Ricky Gervais Podcast

The Ricky Gervais Podcast is the funniest thing i’ve heard in a while, but for some reason the Guardian are choosing to only host the last four shows, so i’ve added a Files page (see up there at the top!) where you can download all the episodes if you’ve missed any of the early ones.

PS3 is unsuprisingly OpenGL

Kotaku is reporting the rather unsuprising news that the PS3 graphics are coded using OpenGL. It has been known for a while now that the PS3 is using a chip based on Nvidia’s G70 architecture, so given Nvidia’s hardcore support of OpenGL and their clear lead in OpenGL drivers on multiple platforms it was probably inevitable that Sony would go for OpenGL. Probably plenty of Red, Blue and Yellow Books on PS3 developers desks already, so it’ll help the familiarisation process – but I wonder if they’ll be pushing CG?

This certainly shortens the Playstation cookbook:

• 1lb of OpenGL
• 20GB of HD video
• 1 commerical physics engine
• A sprinkle of Cell magic

Mix together ingredients and debug for many months at 550Mhz. Tada, your next-gen sequel is complete!

I stand corrected…

OK it’s been pointed out to me that in an earlier post I said:

MacBook Pro is the ultimate *nix laptop

It has been pointed out by a pedantic Solaris fan that this statement is not true and was convinced enough that a correction is required. So without further ado: OS X is not *nix but a *nix-alike – it is built around a version of the Mach kernel and the Darwin operating system is based on BSD but the system cannot be classed as a full *nix. On this basis, my statement that the MacBook Pro is the utlimate *nix laptop is wrong and the title clearly belongs to the Sun Ultra 3 Mobile Workstation (if slow, big and ugly = ultimate to you that is!).

Simple Excel exports

Got some data that you need to transfer into Excel, but ODBC doesn’t fit the bill? Then why don’t you try the new and improved Excel XML format. As far as I am aware, it’s good for Excel 2000 and above:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<ss:Workbook xmlns:ss="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:spreadsheet">
  <ss:Worksheet ss:Name="First Sheet">
    <ss:Table>
      <ss:Column ss:Width="100"/>
      <ss:Column ss:Width="200"/>
      <ss:Row>
        <ss:Cell><ss:Data ss:Type="String">Field 1</ss:Data></ss:Cell>
        <ss:Cell><ss:Data ss:Type="String">Field 2</ss:Data></ss:Cell>
      </ss:Row>
      <ss:Row>
        <ss:Cell><ss:Data ss:Type="String">First row</ss:Data></ss:Cell>
        <ss:Cell><ss:Data ss:Type="Number">1</ss:Data></ss:Cell>
      </ss:Row>
      <ss:Row>
        <ss:Cell><ss:Data ss:Type="String">Second Row</ss:Data></ss:Cell>
        <ss:Cell><ss:Data ss:Type="Number">2</ss:Data></ss:Cell>
      </ss:Row>
    </ss:Table>
  </ss:Worksheet>
</ss:Workbook>

It’s fast, it’s simple, it works with anything that can spit out XML (so just about anything then) and the result looks like more work than just a few lines of XML, but with 99% less code than writing to the binary XLS format, it’s a sure winner.

Big Mac…

Finally got my MacBook Pro ordered. The Apple online store saying that it will ship “on or before the 24th February” which gives me a nice month of regretting my purchase whilst I wait for XP or Vista to boot and give me my Counter-Strike:Source fix. I wonder where the delay is? Is it Apple who are not ready for the rush of MacBook Pro orders or is it Intel ramping up for the Core Duo orders? Who cares, in a month i’ll be growing a goaty and criticising everything computer related which isn’t made by Apple.

As for the “Why get a Mac?” question, there are many reasons. Primarily it’s because I want to diversify my development away from using Windows where the only real alternative is some form of *nix and as far as I can see the MacBook Pro is the ultimate *nix laptop. Couple that primary reason with my shallow love of eye candy, my iPod based weakness in the face of Apple branding and general technolust and we’ve got an overpowering dose of the consumers! Finally it’s been suggested that it’s actually a geeks mid-life crisis – just a laptop instead of a sportscar – they may well be onto something there.

Starting over again…

Well here I go again with another web log. It’s back to Wordpress. This time the switch is prompted be my new host upgrading their security and hosing dasBlog; they previously ran ASP.NET at Full Trust but have now moved everything down to Medium Trust after their .NET 2.0 upgrade. Whilst on the one hand I understand that they are a hosting provider and so should default to secure, on the other hand I am pretty unimpressed with the attitude that them making changes which break apps (dasBlog and DotNetNuke being notable examples) is just tough luck. I guess I should be glad that i’ll be hosting nothing more than personal junk as opposed to something useful or paying.

All said however, Wordpress is a whole lot nicer to use than dasBlog.