Mr eel
The OFLC are Fascist Wowsers
Living in a liberal democracy is nice. Until you realise it’s not as liberal as everyone likes to pretend. Seems it’s enough to pay lip service to the ideal of liberty, but when it comes to the difficult part — you know the bit where you have to put up with things you find unpleasant — loads of people turn out to be wowsers.
Now you might be asking what sparked all these angry words about liberty etc. Oh, it’s just the Office of Film and Literature Classification being knobs. Again.
Specifically they have withdrawn the MA rating for Grand Theft Auto - San Andreas within Australia. This means that the game can no longer be sold. I’m all for rating games. It gives parents a good idea of what sort of games they want their kids to play and it give adults a chance to do the same for themselves i.e. not everyone wants to play a game full of sex and violence. What I hate, is some bunch of out-of-step knob-ends telling me that I can’t play a violent or sex filled game if I want to. Apparently I am not actually an adult capable of making up my own mind, but rather an oversized child to be coddled and talked-down to.
There is no such thing as a R or Adults Only rating for games in Australia. Bah!
Two points I’d like to make here. First lets consider the irony of the OFLC allowing the sale of a game where the the protagonist is a drug dealing gangster, but gets it’s knickers in a twist when they discover it’s possible to see that character having consensual sex. Apparently sex is just so much worse than violence.
Secondly, the rating for this game was pulled without any real discussion or investigation. It’s a knee-jerk reaction to all the furore over the game in the US.
The ratings process is opaque to the public and is focussed on shielding our tender minds from all that nasty stuff in films and movies. Bluntly, I can see worse on the news each night. I’m starting to doubt the need for an organisation like the OFLC, if in the end it means they are going to try and stop me from seeing the films or playing the games I want to, for what are frankly trivial reasons.
Bottom line; this is censorship and censorship fucking sucks.
Either the Software is Broken…
Or you don’t know how to code CSS properly. Just a little while back I read this criticism of Firefox. In it the author claims that Firefox doesn’t allow you to set the width on an anchor tag.
*sigh* Here’s a tip. Go and buy a nice book about CSS. CSS - The Definitive Guide is a good one. Now once you’ve read that fine book, armed with your new knowledge of CSS, you will now realise the Firefox doesn’t support widths on anchor tags because they are inline elements. You can’t put widths on inline elements. This is the expected behavior per the CSS specifications. An inline element is one that just flows around other elements in the page. A paragraph tag is a good example of an inline element. Contrast this with a block element. A block element is a bossy little so-and-so. It doesn’t flow around other elements, but want to take up as much room horizontally as it can. You can set widths on block elements.
Long story short; in order to set a width on an anchor you need to either set it to behave as a block element or float it.
Like this:
a {
display:block;
width:4em;
}
Or if you’d rather float it:
a {
float:left;
width:4em;
}
So simple! The problem here isn’t Firefox. It’s using CSS without understanding how it works. That’s cool, we’ve all gotta start somewhere. However when you start bagging software without actually knowing what you’re talking about… I say bollocks!
More on Nintendo’s Profits
Earlier on I posted about Nintendo’s rather good financial performance. Seems now that they aren’t performing so well this year. Still, it’s worth keeping in mind that their competitors all made losses within the same year. Apparently they have only released 10 first party games this year, which would go some way to explaining the smaller profits.
I’m guessing they they are slowing down production in general and pooling resources for the launch of the Revolution. Seen in that light, lower profits could be interpreted as an investment.
Kurse you Kirby
It’s true. Little sucker is totally sucking my time. Viz. Kirby’s Cursed Canvas!
Why I Like Ruby Pt.1
Ok, well I’m actually a Ruby newbie, but I’m finding an awful lot to like about the language. Firstly I totally dig object-oriented interpreted languages — like loverly Javascript — because they encourage experimentation in learning i.e. change some code, run it to see if it works. I much prefer this compared to using compiled languages. I want to see my code run now!
But aside from my general love for interpreted languages, there are loads of really… really bloody sweet features in Ruby. Even simple stuff like assignment has it’s own special twist.
For example assignment:
mum.last_name = dad.last_name = 'Sutton' mum.last_name > 'Sutton' dad.last_name > 'Sutton'
Or even more fancy, parallel assignment:
a, b = 5, 9 a > 5 b > 9
Or how about comparing arrays?
[1,2,3] == [1,2,3] > true [1,2,4] == [4,3,6] > false
Repetition in arrays:
[1,2] * 3 > [1,2,1,3,1,2]
Basically Ruby gives you a lot for free. I’m so used to dealing with javascript, which has a rather… um, slim core, so I’m constantly delighted with all the fancy stuff. I’m also really pleased to see that the language has been designed really well, so that certain methods are available to most classes and they work in a consistent way. For example the each() iterator used in hashes and arrays.
*Sob* I luv you Ruby!
I’m No Gear Whore, But…
When it comes to actual hardware I use while I write music, my inventory is pretty small. My Powerbook and some nice Alesis monitors. I like it that way. If I can essentially have the contents of a studio stuffed into my laptop, it means I can take it with me where ever. No hassle.
Then, I stumbled over this set of photos. Oh dear. I think I’m in some state of denial. If I could have a studio full of synths I wouldn’t hesitate!
More than anything I want a Monomachine. In my heart of hearts, I’m a knob-twiddler and the idea of having the shiny Monomachine knobs slipping between my trembling fingers is… a dream!
IDM is Dead?!
IDM is Dead! IDM is dead! Whatever it is, it’s apparently dead. Amazing. It’s the journalists that invented that stupid genre and now they get to proclaim it’s death. How wonderful for them.
If you happen to be a bit of a fan of electronic music, you may have heard the term IDM, and if you’ve read any reviews lately you might have come across the proclamation of it’s death. Maybe I’m being a bit precious, but I’d like to say; well la-dee-da and hooray for music journalism! Thanks for that brilliant, sweeping insight. If you hadn’t pointed it out, I might have kept listening to my Aphex Twin records and ended up as some sort of boring git telling everyone else what to think about music.
For anyone looking for context, it’s this review that got me a bit annoyed. It’s not the first time I’ve read this kinda bollocks — i.e. Micro-house is dead, Disco-punk is dead, Rock is dead — and it always reminds me of what sucks about music journalism. Know it alls dying to tell everyone else what to think.
It also puts what I love about music journalism into sharper relief. It’s always better to hear people talking about what they love and why they love it.
Rails Gotcha: Parameter Names
There are a few problems I’ve had while working with Ruby on Rails. Most of them stem from my ignorance of the system. Here’s one tip I can offer. If you’re ever having problems that you can’t figure out, make sure you aren’t using a reserved word in your code.
For example I was trying to save a collection of records along with their parent record. The table name for the collection was ‘actions’. Trying to access @params[:action] in the controller in order to get the info from the browser and into the database was just not working. See, the key :action is actually used by rails to figure out which method to call in the controller. Oops!
Last Night IRC Saved My Life
When you’re having problems, nothing beats having some friendly folks on hand to answer questions. If you’re currently learning Ruby on Rails, I’d suggest checking out the Ruby on Rails IRC channel. It’s nice man.
Actually Nintendo are the Most Successful Games Company
Well, you might scoff. After all, the launch of the Nintendo 64 was a bit of a disaster and for a long time it seemed like Nintendo was playing catch up with Sony. Ask most gamers which company they think is the strongest within the market and they would probably say Sony with the Playstation. Here’s the thing; they’d be wrong.
Companies make games to make money. The company which makes the most money is the winner. Guess what? It ain’t Sony. It’s Nintendo. For those of you still scoffing, read this rather illuminating article.