All posts by Armand

Books

Experimental fiction

I’m now on my last Raymond E Feist book, having read my way through his entire back catalogue (with the exception of Faerie Tale). Will eventually blog thoughts on the series/characters etc, but having just pushed my way through his experimental joint ventures (the “Legends of the Riftwar” series) was impressed that he’d not ruined the universe through his collaborations.

From what I’ve read, he gave his co-authors a lot of independence in writing the stories – and its worked to good effect, importing different styles, different characters, different types of story into Feist’s lovable world of Midkemia. Gotta say, everything that’s bad about fantasy continues to be bad – stilted dialogue, excessive verbosity, etc – but enjoyed the stories more than I expected.

So everyone who’s waiting for the next book in the Darkwar series to be published, go back and dip in. The Krondor novels are surprisingly entertaining, and the Legends series have something to offer as well, if they’re not a patch on Riftwar, Empire, Serpentwar and Conclave of Shadows…

Hmm, wonder if I could persuade Mr Feist to let me dip a toe into his Worlds…

Technology

The future of software

Had an interesting set of conversations at work a couple of days ago. Some speculation as to how the tech market will consolidate as time progresses – the opinion that there will eventually only be four software vendors offering complete enterprise software solutions was raised, and seemed fairly popular (the four vendors in question being Microsoft, SAP, Oracle & IBM). This was raised alongside the suggestion that we’re in the midst of some kind of SOA revolution, and everyone will have SOA systems in place in a couple of years time (yeah, right).

Now, I’ll not pretend to be an expert on the situation, but I do have a few thoughts (I’m sure not completely original, but… nonetheless):

(1) If SOA / web services is the way forward (and I think it is…), then surely the need to buy your entire software infrastructure from one vendor evaporates? It becomes entirely possible to use the open standards to get best of breed products to interoperate – the single biggest argument for buying from one vendor, you would think. It was then further suggested – and I find this slightly mind-boggling – that anyone with decent technology would immediately be acquired by one of the giants.

Maybe, but I’m sceptical. I don’t think that Microsoft/etc., want to play in every field, necessarily. They are all fighting slightly different corners (with the exception of SAP/Siebel. Well, Oracle). Microsoft seems to be the only one concerned with owning the entire desktop – and even they are slowly opening up the Windows platform to others.

The reality is that (some) consumers — and many enterprises — will always choose best of breed solutions, because sometimes you just need the additional functionality without customising Siebel/Netweaver to pieces.

I think its interesting to look at Google here, as they seem to be slighlty more insidious in the way they’re trying to take over your internet experience – but as with enterprise software, natural market forces will prevail and keep the Web multi-vendor. Ultimately, Google aren’t the best at everything they do. Picasa gets its ass whumped by Flickr, for example.

(2) My second point is kind of following on with my gripe about consolidation. Apart from the fact that there are several other major software vendors who I think will escape being subsumed into the big four (Symantec/Veritas, RedHat, Apple, maybe Sun to name a few), I think the SOA trend will only continue. Decentralised software models that rely on the internet will mean, more than ever before, that small vendors can make tiny, hyperfunctional applications/services which are standards based and be happy with an independent, niche existence – but making the money in volume… Can’t think of any examples of this at the moment, unfortunately Yahoo’s acquisitions of Flickr and Delicious shows what happens when you get too big, but I still think there’s a threshold…

Anyway, that’s some pretty heavy thinking for a Friday night. Viva Web 2.0. ‘Nuff Said.

Current affairs

How great news stories are born

“Did you see that over there, Jeff?”
“What Tim?”
“I thought I saw something in the water… look, there it is again!”
“You’ve had too much to drink, you fidgety old mucker,”
“It’s a giant fish!”
“Hang on… there is something…”
“A giant fish, I tell you, call the BBC!”
“That’s no fish, it’s a bleedin’ whale!”
“A whale! Crikey! What’s a whale doing in there?”
“Don’t rightly know. Look, mate, you call Sky News, I’m going to jump in and slap water at it.”
“You’re going to what?”
“Don’t worry mate, my suit will protect me. It’s from M&S.”
“Erm… ok. I’m off…”

Gaming, Technology

Web 2.1 (2)

Ok, so that last post was somewhat too “bloggy” – trying to be quippy & clever with limited substantiation. And this post will also be slightly unhelpful, as I’m slightly too tired to find the source links, and its been two weeks since I wrote the original post… but:

Ajax: a web technology that allows web applications to respond asynchronously, and thus look a bit more like traditional thick-client applications. Also means that sections of applications can load in real time – like map segments in Google maps.

Apply this to gaming, with high speed broadband, and you could have MMORPGs that load dynamically. Get yourself a thin-client machine with enough RAM and you could have some high performance computing, with only a limited rendering engine stored on disks. The reason that Nintendo came into this vision of the future is that their Revolution console will allow Abandonware to be downloaded to it – but as it doesn’t have a hard drive (copy protection), these old games will have to reside in some limited solid state flash memory or volatile RAM — possible for small, old games. But for photorealistic, cool, modern games? Something else would be needed…

So: is that what consoles will look like in the years to come? Games will be sold as rendering engines only, and live as they are updated dynamically off servers, delivered via ultra-fast, seeded P2P broadband networks?

Probably not. But I thought it was an interesting idea…

Technology

Equation

Ajax + high speed broadband + thin client consoles == web 2.1

…or, the reasoning behind the Nintendo Revolution…?

I don’t know, a little too tired to think tonight. Something along these lines struck me as clever on the way home tonight, and has since faded into an imprecise formulation. So let’s pretend I said that first bit confidently and followed it with…

Discuss.

Personal

So…

…this is what 7am looks like. Blech.

Christmas has properly wiped my biological clock, what with all the influx of mind-altering drugs, like Turkey. Normal blogging service will resume once I work out what my name and purpose in life is…

Personal

Happy 2006 (2)

Had a great Season but now work dawns again and the fun, largely relaxing, frolics of the happy season pass. Lots to look forward to and plan this year, and resolutions (largely around fitness, health, & writing..!) to maintain.

This is a photo (from Mazmo ) of me trying to keep with the odd Spanish tradition of eating 12 grapes, one with each bong of the clock, as midnight struck with us all on Hammersmith bridge. It was cold, wet and fun all over!

More, less trivial posts to follow in the fullness of time…

Personal

Happy 2006!

It’s 2006 in my time zone, so Happy NY everyone! Slightly random, slightly tipsy, but very happy greetings to all from me!

Love, El Aramandos, Rey de los Pollos Diablos

Film, Technology

Jungle is massive

Just saw, and really enjoyed, Peter Jackson’s Kong. Will make a faint effort to avoid spoilers, but in essence:

CG v. impressive
I’m not sure if Jack Black is slightly miscast, but brings some humour
The whole “t’was beauty stayed the beast’s hand” thing, cheesy as it was, I loved
Script good enough, cinematography v. beautiful (as is leading lady, Naomi Watts)
And the climax of the whole film for me: Kong vs. T-Rex. Nuff said; go watch it now!

Postscript: Orange Wednesday played up tonight and nearly stopped me watching the film. V. frustrating! They claimed it was traffic to the autoresponse line… rubbish! I’d advise all to text 241 well in advance (available in advance from Thurs am each week, apparently) to get their BOGOF for this one…

Personal

Christmas!

DSC01060 Had a great Christmas at Gem’s: starting off with an International Christmas Party with Gem’s friends, featuring a chocolate fountain! The party was v. entertaining, with about 10 courses served, about six of which were dessert – and it was interesting for me to see some people maintain a community from their youth, something I have only the vaguest understanding of beyond my family :P.

Gem’s family took great care of me and I had a great time; from the huge Christmas dinner, and the murder mystery game we played (fun though it was, these are TERRIBLE!), to a Christmas day spent opening fantastic presents and eating even more (my first ‘traditional’ Christmas lunch on Christmas day, with sleep inducing turkey and everything!), to boxing day visiting the impressive major oak in Sherwood forest. Gem was driving for the first time since getting her license about eight years ago, and was v. impressive!
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Amongst the great Christmas chat was a discussion of a pie maker Tony mentioned at work a while back… which now seems to be out of production :(. Ah well…

Anyway, hope y’all have had a Merry Christmas and here’s to a topping NY!

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