In a breathtaking match that went right down to the wire, Ev0ke overcame Triumvirate in the final of the fifth EVE Alliance PVP Tournament.

All the matches from the tournament are watchable here: http://www.eve-online.com/evetv/tunein.asp

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I just had to post that image, a great example of gamer humor.

This post will be very short (infact I’m nearly done). I just wanted to post a link to a very interesting article - Production Quality Game Code by Jered Wierzbicki, its a very good and informative article and definitely worth a read if you are interested in game programming.

Bootnote: this is also rather entertaining as well, oh and my girlfriend just started her blog. She is a much better writer than I am, so head on over to Sweetheart, bitter heart, now I cant tell you apart

I have been debating recently whether or not I should by a second monitor to increase my screen area and hopefully productivity (it’s not as if I just I’m just going to use it to play games on… well hopefully as that might lead to a decrease in productivity). I currently work from my Sony Vaio FE28B laptop, I really like it, its 1.5 yrs old and still does ok for my needs. It has a 15.4″ widescreen monitor, so I have been debating on whether or not to buy a second. Will it actually do anything for my productivity?

The disadvantage of using a single monitor is that you have to flip between screens when working in multiple applications, which is common for development. When I work I may have an email program, web browser, development environment (Visual Studio), and not forgetting iTunes. Flipping from one application to another takes more time and physical movement than I’d like. One solution that desktop users often go for is to get a radically larger monitor that can show multiple applications at once, but that would be rather silly since I’m using a laptop.

Does using multiple monitors actually increase productivity? Well according to some reports adding a second monitor increases productivity by up to 50%. I have no doubt that adding a second monitor to my setup would increase my productivity but not nearly by 50%, but I have found this very useful post written by a real programmer (unlike me; who just pretends to know what I’m on about). According to the post for this particular development team when dual monitors were introduced productivity increased by 10% and bugs decreased by 26% (which would be good from my current bug level of 99%).

So I have decided to attempt to find a second monitor, the only problem is I want one of the same size and aspect ratio (15.4″ & 16:10) as my laptop monitor. I have been trawling e-bay but at the moment the only ones that match those criteria seem to be faulty. I will post again as soon as I find something sutable.

For more on multiple monitors and productivity see:

• This Coding Horror post
  
• This NY Times Article

Should I stay or should I go … with Visual Studio 2005 or 2008 is the question in this particular case. At the moment I’m using VS 05, but since Microsoft introduced DreamSpark any student (in North America, Europe or Asia at the moment) can get Visual Studio 2008 Pro for free.

Are there reasons for moving to VS 2005 instead of 2008 even though 2008 is the newest version with support for .NET 3.5? Minimizing risk is probably the major driver for deciding on VS 2005. After all, it’s been out in the market for almost two years and it’s stable and mature. There’s also the common wisdom that you shouldn’t deploy a Microsoft product that doesn’t have at least one service pack. Mind you that SP1 for Visual Studio didn’t come out until 12 months after the release of the product. Microsoft is no longer in the mode where the Service Pack has to hit 6 months after release because there were quality issues that needed to be fixed.

So what is new in 2008? And what stuff will I actually use? Well according to Microsoft, this is what’s new, but how much of that will I use? Well as I have been looking over it lately, I really can only find one real thing that I will use. The support for .NET 3.5, as I said in my previous post I am currently trying to learn C# so I believe I will upgrade when I find the time. Oh and I forgot the most important reason as to why I’m upgrading… It’s free

I’ve recently been attempting to learn C#, not that it ’should’ be too difficult for someone who is supposed to be able to program in C++, but then again I should also be able to tell you how to do various other things that I have apparently learned over the last year and a half.

I have been learning from O’Reilly’s Programming C#; so far it seems to be pretty good. It doesn’t assume that you are an expert C++ programmer which is handy if you like me have trouble with using cout.In C# you can also see the influences of Java, VB, and quite a few things from other languages. C# is mainly designed to work with Microsoft’s .NET platform. Although learning C# while trying to cover some more advanced topics in C++ for use in my OpenGl coursework is proving a bit confusing. For anyone interested in games, there is a great website here; it covers the entire history of consoles right from the Magnavox Odyssey (1972) through to the PS3 & Wii (2006). It’s an interesting read, and lets you see just how far the humble home console has come.

As I sit here thinking how to start this second post a question came to me, what type of blogger am I (or am I going to be is perhaps more accurate)? Am I going to be one of the bloggers who is constantly upon their soapbox dishing out advice and their views on the major news events, or perhaps one of the narcissistic bloggers who only seem to talk about themselves and their own importance, or will I perhaps be one of the bloggers who talks with authority and knowledge on a certain subject.

I personally feel that the best type of blogger to be is the latter, so did it surprise me to find out that the world’s most popular blog is Perez Hilton a celebrity gossip blog that receives about 3 million visitors per day? Sadly it did not. Is it naive of me to believe that a blog with greater social meaning, or more intelligent writing, or more depth to its subject matter is deserving of as much if not more popularity?

I am certainly not talking about my own blog here, but one such example of a very good blog that has these qualities and that I read on a regular basis is Coding Horror by Jeff Atwood, although that may be a bad example of a small blog (although certainly smaller than Perez Hilton) as at the time or writing has almost 75,000 subscribers. Any thoughts on the best way to blog and the whole question behind what makes a good blog are more than welcome (if anyone will actually read this).

But I digress…

So to the other part of my title: light cycles, those of you who have seen Tron should know what I am talking about for those who haven’t, well the wiki article should help. Why am I talking about light cycles? Well for my opengl coursework I have been asked to create a 3D scene of my choosing, no prizes for guessing where I’m going with this. I have now (almost) finished my model and am fairly happy with it.

As it stands at this moment in time I still have to do the UV mapping and then I can move on and start on a texture. I am feeling quietly confident about this coursework. On the other hand I still haven’t really come up with any ideas for my PS2 programming coursework so I am starting to get slightly nervous about that.

I would welcome any ideas for either of my projects and feedback on the model.

cout << "Hello World!";

Well, finally I’m going to start blogging, I’ve had idea to start in my head for ages but hadn’t got round to doing anything about it. The blog still needs a visual identity but I thought I’d just get on with posting anyway.

The first question I feel I should answer is who am I?

Well my name is Graeme Haddow, I’m a 19 year old student (2nd year) studying Computer Games Technology at Abertay in Dundee.

That leads me nicely into what would be my second question, what is this blog going to be about?

As you can guess I will be blogging about my main interests: gaming, games programming and programming in general. I will also be at times deviating and talking about my life in general and other subjects that interest me. As well as the weird and the wonderful that I find upon my voyage through the net.

Well thats about all I can think of at the moment, but I’m sure I will have more useless ramblings later…

To be continued