This deserves all the accolades going. A perfectly rendered tale of childhood best-friends-forever growing up and trying to make video-games. It is funny, well observed, and grim. It's sort of like Nick Hornby's "High Fidelity" for the 21st century. There's a desperately sad trope about how some men believe that women are a video-game where, if you put enough friendship in, you eventually get rewarded with sex. This is the tangled and twisted tale of how some people believe that, if you put…
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A dark and shadowy figure is using laptops to terrorise a school and convert its pupils into mindless automata. Only one person can stop this dastardly scheme - Kate Winslet! Who, for some reason, plays a 15 year old. Because she is 15. Because this is 1991 and Russell T Davies has written one of his first proper dramas for the telly. Albeit Children's BBC - but we've all go to start somewhere, right? While watching the fabulous "Imagine" documentary on RTD, I learned about "Dark Season".…
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Privacy is a funny concept, isn't it? Very few people want the whole world to know what medical complaints they have. But most hospitals are open-access buildings, where the waiting rooms have large monitors to tell patients that their doctor is running late. A few years ago I was sat in the proctology waiting room. Anyone who knew me would have seen I was waiting for an bum doctor. They may not have known my specific complaint, but the laser-display board announced that my appointment was…
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You don't need to pay £££ and download GB of files in order to have a good VR game. It turns out that the Web is perfectly capable of serving a decent VR experience. You can open up your VR rig's browser (I use Wolvic) and start playing instantly. I've just completed "Get The Heck Out". It's a fun and free shooter. The twist is, you are expected to die. A lot. You start with a puny pea-shooter: After every level you can upgrade your weapons - which last until you die. But every few levels, y…
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I used to like the original FourSquare. The "mayor" stuff was a bit silly, and my friends never left that many reviews, but I loved being able to signal to my friends "I am at this cool museum" or "We're at this pub if you want to meet" or "Spending the day at the park". So, is there a way to recreate that early Web 2.0 experience with open data and ActivityPub? Let's find out! This quest is divided into two parts. Get nearby "Points of Interest" (POI) from OpenStreetMap. Share a location…
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This is an astonishing book. On the one hand, it's the basic "Harry Potter" trope - a young orphan is gifted, gets sent to school to learn magic, becomes pals with the other weird kids, has adventures, and fights a monster. Except here, Harry is Chinese, is sent to Oxford University to learn magic, and faces up to the reality of colonialism and Empire. Oh, and the magic is based on the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. I lived in Oxford for several years (although, thankfully, I wasn't a scholar) and…
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I recently received a survey from an event I'd attended. Look, I've read The Circle, so I know that I have to give individuals scores of 10 or they'll be fired. I also know Net Promoter Score is bullshit, but the people sending the survey have faith in it. So I filled it in as best I could. But then I got to this question: Putting aside whether I feel like something is good value for money - what's my incentive for being honest? I am homo economicus. As a rational self-interested agent, I …
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I am decidedly unconvinced by this book. What do you do when you are too interested in the world? This is a problem I have; everything is interesting! How do you pick? What if I spend time studying the wrong thing? What if I never complete any of my madcap projects? How do I pick and choose? This book purports to help "Scanners" get their lives in order. I sort-of identify with that - so can this book help me regain focus and get on with my life? No. Not really. Essentially, it is a…
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Last week I attended an unofficial discussion group about the future of AI in Government. As well as the crypto-bores who have suddenly pivoted their "expertise" into AI, there were lots of thoughtful suggestions about what AI could do well at a state level. Some of it is trivial - spell check is AI. Some of it is a dystopian hellscape of racist algorithms being confidently incorrect. The reality is likely to be somewhat prosaic. Although I'm no longer a civil servant, I still enjoy going to …
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OK, first off, you have to read this amazing judgement about whether Walker's Sensations Poppadoms count as a potato-based snack for VAT purposes. Like most judgements, it is written in fairly plain and accessible language. The arguments are easy to follow and it even manages to throw in a little humour. But if you read closely, you'll see there are a few instances where an errant question-mark pops up: From context, it is pretty clear the word should be "flour" but is rendered as "?our" - …
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I've recently set up my own consultancy company and decided to sponsor my local UKGovCamp conference. That entitled me to a logo on the site, a shout-out during the conference, and place to put any promotional stickers. Everyone loves stickers! But I decided to bring along something different - promotional sweeties! I found a small business to print my logo with edible ink onto sweets and ordered some fizzy flying saucers, mint Mentos, and fruit Mentos. They all had my company logo and name…
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Four years ago, I got the Iiyama ProLite 24" Vertical Screen. But as my eyes grow dimmer and my hind-brain desires upgrades, I splurged on the (stupidly named) Iiyama ProLite XUB2893UHSU-B5. It is well lush! Thin bezel around 3 sides. Excellent viewing angle when vertical. A decent array of video ports and USB. And fairly wallet friendly £280. There's a lot of screen for your money. (Yes, I do have a desk crowded with gadgetry!) I'm only using this for reading very long (and only slightly …
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· Book Review games · 2 comments · 200 words