The short, 12 week, course was cumulatively a disappointment; mostly due to the tutor who, ostensibly was considerate and erudite, but failed to reveal exactly what criteria he would be marking our assessments with. With only two marked assignments it meant there wasn’t enough of a corpus to “play to the crowd” so to speak, and not knowing what one was being marked on (technical ability? word usage? poignancy?) it became a crapshoot. My final score was disappointing: a combination of these factors and not being entirely happy with the piece myself. The course was conducted entirely online; doing the work was not a problem, however the other members of the course, who were segregated into arbitrary tutor groups, were skittish and generally unfamiliar with communicating online. This meant that for someone who is used to forums and instant messaging everyone became selfish and posted only when it was necessary. This was to be expected from the audience a course such as this would attract (ageing bibliophiles or wayward scribblers) but altogether it struck far too much of my previous university experience.

I have (finally) passed the point of no return and plunged into C++ programming which is something that I never thought would happen. After tinkering with various 3D engines with no headway, I settled on tinkering with 2D (remember kids, less D’s != worse) with the excellent SDL. So far I’ve only toyed with ideas that have interested me including: motion blur (based on velocity), raster rotation as well as re-learning a lot of the vector maths which I only had a tertiary knowledge of before.

The design work has all been work related and not worth digging in to, suffice to say that a new design for this blog will be coming sooner or later (more likely later knowing my general demeanour towards this blog). I have been turned towards using exterior services for certain tasks (Google Calendar has been especially well used by me recently) so I’m looking for ways of integrating that into my endeavours. The Gran Plan^TM is to blog my forthcoming trip to Japan (on my terminally neglected other domain) with calendar, map and photo integration. This is of course blue sky at the moment but it presents an interesting challenge to be able to be done well, both for the reader and for me whose last desire while on holiday will be to futz with things.

But what’s this on my socks?

Friday socks? On a Thursday?

That’s right feet, I’m sticking it to your oppressive regime, now you don’t know what day it is! And let this be a lesson to the rest of you appendages, I may not have gloves with days of the week on them, but if I did, I’d be fighting your restrictive system as well.

I plucked these links from my RSS reader (RSS Owl, how I love thee) however there is one category still left to add, the ubiquitous “Stuff” category which more or less defines this site as well as my life so take from that what you will. I’m hoping to tweak the design at some point and possibly add RSS feed links (as that’s usually how I read them) but that’s for another time.

It is my firm belief that one day, soon, squirrels will ascend to the dominant species of this world, enslaving humanity with their pointy teeth and twitching tails, the threat is very real and cannot be underestimated. One day, the lesser species of the earth can shake their heads and know how things went wrong, and know that they could have stopped it; as such I feel it is my duty to catalogue and document their meteoric rise to power, primarily because I am training them to become better, more efficient dervishes of destruction.

We shall start slow, so that the true depth of my clandestine power play can be asserted. Take for instance, the story of a red squirrel swimming across a lake. An innocent enough touchy-feely story about an anomaly in nature? No, Trevor was on a training exercise which he duly failed by accepting the assistance of the boated humans. What the naive people on board failed to notice was the platoon of underwater squirrels keeping tabs on Trevor’s progress. Indeed Mr Benson, squirrels can swim, but their ability is not enough for aquatic combat now is it? Since the posting of that article Trevor was duly disciplined and can now swim for 400 miles without a break while towing a small arsenal of weapons.

Scoff at such a thing you may, I could well be twisting the story to my own means, as if I would have the time to do that. Turn this idea on its head then, and wonder at why one would choose squirrels to vigorously train and teach deadly martial arts to; Alpacas would of course be the obvious choice, but squirrels’ lack of obviousness is to their benefit. Point in note: the New Scientist story of squirrels heating up their tails to fool snakes. A useful survival mechanism that evolution undoubtedly had a hand in, the scientists missed the squirrels’ poison projectile sac and their super strength but biologists have always been reticent to document such lethal features of the species. With my most recent squirrel enhancement project however abilities such as in-built rockets and laser eyes (an early prototype of which was comically included in an early Simpsons episode) will bring their abilities up to scratch with their badger nemesis. Perhaps Wired said it best though, “Super Soldier”. What better way to take on the frigid northern reaches of this planet than with a creature that can survive (albeit comatose) in a near zero-degree state. But physical traits aren’t the only thing going for squirrels, no no, a mental capacity is needed if the title of “Rulers of the World” is to being absolute; it’s gratifying to hear then that Wilkes University in Pennsylvania have scientifically proven that squirrels are sneaky. This is not world shattering news as I doubt any of my current experimental “Smart Squirrels” will ever be able to grasp quantum mechanics, but wild squirrels, feral and untamed, still show that spark of intelligence.

“This is all good theory, but is the squirrel threat real?” I hear you ask. The most poignant example is that of a nomadic group I trained in my earlier days, a rogue group of down-and-outers living off the street that I gave a second chance. At the end of their training when they tried to murder me in my sleep (I couldn’t have been happier!) they were the most hardened, grizzled group of furry inch-high rodents I could have hoped for. They slipped up however, their terror campaign in Eastern Russia being documented, thankfully none of their names or faces were revealed, if they can even remember their original names any more. Of course, there are the more fringe areas of militant tree-rodents that worry me: poor George was such a promising and upcoming member of my elite. Coerced as he was into the act, it kept the populace of that area at least in check. Tony Millar’s sister may have been fully insured, but she now has to sleep with one eye open, clutching a gun, endlessly waiting for George’s family to avenge his senseless death.

Even humans have noticed the versatility and durability of squirrels, the Iranian secret police was one of the first to “donate” to my cause, and utilise my acquired knowledge they did. Unfortunately Iran did not upgrade to the latest version of SpySquirrel, the ones laced with thermite in case of accidental discovery, now I feel their contribution may have been in vain due to sloppy maintenance. I am, it may surprise you to hear, not the only one documenting the exploits of squirrels around the world, nay, a forebear to my documentation exists, in the form of the Metro. A free newspaper in the UK, it first came to my attention in 2007 as the story of the spy squirrels broke and it appears they have documented a great deal of the operations I thought covert. Correctly terming it the “Squirrel Menace”, I doubt the doe-eyed reporters of the Metro truly know what a box they are opening with their unfettered campaign of free speech. “Suicide squirrels strike again”. Such martyring tactics are abhorrent, besides which, Marlene survived the attack and became a squirrel with very high static potential, we are currently training her to project her powers so that she may be more useful than making one’s hair stand on end. “Rogue squirrel forces down plane”, with a most apt caption of “Oh, furry furry demon”. Chewing through wires was the least of your problems in this instance American Airlines, though alas poor Reginald, he had barely begun to live.

Humans of course, try and comfort themselves with the idea that they are smarter than the squirrels. Dressing squirrels up? Not an efficient use of what time you have left. But sure your common, garden squirrel may get ruthlessly dizzy after encounter your contraption, or perhaps a device so devious in construction it defies reason but really humanity, how long do you intend to survive when trained, ruthless, bushy-tailed warriors descend upon you? Will your futile one-shot catapults or elaborate twiling machine work then? Or will they crumble like your civilisation? I doubt it, and lest you construct more worthwhile defences, your ruin is already upon you.

As awesome as this cheese.

Okami (PS2)
The release of Okami so close to the release of FF12 was always going to be an issue, but passing up such a gorgeous looking and critically acclaimed game was out of the question. Unknown to me was just how vast and enthralling Okami’s world was; from the rolling fields and cheery village of the opening to the snowy tundra of the final zone, abilities and powers are drip-fed through just in time to save a player from repetition while the story twists and turns in an unpredictable but never chaotic way. While the unique visuals and adventure gameplay make Okami great, it’s the characters which transform it to wonderful. The silent wolf protagonist morphs from sleek beast to clutzy cub without so much as blinking and everyone from secondary characters to the glowing dot on Amaterasu’s nose is wonderfully animate, made all the more endearing by the cutesy, nonsensical voices reminiscent of Banjo Kazooie on the N64. Indeed, gameplay would be familiar to fans of the Zelda series, and while the Celestial Brush and assortment of accessories may be wonderfully off-beat, the progression and exploration aspects remain as firm as they ever were with Link. Okami is an undeniable work of art in both technical, gameplay and story terms and there is no aspect that detracts from such an awe-inspiring game.

Final Fantasy XII (PS2)
Almost a full year after the Japanese release and four months after the US release, FF12 was finally released in Europe late February with a completely unnecessary advertising campaign on television and splashed across magazines. To call FF12 anything other than a triumph would be an understatement, it raises the bar in just about every category from art direction to the superlative script to an innovative and, most importantly, fresh combat system. If it weren’t for the overwrought plot and effeminate male lead, it could almost be mistaken as one of those other, lesser JRPGs. Its greatest weakness is the characterisation, eschewing love stories and overbearing personal tragedies for a more subtle, adult, and all round political take on the Ivalice of Final Fantasy Tactics days. The main plotline takes precedence over random side-quests and it’s not hard to see most of what the game has to offer on your first play through; lacking the instant exposure of the world obtaining an airship does in previous Final Fantasies, FF12 is measured, methodical and utterly engrossing.

Bullet Witch (360)
Once again released almost a full year after the Japanese release, Bullet Witch is a guilty pleasure, foolishly drawn in by promise of magic-tinted action with a female goth lead; in actuality the game is flat, frustrating and unimaginative. The setting is intriguing, the protagonist nonchalant enough but like Blood Rayne before it, the spindle, doll legs of Alicia make her feel untethered to the world, not helped by the outright lack of feedback from her gargantuan “broom” she totes around. Enemies are as thick as a bunch of rocks and death comes from poor, unalterable sensitivity and outright glitches than any measure of skill or luck. The game is thankfully short and dependent on levels of boredom of watching the grim debacle of entertainment unfold before you. There is little to recommend beyond the tantalising costume switching available from the outset; if your fantasy was ever to run around a badly rendered mine-complex as a busty office worker or heavy-metal school girl then Bullet Witch should be high on your list of purchases.

Command and Conquer 3 (PC)
HAIL KANE. After the lackluster Tiberium Sun, I was apprehensive as to how C&C3 would turn out, especially after the fun but off-the-wall Generals (and expansion packs). Moving back into the Tiberium universe gave the game a breadth of knowledge to draw upon but could easily raise ire given ham-handling of the material. Thankfully C&C3 turned our to be a blast in all respects; excellent graphics built on the tried and tested Generals engine, knowingly campy cut-scenes from such darlings as Jennifer Morrison and all around fun gameplay. The strategies may have been new, but C&C3 brought nothing to the table that hadn’t been done before and sometimes better in other games, franchise or not. Tank rushes and other dark-side play were quickly squashed with swift patching and a surprisingly balanced and familiar play style was settled on. Multiplayer once again provided the bulk of the enjoyment with swift free-for-alls and team play only hampered by the notoriously delicate lag associated with the Generals engine. EA continue to support the game with monthly “Battlecasts”, more tongue-in-cheek, mostly-marketing hyperbole from the C&C universe including the upcoming expansion pack, Kane’s Wrath. Certainly worthwhile with friends who are equally nerdy over GDI and NOD but otherwise a pretty, well-produced but overall mediocre RTS.

Bioshock (PC)
My thoughts on Bioshock have changed little since my initial scathing review. I may have mellowed out somewhat to see into the lovely artwork and attention to detail, but the overall lack of character interaction, end-game strategy or worthwhile storyline still make this an aesthetic wonder but ultimately wonderless FPS. Its benefit will be in the games it spawns, ones that make a concerted effort to stir emotion and tingle the senses and probe the mind; whether they can be more successful than Bioshock is a matter for the future.

Stranglehold (360)
Stranglehold still remains a superb shooter, as unpretentious and overblown as Max Payne was before, it represents the pinnacle of placing things beneath a targeting reticule and pressing a button. It remains true to its source material and produces room after room of deliciously destructible paraphernalia with only ammunition and meat shields in the way. Pleasantly challenging on hard, refreshingly straightforward on normal and relaxingly cathartic on easy, whether you want Stranglehold to be a balls-to-the-wall shooter or a gritty tale of revenge is up to the player but it is without a doubt the best version of Space Invaders I’ve played.

Half-Life Episode 2 / Portal / Team Fortress 2 (PC)
Creating a crazy “Orange Box” scheme whereby early adopters would be able to gift their copies of Half Life 2 to some poor individual was a bit of a bizarre move but the introduction of three new entires into Valve’s canon was too much to pass up. Episode 2 is familiar and more of what was offered in Episode 1: a straight-up, awesome romp through the world of Half Life. The locales may have switched and physics beefed up but that sense of wonder and assuredness is still present only this time bolstered by some superb character writing and set-pieces. Obviously play-tested to death, Episode 2 is relentlessly entertaining and only suffers because of the long wait after Episode 1 and the even longer wait to Episode 3. Team Fortress 2 is my least played part of this triumvirate and while humourous, slick and dripping with style, TF2 is just another class based shooter. Better balanced and swifter paced than others of its ilk it speaks to those of clans and private servers rather than casual throw-arounds with the random public. Portal is indeed the darling of the pack, the tale of Narbacular Drop and the Digipen team now common video game lore, the result is a brief but perfect example of humour and puzzles. Simple concepts tirelessly reinforced, the portal gun is as familiar and instantaneous as the gravity gun and each puzzle represents a perfect extension to that simplicity. The real measure of Portal comes not from the ending song, but the sheer volume of memes it has spawned, for one cannot disagree, the cake is a lie.

Assassin’s Creed (360)
Despite Jade Raymond’s tireless efforts to convince every male with eyes that this was indeed a game she wanted us to purchase, I bought Assassin’s Creed on its merits as a new franchise and one that was not afraid to try new things. Both of these were satisfied and despite my initial confusion with the underexplained back story, the free-running of Altair comes into its own once one is allowed to roam one of the cities. Each city differed more in tone than in layout and with the added benefit of rooftop conveyance, navigating them became a question of checking the map rather than the slow burn learning of roads and buildings ala Grand Theft Auto. Altair’s animation and abilities are unmatched and much joy can be had by simply bounding through the cities with little to achieve other than fun; this activity is of course made all the more entertaining when doggedly pursued by lawmen of various denominations. While the mission structure may be repetitive, it serves the purpose of introducing the sector of the city you’re exploring, the assassinations are far less planned and benefit from ad-libbing than careful planning. Soliloquising by the targets aside, Assassin’s Creed manages to be a most intelligent and deft game, unobtrusively weaving a story of duplicity and morals without being preachy or overly dense; the philosophical underpinnings of the plot are sound and while the script suffers from overly long monologues, it is otherwise tight and polished. The combat is the biggest divider, at first being cumbersome and tricky but slowly becomes fluid and second nature, parries, thrusts and counters all reveal the brutality and lethality of Altair when faced with supposedly insurmountable odds. Despite the flaccid ending Assassin’s Creed remains excellent throughout and only the lack of closure on the part of the backstory is any big detraction.

Call of Duty 4 - Modern Warfare (360)
Beguiled by the graphics and lured by the modern setting, I was not a fan of the Call of Duty series until this installment. Initially ignoring the single player campaign for the utterly absorbing online multiplayer, CoD4 is unsurpassed in terms of reward and play-styles. Offering up a variety of styles from free-for-all to team deathmatch, the multiplayer is just at home with the public as it is amongst friends and the desire for “just one more round” is immense. Doing away with meaningless multiplayer achievements for in-game achievements is a bold move but one I’m sure will be copied by developers to come; the customisation potential is endless and despite the possibility for abuse, the customisation balances itself out according to overall skill level and situation, favouring each in equal measure. The single player is noisy, sometimes confusing but often exhilarating and drives home the horrors of modern war without any axe to grind or soapbox in sight. CoD4 is simply the most perfect example of a first person shooter possible, it may be unimaginative in setting and plot but it makes up for this a hundred times over in content and possibility.

Mass Effect (360)
What can one really say about the latest Bioware epic? While some had been looking forward to this since Jade Empire wrapped up, I was slightly more wary given the subject matter and my predilections towards previous Bioware sci-fi forays. Mass Effect is at once endlessly ambitious and surprisingly limited. To say the universe it inhabits is well realised would be a gross understatement, the encyclopaedia of information available is enough to fill several books and the desire to read everything is soon overridden by the burning desire to get on with the game. The dialogue trees and writing is as sharp as ever but lacks punch in some areas and is earth-shatteringly excellent in others, Bioware made an odd decision for their antagonist, obviously leaving the more malevolent evil doers for another entry in this trilogy. While the real time combat can sometimes feel scrappy, it enforces a tactical and strategic approach that is initially unnerving given the ability to just hold down the trigger. While the main plot is only a scrap of the game available for exploration, the rest comes through a slow and repetitive trickle: the glee first felt at exploring a new planet, Mars Rover style, is soon replace by annoyance at the arse-backward vehicle you are forced to drive in with no hope for a sleeker upgrade further down the line. These are of course all tertiary points to the overall playthrough of the story which is superbly voice acted, well written and well paced, it is up to the player to pace themselves as they see fit; frequent sojourns to other planets are available for those wishing to extend their stay in ME’s universe. The ending is an especial highlight, and while repeated playthroughs are encouraged there is little to replay unless one wishes to see the flip side of the moral coin.

Others
Other games I’ve played this year but not yet released in the UK include Persona 3 (PS2) and Odin Sphere (PS2) as well as other games not released this year including Neverwinter Nights 2 and of course replaying the Hitman games.

Future
2008 is going to start with a bang with two first quarter games: Devil May Cry 4 and Ninja Gaiden 2, both for the 360. Longer term things look a little more uncertain however with plenty of PS2 and now Wii and DS games to catch up on, spare time will be blissfully absent.

I have tweaked a couple of items in the backend. The first is the RSS category links; as I have been known to post about whatever I feel like, taxonomy feeds are a good way of ignoring the general rambling I tend to do while squiffy or bored. The problem was that my permalink structure on Wordpress caused some problems with the automatic feed links which made me to hold off implementing them, the solution was simple and worked a charm. The other change was the aggregating of very old entries in the archive list; this was something that I had done when I programmed my own abortive attempt at a blog system but wasn’t something Wordpress did natively. I did think of putting it into a plugin but I considered that overkill as I was already monkeying around with the guts of Wordpress. I’d made the decision to stick on 2.2.3 and not upgrade to 2.3 until I was sure all the bugs in 2.3 had been rooted out; taking a quick glance at the trac listing for open tickets for 2.3.1 and beyond reveals very little that would stop me however I’d been burned by the near weekly 2.2.x updates of before. The reason there are very old entries is due to the merging of my old DeadJournal entries with this blog; primarily for posterity but (as I mention in the category description, another new addition) also to remind me of what my writing used to be like.

As far as future entries is concerned, I’ll finish my draft review of Paprika and start one on 5cm a Second which should provide enough time to start a new feature: the three episode taste test. While this anime season doesn’t look nearly as spectacular as the last one, it has a number of shows which may hold interest. Even with most series now on two episodes it’s pretty obvious which ones I’m going to stick with, however three is enough to get over the budget burn of the first and languid story/character drive of the second. At some point I’m also hoping to finish off my Cuba write up, although I need to retroactively populate previous entries with photos (already done for days one, two, three and four) and continue writing; each entry can take close to two hours to write and check which is basically the entire evening.

There are other things on the horizon as well with chaostangent.com in general. I recently attended the Future of Web Apps conference in London which was a bit of a mixed bag but generally awesome. Apart from the highly anti-social laptop usage and people continually trying to sell me things, most all of the developer talks I attended were excellent, the stand out one was by John Resig of the Mozilla Corporation which was both very informative and interesting. One thing the conference did do was give me some ideas for a project which has been sitting on the back burner for a while now. I’ve also been fiddling with Wordpress more and more having decided to stick with 2.2.3 for the time being so I can hopefully start integrating some of my ideas that I’d originally written off due to restrictions on the plugin architecture.

You can consider this post to be an interstitial between your (sometimes) regularly scheduled program, just to indicate that I’m not going to slip into another four week lull.

This “guide” (more anecdotal than how-to) assumes knowledge of video encoding basics, I’m not going to cover the difference between container and video formats or how to use VirtualDub, there are plenty of other tutorials and guides that cover those topics.

The Flash Video container format (FLV) supports two major video formats: the first is codenamed “Sorenson Spark” and is a variant on the H.263 standard; the second is “On2 TrueMotion VP6”. The former is well supported in many encoding and decoding tools and libraries, the latter isn’t. It will come as no surprise then that the latter allows for far greater compression at similar visual quality when compared apples-to-apples to the H.263 format. To give you a quantifiable measure of this: I managed to get more than 2 times greater compression and better visual quality when using the VP6 codec. In short, this is the codec you want to use to get the most out of your movies.

Quick and dirty
If you just want to get a compatible FLV file quickly and painlessly and aren’t worried about size or quality overmuch, then grab yourself a copy of ffmpeg (a recent compiled Windows binary can be found here) and put it in a place where your command-line of choice can find it. Then punch in:

ffmpeg -i "yourvideofilegoeshere.avi" outfile.flv

Voila, in no time flat you’ll have an all-singing all-dancing .flv file ready for whatever you have in store for it. If you’re feeling particularly awesome, you can even control the output size of the video:

ffmpeg -i "totallyawesomekittenvideo.avi" -s 320x240 outfile.flv

ffmpeg, converts using the H.263 video flavour and MP3 audio format which is probably fine for most people. The problem with this process is the output is less than stellar and suffers from a tremendous amount of artefacting. I wanted to exercise a little more control over the visual quality. Some searching revealed byzantine quantizer settings which made the command line look like a calculator had exploded:

ffmpeg -i "hahathatguytotallysucks.avi" -qcomp 0.6 -qmax 15 -qdiff 4 -i_qfactor 0.71428572 -b_qfactor 0.76923078 -maxrate 972800 -s 320x240 -b 819200 -refs 1 -subq 1 -y outfile.flv

Tweaking these options gives variable results, but nothing close to the kind of quality / file-size ratio I wanted. The VP6 codec seemed worth trying out. Unfortunately using the VP6 codec is rife with hurdles; the primary one is that it is entirely proprietary, On2 own licenses and patents and probably crocodiles with bazookas to protect the codec; some companies have obtained licenses to use it in their products (On2 of course having their own implementation) which means the easiest and most pain-free route is to buy one of those products and bask in the fully-licensed glory.

What isn’t widely publicised is that On2 released a version of the VP6 codec for “Personal use” but no longer provide it for download on their website. A cursory search on Google (lets say “vp6 vfw codec”) returns some good matches. After downloading and installing, I now had the ability to encode to VP6 as long as it’s for “Personal use” according to the license agreement. This little endeavour was for my own curiosity rather than monetary gain which I’m sure falls under that stipulation.

Codec in hand, in theory it should be as simple as encoding to VP6 using something like VirtualDub and then muxing everything together into an FLV file. If only things were that simple. As far as I could see, there exists no standalone set of FLV muxing tools (like the seminal MKVtoolnix suite). However, ffmpeg can output to an FLV file and provides the ability to do a straight copy (i.e. no transcoding) of the source video, that could work…

No.

For the VP6 codec to be recognised within an FLV file, the container needs to have special bits set which indicate to the player that it’s going to receive VP6 video content rather than H.263/Spark; ffmpeg doesn’t write these bits as it doesn’t “officially” deal with VP6. After much searching, I stumbled upon a way to modify ffmpeg to write these bits but the patch hasn’t been merged into the main ffmpeg branch yet. You can download the patch and a pre-compiled Windows binary from a blog which also offers an alternate method of achieving what I’m describing.

The crux
If you haven’t been keeping up, here’s the short version of it. We want to make an FLV using VP6. Vanilla ffmpeg doesn’t do this so we need a modified ffmpeg to do it. Use the above blog page or modify your ffmpeg source to get ffmpeg to do what we want.

Open up your source video in VirtualDub and apply any filters you want (contrast, brightness, resize etc.) but make sure the “Flip vertically” filter is somewhere in that mix. Go to compression and select the VP6 codec; if you’re using VP 6.2 you can do two-pass encoding which, potentially gives better results than a one-pass encode. Make sure “Use source audio” is selected and save your video down. You’ll have an .avi file which has VP6 video and the original source audio.

Now use your modified version of ffmpeg and use the following (substituting filenames where applicable):

ffmpeg -y -i "ooooohprettyprettyflowers.avi" -vcodec copy outfile.flv

If you want to control the audio compression a little better add the options for that:

ffmpeg -b 128 -ac 2 -ar 44100 -y -i "ohwowexplosions.avi" -vcodec copy outfile.flv

You will now have “outfile.flv” which is your final Flash video file, ready for uploading. Of course, the proof of the pudding is in the tasting:

Get Flash to see this player.

h263.flv - 1,466KB

Get Flash to see this player.

vp62.flv - 676KB

Conclusion
This process is obviously not suited for the automatic encoding process that a lot of sites seem to crave nowadays, this process is far better suited for the cash-strapped auteur who wants the most out of their videos and bandwidth and doesn’t have a large amount of videos to encode. VP6 support in ffmpeg/libavcodec is coming along, and the most recent builds of ffmpeg come with decoding support for VP6, but whether patents/license prevent encoding support is still to be seen.

It’s hard to know where to start refuting such an article filled with a plethora of misconceptions and fallacies. The first place would really be the Turing Test, one of the most well known ways of “proving” an AI. The first thing any AI course worth its salt will teach you is not so much that the Turing Test is worthless, just that it doesn’t necessarily prove that something is intelligent. It makes the mistake that if a human is fooled into thinking the machine is human, that it has demonstrated thought or intelligence when in actuality, a lot of humans wouldn’t “pass” the Turing test. There is an immense body of work dedicated to the Turing test and whether it should be just one of a suite of tests or whether the test itself fallacious or whether tests are even necessary.

Cutting to the heart of this matter is the definition of intelligence. One cannot give a definition because one does and can not exist, a measure of intelligence is built in a variety of ways but there is no cold-clinical definition that would allow a strict separation of intelligence and stupidity, light and dark, pass or fail. Just like someone cannot prove they are alive, they cannot prove they are intelligent because one definition does not match up with another. “I am alive because I am cognisant of my surroundings,” “I am intelligent because I am not yet dead”.

The primary part of what I see bandied about as discussion of AI is the ridiculous idea of “true” AI; as if we could somehow imbue a system with life and intelligence through lightning bolts and Tesla-coils and that a shining paradigm of intelligence would be born. Computers are deterministic; we get out of them exactly what we put in. When it comes to AI there is the situation of “emergent behaviour”, whereby we get something out that we didn’t necessarily expect; this is not to say that the outcome could not have been predicted or modelled, just that it wasn’t expected. So by that definition, to create some kind of “true” AI, we would have to have someone, either one or a group of people, who would be as smart as the system they created; intelligence could not just “fall out” of a vastly complex system. The article goes on to speak about cyclic improvement as if it was the simplest thing in the world: by virtue of being a machine, the AI could of course improve itself whereby we have failed. Just like how if we had two AIs, they could of course “merge” to create a better amalgam of the two. The entire concept of “true” AI is so outlandish and completely outside the bounds of rational and logical thinking it gobsmacks me.

The comments to the article range from the informed to the abstract but cover a wider gamut of reasoning than the article itself. I think what amuses me most about the concept presented in the article and in numerous other bits of futurism and fiction is that fundamentally, we (as human-kind) do not understand how our brain works. We see the brain as the nexus of our “intelligence”, how a dense cluster of nerves which coagulated over generations of evolution gives rise to “consciousness” and “thought”. If we could model that or at least the “important” parts of the brain, we would birth something at least as intelligent as us. To me, this falls into that category of magic and gods, whereby we don’t understand something so find ways to explain it away. Maybe what we think of as cognitive thought is simply smoke and mirrors, emergent behaviour we can’t understand simply because we’re part of the process, and trying to fool ourselves into believing we created something intelligent is just an Escher painting of madness.

I digress, really this isn’t a discussion on the philosophical aspects and impacts of AI and its fundamentals, but simply to indicate that we are merely scratching the surface of a vast and nebulous concept. The article makes no attempt to be researched or intelligent in the matter and simply comes across as sensationalist and shallow.

A scant few days later I was coaxed to go out on Valentines day. To Skool Disco. At Corporation. With a Traffic Light party. On a Wednesday evening. With best intentions and a 1am cut-off point I thought a brief tipple and requisite thrashing about would do me no harm. This wasn’t a plan best laid but any semblance of sanity went out the window when it transpired that Corporation were doing drinks for £1. And of course our tickets also got us a free drink.

I have been to work with a hangover before; I am not proud of this fact and know full well that it impinges on my usual high octane approach to programming but I am no stranger to hangovers. Water before bed, breakfast in the morning and continuous glasses of water and the hangover is banished by lunch time. Not this time. This was the Duracell of hangovers: it just kept going, and going, and going (and going). It also didn’t help that I was tasked with sending out an e-mail to 12,000 people who had registered on a client’s site. E-mail sending is traumatic enough when lucid, but when your brain screams at you that you’re dying, it makes it all the more fraught.

After that “experience” there are now strict ground rules in place for me drinking on a weeknight which involve drinking limits, cut-off times and a barrage of excuses to waive all of the rules. Along with killing my liver, gaming is my other primary pastime and given the current line up of releases, my calendar is full.

Play surprised me by getting Okami to me on release day which has kept me more than busy. Thirty hours in and I’ve only just reached the final quarter of the game which (for the reluctant mathematicians among you) gives me another ten hours or so left. It is an awe-inspiringly awesome game and I have very few quibbles with it, but ten hours in two days is nigh on impossible with Final Fantasy XII coming out on the 23rd. It was always going to be a push to finish Okami in time for FF12 but I foolishly thought it would be possible, even probable, perhaps even approach the mythical 100% completion. With FF12 comes a brief respite until God of War 2 is released at the end of March along with Command and Conquer 3. This is of course ignoring Crackdown and Bullet Witch for the 360 which I’m not looking forward to enough to buy on release.

Final Fantasy games always take me out of gaming action for almost 100 hours each; 7, 8, 10, 10-2 have and no doubt 12 will as well. I recently tried for 100% on 10 after fatally breaking my initial game (Dark Aeons prevented weapon/stat progression) but gave up at the long term end-game “investments” (I then accidentally erased that save when making room for Okami…). Seven and eight I played on PC and managed to almost 100% seven were it not for those pesky Weapons (Emerald and Ruby) and eight was never my favourite to begin with. Ten-two I played through stoically but it didn’t help that it may as well have had “Girl Power” stamped across the front-cover.

If you’re currently thinking the (logical and sensible) argument of “Why not wait to buy them?”, you can take that kind of negative talk elsewhere. I may not be “hardcore” but me obsessive compulsive tendencies need some outlet.