graemef.com

BBC News:

Veteran BBC broadcaster John Peel dies from a heart attack at the age of 65 while on holiday in Peru.

There goes the man with the most varied musical tastes the planet has ever seen.

IanG has posted a lengthy and informative article which aims to demystify data binding in .NET, and describes how to use what’s new in Whidbey (.NET 2.0).

Thanks Ian, I hadn’t noticed IPropertyChange!

RollerCoaster Tycoon was good, RollerCoaster Tycoon 2 was great and, by the looks of the demo, RollerCoaster Tycoon 3 is going to be better than ever.

The kids love it because you can make people vomit :sick:, and it’s a really sneaky way to get them to learn about all kinds of stuff without them suspecting a thing…

Update

It’s only £17.99 (with free delivery) at Play.com :jawdrop:… Ordered!

There are leaked screenshots of the context menu available to VB programmers and also the one for a certain group of self-proclaimed superior intellects.

Like it!

I clicked on this (via ChrisAn) and my wife asked me why I was looking at pictures of Rolf Harris…

(My answer is “it wasn’t me!”)

I think I’m going to like Fable,
but so far it’s hard to tell… As I previously reported,
my Xbox is on its last legs, so last weekend I
took it to pieces and attempted to
clean the DVD drive. I’m happy to say that my fiddling didn’t make matters any
worse, but it hasn’t made them any better either. It seems that when I play Fable
I’m OK until the drive spins down for a while. Spending a couple of minutes browsing
the goods at a shop kills it every time. Teleporting to a different area is another
good way to make it fail, probably about half the time.

So, I thought I’d go for Plan B - borrow the kids’ Xbox and transfer my saved games
onto it. Unfortunately Fable saved games can’t be copied, so that would mean starting
again and then losing my progress when I inevitably have to return it. Of course,
I’ll have to start again anyway if I buy a replacement Xbox someday…

Anyway, while Fable looks like it’ll be fun, there are some bad points that are
making my early experiences frustrating:

• You can’t skip the intro videos on Fable until a short way into the last one. This
  is no fun when your Xbox keeps failing to read the disc so you have to load it up again…
  And again…
• I’m finding combat a lot harder than I’m used to. I’m at an age now where I’d like
  my levels of adrenaline to reduce as an effect of playing a game, so it’s a bit
  of a shock to find such an “arcadey” combat system in what otherwise seems to be a standard
  RPG. I prefer to have combat outcomes reflect the abilities of the characters rather
  than mine, as my abilities thus far tend to lead to disappointment.
• The camera’s a real pain. When in combat I find that the enemy is too often behind
  my hero where I can’t hit it. Not fair. I think I have a slightly twitchy right-thumbstick
  on my controller which is making it zoom in of its own accord, too.
• And lastly but probably most importantly, I can’t rememeber the last time I played
  a game and couldn’t save my progress at any time I choose. What’s with the “do every
  quest in one sitting” restriction? That really does not help make an enjoyable game
  in my opinion. There’s simply no fun in investing half an hour to reach the end
  of a quest only to be killed by the boss at the end and being forced to start all over
  again. My gaming time and energy is strictly limited and is too precious to be wasted
  like this.

I’m sure I just haven’t got the hang of it yet, but thanks to my knackered hardware
I’m not likely to in the short term.

The upgrade went pretty smoothly, once I’d remembered to upload my config file…

Hats off to everyone involved in Drupal!

It’s that time again… Drupal 4.5 is released so I’ll be upgrading.

Normal service might be resumed shortly

Jamie has revealed how to use MSBuild to compile for .NET 1.x, and he’s produced a tool to help!

I kept meaning to post about compiling for .NET 1.x using
MSBuild. I had everything working on my machine, but getting everything
into the right place was a little involved. I’ve ended up writing an
installer that collects together all the files you need along with the
required modifications.

Nice one Jamie! FetchLinks just got a whole lot easier to maintain!

Believe it or not, Cory is feeling a little disgruntled because he feels we get more "Xbox Love" in Europe then he does over in the US. Well, Cory, I live less than 30 minutes drive from Lionhead Studios in Guildford, and I’m STILL WAITING for my copy of Fable because it hasn’t yet been released over here.

Most of you lot have already finished it so don’t give us a hard time, you dirty rotten cheats!