I’d written a huge, long, wordy review of Infinite Dreams‘ Sky Force for Series 60, but in a fit of stupidity, I managed to delete it before uploading it. So, here’s the 60-second summary version of said review:

“It’s a bit dead good and is all shiny and ace and really good fun and not at all wank like every other mobile phone game ever written, even if it is a fairly shameless ripoff of 1943 by Capcom.”

So, yes. Go and buy it from Nokia or Handango or something. It’s ace.

Jeez, sorry about that. The lesson we learn from this is don’t let yourself near a computer when you’re tired, emotional and have had a couple of bottles of beer. The post is staying there, though, to remind me of exactly why I don’t want to write about this sort of stuff. Normal service will resume later with a review of a game, probably.

You know there are some songs you probably really shouldn’t listen to when you’re feeling vulnerable and/or alone? Songs that, like, remind you of emotions you felt a long time ago that you hope to never have to revisit? Well, it turns out that I can still play some of the songs that do that for me on the piano. It also turns out it’s a really stupid idea to discover this fact when you’re in your flat, on your own, feeling a bit lonely and your girlfriend is busy working on an essay severl miles away. I think I’m going to go to bed now.

It’ll be interesting to see if this post survives the next 24 hours. I promised myself I’d keep this sort of stuff off this site. I might delete it later. We’ll see.

I like internet banking. It reduces all of my financial concerns down to a little window on my computer. I can pay my credit card bill whilst I’m waiting for a compile to finish. I can apply for a loan (should I wish to do so) in between debugging sound code. It almost makes banking a game – you click on buttons and type in numbers, and some numbers go up and other numbers go down – like Championship Manager, except without all that boring football stuff to distract you from the fact that it’s just an elaborate spreadsheet. Hooray for internet banking.

(what would be even better is if my parents used it too, so they could find out if that not insubstantial quantity of money I transferred over to their account the other day has turned up yet or not; they’re still of the mindset that anything more complicated than writing a cheque involves a trip to a branch – hell, they’re still of the mindset that uses cheques, come to that)

Coo. Mysterious “pure virtual function call” bug eliminated (stupid error message, that’s not what I was doing at all). Mysterious crashing on std::set::erase() bug eliminated by switching to std::list. Mysterious sounds only playing at origin bug fixed by using a different position set method. Everything seems to be working. That’s surely not right.

Every single bloody line of code I’ve written today seems to be broken. Every bug I fix unveils five more. All the bug fixes seem to require not insubstantial redesigns of bits of my code. And every test of every single change I make takes about 5 minutes to complete because of a distinct lack of lightweight test harnesses in our system. And it’s all bloody Microsoft’s fault for not decoupling a sound source from sound data in DirectX. I think I’m going to buy the GTA3/Vice City XBox double pack on my way home tonight so I can run over some pedestrians and relieve a bit of stress.

Today is really not a good day.

Just a quick post to comment on how great Opera‘s customer service is. At 3:10pm yesterday, I emailed them to explain that I’d upgraded my phone from a Nokia 7650 to a Nokia 6600 (which, incidentally, is lovely) and consequently my version of Opera no longer worked (it’s tied to an individual IMEI), and could I have a new registration code, please. At 3:12pm I got a reply with the registration code in it.

If only dealing with every company was this easy and pleasant.

(for what it’s worth, Opera for Series 60 is pretty damned impressive, too – the Small Screen Rendering stuff is great, although frames still don’t quite work properly)

It seems that a bunch of people I know from London (largely the BITE inner spiral) were in Edale yesterday also, and that Naomi and I missed them in the Old Nags Head by about twenty minutes, as evidenced by the presence of the Nags Head and Rambler in the BITE database.

Incidentally, I can’t recommend beerintheevening highly enough. Started by a coursemate of mine as a way of keeping track of her New Year’s Resolution to “drink more beer”, it’s grown into a monster database of several thousand pubs and bars worldwide (though somewhat centred on London) and it’s brilliant – you can waste hours just reading the comments.

Periodically, I decide I can no longer cope with city life. I lived in the countryside for about 18 years, and despite having now lived in Manchester for over 6 years, once every couple of months I reach a point where I have to go and climb a hill and see trees and fields and sheep and things or I’ll have a nervous breakdown. When this happens, I invariably climb on the next train to Edale and go for a walk.

So, that’s what I did this weekend. Naomi and I got up bright and early on Saturday morning, and made our way to the tram station (we reasoned it would be faster than the bus – in the event, flooding had closed half of the Altrincham line and the replacement bus service never actually showed up, so we had to get a taxi in the end. You can mentally insert a lyle-esque rant about public transport here, if you wish).

View from the top of Mam Tor towards Castleton

Edale is only 45 minutes out of Manchester, but it’s a whole other world. The noise and stress and crowds of the big city give way to snow-capped hills, stone cottages, fields and many, many sheep. We’d decided that we’d walk up Mam Tor this time, replicating a walk I’d done many times as a child, and giving me plenty of opportunity to reminisce about living in Nottinghamshire and how great it was to be a kid.

Mam Tor is the site of an Iron Age fort. Obviously, it’s not there any more, but you can still clearly see the ring where the fortifications used to stand. It’s believed, though, that the site was of some importance earlier than the iron age – the trig point stands atop what is almost certainly a bronze age tumulus, and bronze arrowheads have been found there too. Unfortunately, the large number of visitors the site receives have meant that the National Trust have had to pave the area, and as such the tumulus is no longer easily visible.

The other thing Mam Tor is notable for (besides the fact that it’s the site of some fairly serious landslide activity) is its wind – it’s very popular with hang- and paragliders, and there were two hanggliders there on Saturday, the sight of which immediately prompted me to consider taking up yet another daft, expensive wind-powered sport, much to Naomi’s annoyance.

Anyway, our little route took us straight up the side of the hill – which surprised us, as we thought we were aiming for Hollins’ Cross, but evidently either the signposts or our map had lied to us. Having barely seen another soul except for a couple of fellow hikers since we left Edale, it was quite a surprise to discover that the top of the ridge and the Tor itself was crawling with people – families going sledging, students having snowball fights and a few people who, like us, had decided that a snowy day in February was clearly the ideal time to go and climb a hill. We continued along the ridge a little way before descending back down to Edale and retiring to the Old Nags Head for a couple of pints and a bowl of chilli (I can’t speak highly enough of the Old Nags Head, incidentally – a lovely little pub, and their yorskhire puddings are fantastic).

I think next time, we’ll maybe go over the ridge, and continue through Castleton to Hope, and get the train back from there. I’ve not been to the Blue John Mines for a years and it’d be fun to go back and see them again.

An amusing footnote to the day is that, having walked up and down the Tor in not-entirely-great walking boots without major incident, upon alighting from a bus later that evening (having been out for a friends’ birthday) I tripped and twisted my ankle. Oh, sweet irony.