Grammerjack

I just tried creating an avatar on Microsoft's new Xbox dashboard. As you can see (at least when the Microsoft server isn't being hammered) on the left, they provide a URL for displaying your current Avatar on a web page. The character creation system is not too bad. In some ways it's more flexible than Nintendo's Mii (for example more hair styles and clothing), but in other ways it's more limited (less control over facial feature placement). My avatar looks better on the Xbox than it does here -- they should consider sharpening the image. For example, the T-shirt my avatar is wearing has a thin-lined Xbox symbol. I think they do a good job of avoiding the Uncanny Valley effect. I look forward to seeing how avatars end up being used in the Xbox world. In othe Xbox-related news I'm enjoying playing Banjo Kazooie Nuts & Bolts with my son. All we have right now is the demo, but it's great fun for anyone who likes building things. It's replaced Cloning C...

I'm a big fan of CPU architectures. Here's a conversation between David Moon formerly of Symbolics Lisp Machines and Cliff Click Jr. of Azule Systems. They discuss details of both the Lisp Machine architecture and Azule's massively multi-core Java machine. http://blogs.azulsystems.com/cliff/2008/11/a-brief-conversation-with-david-moon.html The claim (from both Symbolics and Azule) is that adding just a few instructions to an ordinary RISC instruction set can make GC much faster. With so much code being run in Java these days I wonder if we'll see similar types of instructions added to mainstream architectures.

This one can: XKCD: Someone is Wrong on the Internet --- this comic's punchline has saved me at least an hour of a week since it came out. That's more than I've saved by learning Python. :-)

The next generation of video game consoles should start in 2011. (Give or take a year). It takes about three years to develop a video game console, so work should be ramping up at all three video game manufacturers. Nintendo's best course-of-action is pretty clear: Do a slightly souped-up Wii. Perhaps with lots of SD-RAM for downloadable games. Probably with low-end HD resolution graphics. Definately with an improved controller (for example with the recent gyroscope slice built in.) Sony and Microsoft have to decide whether to aim high or copy Nintendo. Today a strong rumor has it that Sony is polling developers to see what they think of a PlayStation 4 that is similar to a cost-reduced PlayStation 3 (same Cell, cheaper RAM, cheap launch price.) http://forum.beyond3d.com/showthread.php?t=50037 That makes sense as Sony has had problems this generation due to the high launch cost of the PS3. The drawback of this scheme is that it does nothing to make the PS4 easy to program. In the l...

Team Blue Iris (that's me and my kids!) took 19th place, the top finish for a Python-based entry! Check out the ICFP Programming Contest 2008 Video . The winning team list is given at 41:45.

That's the question Dean Kent asks over at Real World Tech 's forums. I replied briefly there, but thought it would make a good blog post as well. I'm an Android developer, so I'm probably biased, but I think most people in the developed world will have a smart phone eventually, just as most people already have access to a PC and Internet connectivity. I think the ratio of phone / PC use will vary greatly depending upon the person's lifestyle. If you're a city-dwelling 20-something student you're going to be using your mobile phone a lot more than a 60-something suburban grandpa. This isn't because the grandpa's old fashioned, it's because the two people live in different environments and have different patterns of work and play. Will people stop using PCs? Of course not. At least, not most people. There are huge advantages to having a large screen and a decent keyboard and mouse. But I think people will start to think of their phone and their PC...

Peter Moore on Xbox I always liked Peter Moore, and I was sorry when he left Xbox for EA. He's given a very good interview on his time at Sega and Microsoft. (He ran the Xbox game group at Microsoft before moving on to Electronic Arts.) Lots of insight into the Xbox part of the game industry. Here he is talking about Rare: ...and you know, Microsoft, we'd had a tough time getting Rare back – Perfect Dark Zero was a launch title and didn't do as well as Perfect Dark… but we were trying all kinds of classic Rare stuff and unfortunately I think the industry had past Rare by – it's a strong statement but what they were good at, new consumers didn't care about anymore, and it was tough because they were trying very hard - Chris and Tim Stamper were still there – to try and recreate the glory years of Rare, which is the reason Microsoft paid a lot of money for them and I spent a lot of time getting on a train to Twycross to meet them. Great people. But their skillsets wer...