PS3 Still downloading

Nine items to go mostly Dragon Age Origins and Fallout 3, but I've turned it off for the time being after yesterday. Speed had reduced to pitiful amounts I'm talking about getting bored watching Kbs tick over. As this is happening with all the downloads I don't know if it's the Sony Store side or if Orange have got annoyed over this trickle and throttled my connection.

Even though I've an Unlimited plan I'm still bound by Orange's Fair Usage document, however it states that they should inform me if they think I'm abusing the system.

As I've had no contact from them and I'm abiding by their terms to restrict usage outside the peak hours I have to conclude that either they're breaking their own terms or it's Sony's side. Either way I'm going to give it a rest for a bit and see what happens in a day or so.

French- Anglo alliance

So our Coalition Overlords have declared a defence pact with France - we provide the aircraft carriers and they'll provide the aircraft - rimshot :-P

Of course the tabloids are up in arms over the thought that 'our boys' will be taking orders from the French as if that was somehow different to every single joint military operation ever undertaken.

Amusingly if we'd refused the pact I'd bet they'd still be up in arms over how much money maintaining two defence forces cost the taxpayer.

I do wonder how they can get away with this reactionary drivel.

Strictly Come Dancing

For reasons that may or may not have something to do with "Move" I ended up watching Week 5 of "Strictly Come Dancing" with my parents. This is not something I normally watch, but for various reasons I did catch week 4's episode and found I did enjoy listening to the music. This time I watched the dancing too.

Some was good some was bad, I have no idea what the judges were watching with Patsy's performance, but it certainly wasn't the same as us. Compared to what went on before it was amateurish. Speaking of amateurish poor Brucie, is he still writing those jokes? If it's someone else fire them.

Of the 'celebrities' I'd heard of maybe three of them and at times I was asking my father which one was the professional. The star of course was Anne Widdecome, unsurprisingly near the end because as I said at the time "That's who everyone's waiting to see and once they have they'll turn over".

The 'fun' part was predicting the judges scores; very easy to do once the first was presented due to the facial reactions of those who followed.

Meh the music was enjoyable to listen to* and someone did a good job choosing the background music with the training sequences; I'm certainly not going to bother again.

*though it would have been better without the audience whooping every time one of the dancers managed to lift a leg.

[One annoying thing is the BBC's official site for the programme only lists the music for the current episode I ended up at Digital Spy to discover a couple of the tracks I couldn't name. In this instance Supermassive Black Hole by Muse so thank you Fudd for doing what the BBC can't or won't]

Minecraft level design test-rig?

Swapping discs in and out over the weekend left me time to mess more with Minecraft and carve out the main chunk of my 'spiral tower'. As I extended out the catacombs it dawned on me that this wouldn't be that bad as a deathmatch map. Not great, but not bad.

Now the PC versions of a lot of shooter games (and also sandbox games) come with level designers, but some are easier to use than others. I wonder if any one else has considered using Minecraft as a test-rig?

It's very simple to use; it runs pretty much anywhere so creating a level, running a server and allowing testers to run around and shoot each other is easy. Even in single player watching someone get lost or not know where to go next allows fine-tuning; then how simple to carve out the basic layout in the actual level designer for a game.

Sure Minecraft has limitations in that everything is a one-unit cube with no curves, but I wonder how much time could be saved using it for at least a first approximation?

PS3 Move

As mentioned my new PS3 came with "Move" bundled with it. I could have picked "Sports Champions" or a different Move enhanced game, but felt that might be a waste until I knew how well it worked.

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A new PS3

Yes the voucher came on Friday - a recorded delivery of an non-personalised gift card that my neighbour signed for.

I had a large choice between the 320Gb bundle and another 320Gb bundle; both with "Move". The more expensive option came with a choice of one game from a selection; none I wanted. The other cheaper bundle a choice of one game from just two FIFA and Medal of Honour; so no choice there and I picked MoH.

Got it back home and found it was exactly the same width as my old PS2 upon which it now rests. It does stick out at the back though. Powered up and restored an old backup. User identity though not with a photo; no game data; no wireless settings; no PSN settings. Blipped through all that easily enough and copied over my old save games.

At this point I discover that some games save the date/time with the save; and some just use the date/time of when they were created. As they're all being transferred over at the same time it was a little difficult to tell which were the most recent in certain games I've played multiple times.

Next it was the installation of the games themselves. Now sure I could have just installed them as I played them; but that would have meant "Hey I fancy playing [X]" and then waiting an hour or more for the patches to download. I have no idea the effect of trying to play version 1.00 of a game with a version 1.10 save, and had no intention of finding out.

So Saturday and Sunday I just swapped discs and let it run ("Little Big Planet" and "Burnout Paradise" - yeesh). Checking some games as I went I knew I hadn't got a "Dragon Age: Origin" nor "Assassin's Creed II" save file as they were protected; but I was surprised to learn I also didn't have a "KillZone2" or "Dante's Inferno" either I'd forgotten they were protected or simply missed them by accident during the back-up.

So all the games installed and patched and I still couldn't play some because I had add-on content to download. As with the different versions I'm disinclined to start a "Fallout 3" save file in the middle of "Broken Steel" when I haven't downloaded it yet. So the rest of Sunday I managed to acquire all the "Borderlands" content and my PS3 is now patiently pulling everything else down.

While I'm loathe to leave it unattended the snails-pace delivery over the weekend means I think that a  school-day may be the best time.

[Damn it I forgot that by default it turns itself off after 2 hours of no activity and it seems that background downloading doesn't count]

Clock change

It's only when I have to change the time do I realise exactly how many bloody time-keeping devices I have. The TV and computers change themselves, but one clock in every room, the oven, the microwave, the washing machine, watches, mobiles, landline phones, and the PS3 which I'd only just set.

Glad it only happens twice a year :-)