major hollywood output at cinemas to keep up the British film quota, giving very rose-tinted views of large (but not usually touristy) British towns, voiced by Kojak star Telly Savalas.

Seen through modern eyes, these films can be highly amusing, especially as Savalas himself never actually visited any of the places he visited!

Keith Richards is Vishnu?

benjymous — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 20:13:00 GMT

From today's Metro:

Wrinkled rocker Keith Richards has revealed he owns 3,000 guitars - and plans to display them in a museum or give them away. The Rolling Stones star, 64, said: "I've probably got two many guitars. I've got 3,000 guitars and I've only got two pairs of hands. I only play about ten of them."

Keith playing ten guitars with his four hands? Where can we get tickets?

Clever little Japanese Flash Game

benjymous — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 13:38:00 GMT

This is a deceptively simple little very simple little flash game, that might take you a while to work out what you're actually supposed to be doing, but it's worth it once you figure out the answer!

Cursor*10

It isn't easy being green

benjymous — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 19:51:00 GMT

We made one of our semi-regular trips up to Alnwick today, and were surprised to find a new "green" shop had opened - The Big Green Frog (the second choice of name after the proprietor's son's first suggestion of Big Green Wobbly Monster was turned down as possibly being a bit off putting!)

As their sign says, they stock organic and fair-trade clothing, gifts and goods, and were incredibly priced, it's normal for organic jeans to be in around the �50 mark, whereas theirs were for sale at a much more reasonable (and M&S comparable) �35. They also stocked lots of toys, gifts, adorable baby clothes, and funky t-shirts.

If you're in that region of the country, they're well worth a pop in, at 9a Narrowgate, just off the corner of Fenkle Street (click the little globe icon under the post for a map!) - We wish them the best of luck and will be sure to pop in again next time we're travelling that way!

Arthur C Clarke - 1917 - 2008

benjymous — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 08:01:00 GMT

If I have given you delight
by aught that I have done.
Let me lie quiet in that night
which shall be yours anon;

And for the little, little span
the dead are borne in mind,
seek not to question other than,
the books I leave behind.
This is Arthur Clarke, saying Thank You and Goodbye from Colombo!

365 update

benjymous — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 10:26:00 GMT

Ok, so as promised, I've relaunched 365 - it's now a gallery page again (with a funky calendar layout), rather than daily blog posts, as I was finding it hard to write a whole post for each image when most only warrant a brief title. I'll go through the last 6 months of photos and add captions in due time!

It's using all sorts of clever hi-tech AJAXy goodness which might break unexpectedly, so bear with me if it does!

Click here for the new 365!

Normal posting will resume shortly

benjymous — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 13:05:00 GMT

Don't worry, I haven't forgotten about 365 (I'm planning on relaunching in a new format), or given up posting, there's just been a fair bit going on right now - I'll update more later :)

The first weeks of February

benjymous — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 00:00:00 GMT

In the first weeks of February...

It's pancake day

benjymous — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 16:05:00 GMT

... A handy recipe, in case anybody was planning on using a packet mix ...just add your own eggs and milk...

Friday's snow from the office window

benjymous — Sun, 03 Feb 2008 20:59:00 GMT

Organic Falafel

benjymous — Sun, 03 Feb 2008 00:00:00 GMT

This evening's dinner consisted of tasty organic falafel, bought in packet form from The Green Shop in Berwick yesterday, on a bed of tasty salad and a toasted pita. Who says veggie food is boring?

Royal Border Bridge, Berwick-upon-Tweed

benjymous — Sat, 02 Feb 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Today we made a journey up to Berwick-upon-Tweed and had a thoroughly nice day out (with a surprisingly short journey.) One of the highlights was the Royal Border Bridge, a nineteenth-century rail bridge built by Robert Stephenson. --@lat="55.771939" lng="-2.014618" zoom="5"