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Thursday, 09:17 pm, 11 November 2004 Decorum for Forum The past two evenings have been spent working on the new Noble Ape Forum and the second edition of Programming the Noble Ape Simulation. The forum effectively replaces the bug and feature reporting that Sourceforge provided. Forums and direct online feedback have been considered at least once a year for the past three or four years. The issue with Noble Ape has been maintaining user and developer interest. A large portion of the regular Noble Ape users don't want to be tracked. There use of the software is visible through download numbers. But not through much else. To-date, the developer mailing list has experienced strong and weak periods. Perhaps uneven would be a good descriptive word. But it fulfils its purpose and it would be nice to replicate the strengths of the Noble Ape developer mailing list with Noble Warfare. The problem I have with forums is stagnation. If there isn't regular use, it doesn't encourage regular use. How to get the ball rolling? This is the question. News Links - News Stinks Each day I would probably read between twenty and fifty internet news stories. I don't regularly comment or include news items on the Log. Part of that is a feeling - a need - to depoliticise my online entity. Following that introductory caveat, I found two news pieces today have effected me and I think are particularly good and interesting journalism. Surprisingly both articles come from BBC News. Since a UK government inquiry into the BBC - in part to soften its coverage of the invasion of Iraq - the BBC has produced noticeably more insipid commentary. I found this article today from a journalist embedded in the destruction, rather than with a US military unit. It provides a grit-reality that is so lacking in modern war commentary. The two points that seem to diverge from the standard line on this conflict are; (1) the US military are evacuating during the evening - thus losing any gains on the ground, and, (2) the US military aren't removing their dead and injured - which indicates they are leaving quickly. The second article was on Yasir's millions. It seems the international community were happy to allow the Palestinian leader to have Palestinian taxes put directly into his bank account. Astonishing. When does democracy really being? Dwarf Wars Orcs One final footnote. The Dwarf Wars Orcs arrived today. They are stunning metal figures. But the combination of heads, weapons, shields and bodies gave me a strong headache. Too much choice can sometimes be a bad thing. Good night. Tuesday, 08:05 pm, 09 November 2004 Just a Quiet Day with the Apes... I had a holiday today and spent most of the day listing stuff on eBay and working on the Noble Ape Simulation source code. Remarkably edifying actually looking at my old work and getting a sense of the progress of the development. Slowly but surely the Simulation is picking up developers and interest. I was almost ready to write a set of update documents on programming the Simulation. But I thought I'd save that fun for the weekend. Now Noble Warfare shares a code footprint with the Simulation, there are some sections of code that are almost independent of both developments. The file handling method - shared in both - is in stark contrast to XML. Minimalist, parser centric and simple syntax checking. Perhaps worth documenting in its own right. Commission News I heard from Fred Reed today. One of Fred's US commissioners found his dog had eaten a selection of Fred Reed classics. An emergency commission was needed to fill the void. Two weeks of Barbalet greenskins and images online to follow. Good night. Sunday, 07:33 pm, 07 November 2004 I've been working on the Noble Ape Simulation source code today. Proof that putting source down for a couple of months can only improve it. In the case of the Simulation, it hasn't been released since April and the source code hasn't been actively edited since the end of August. More in the dark hours. As promised, last night's fireworks.   Good night. Friday, 11:10 pm, 05 November 2004 Coming from the Justin Hall school of weblog entries... K-R-U Best Hi! My name's Tom Barbalet. In the mid-90s I spent about four months in Malaysia. Not all at the same time, but spread out over a couple of years. During this time, I found Malaysian music a good diversion to developing the low-level compiler I was working on and the early development of Noble Ape. One of my favourites was the group, Kru (also known as KRU). Recently, I was going through a pile of possessions neatly grouped in a box. I found my only KRU tape - Awas. Awas means beware, although it sounds like; Just when you thought it was as bad as it could get, it got awas! KRU were released through EMI, so aside from the Beastie Boys, they are the only (occasional boyband/occasional) rap act that samples the Beatles that I have heard. You may remember DJ Danger Mouse's Grey Album, also occasionally known as the Gray Album. That sampled from the Beatles illegally. I was going to put an MP3 of KRU's track that samples the Beatles online. But the internet would be awas because of it. Extracting Myself from Plastic I received a copy of the new Space Marine codex today. If I wasn't a huge fan of my man, Nick Umanski, I might have considered sending it back for a refund. The best thing about the Space Marines is the process that turns man into marine. The book was full of pictures of plastic figures and poor drawings. No historical background. The new ish I'm on is Dwarf Wars. Although I won't be buying the rules (that include the favourite probability item - a deck of playing cards), the figures are having a strange mesmerising effect on me currently. What level of funk have I gotten myself into. It's enough to make me want to sell more stuff on eBay. WeFunk in Switzerland The WeFunk crew have announced over the past couple of shows that they are going to be playing Zurich on 10th and possibly 11th December. I'm debating going. Actually, I'd much rather see them play in Montreal. The live element of their Rockdeep night with a home crowd and Rawgged MC or the ability to sit-in on a radio show would beat the Swiss experience. Ironically the price of going to Switzerland to see them perform would be comparable to Montreal in flight and accommodation costs. I can't understand why a UK promoter can't get them here. They regularly shout out London and Manchester. But no. Development Angels for Peace Two things have been keeping me thinking with the Noble Ape development recently. The first is 32-bit-ising the Simulation Core (the networking code suffered multiple crashes and it is hard to do networking code without a testing network) and the second is big land. Big land - really big scrolling land - hasn't been worked on with Noble Ape. The memory constraints of the existing land is sufficient but the development needs something new to ignite a new group of users. My pondering continues. T'row night, photos of fireworks. Good night. Wednesday, 07:31 pm, 03 November 2004 Formerly Known as the Source Log Another month and the benefit of a blank page. The first musing for the month - when should the Noble Ape Source Log resume. Noble Ape related information has started again and either the Log gets nerded out - or the Source Log resumes. The issue currently is getting stable networking code for Noble Ape and Noble Warfare. The initial development from last month's mailout about code uniformity proved 1:1 over all the platforms. So something has changed. Now that is confirmed, there are two options. Either change the code so the core is 32-bit or write a network interface. The decision came in the past couple of days when I was emailed about a 64-bit Windows port of the Simulation. Through this development it will be easier to concentrate on the network code and this network code also helps Noble Warfare. Writing network code seems to come up every couple of years. It's not something I focus on in my day-to-day development. But for Noble Warfare the network code needs to be water-tight. Every possible contingency needs to be covered. End of the Hole Regulars to the Log will remember the United Utilities narrative. This morning, around 11am, the hole was filled. It's the end of an era. Return of the Reed I've received a couple of emails from Fred Reed, back from the US. A large parcel of figures are on its way, and potentially the final commission for the year has been sent to him. I don't know what December will look like. But November is looking dark and ominous. Good night. [ Previous Log ]
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