Is the campaign for dark skies finally having an impact?

This morning we had a leaflet from Southern Electric informing us that our street lights and those around Leeds are going to be replaced. This in itself, isn’t all that interesting, it’s the type of light fitting they’ll be using on the new lamp posts that is.

older designs which throw light in all directions, do not meet modern illumination standards.

Hopefully they’ll not be just doing the minimum to meet the current lighting standards, but going all the way with full cut off lighting. Across the entire of Leeds, this could have a pretty dramatic effect on the amount of light pollution and see the return of dark skies. Hopefully neighbouring cities will follow suit.

I’ve a keen interest in Astronomy, so any moves which reduce the amount of light polution, are welcomed. Although sods law will probably result in the location of the new lamp posts directly overlooking where I setup my scope

First off, since I’ve not blogged for a while about anything Game Dev related, I thought I’d mention why.

Myself and Tom Bampton have been working on a fun side project since late last year which we’re wanting to keep under wraps a little longer, however, there’s a ton of material to blog about once we’re far enough along to make it worth discussing. Also I’ve been working on Shelled 2 which I can’t really say anything about other than it’s coming along very nicely

GP2X Competitor

Anyhow, a few things have recently caught my eye that I felt were blog worthy. The first is a semi rumor, possibly vaporwear but interesting enough to hope it isn’t. There’s a pretty lengthy thread going on over at the GP32x.com forums regarding a new handheld device under development. The reason I’m saying this might be vaporwear is it’s not clear WHO that company is, only that several prominent gp2x community members who were very active in the development of software for and/or the distribution of the actual gp2x hardware, appear to have a reasonable amount of input into the new device.

I’ve not really talked about the GP2X much since buying one way back, but it’s a great little device and quite fun to program, well worth the price compared to any other handheld currently on the market.

That’s not to say it’s perfect. It’s not. For example the joystick is a little awkward to use and the lack of d-pad support makes some games awkward to play. The volume control is software based and inconsistent, even on the lowest setting it’s way too loud for my tastes when using headphones, the setting one step lower is mute.

Still, when you consider this device is first and foremost a media player, which it does very well I might add, it’s not a bad piece of hardware and the community has worked wonders turning it into a reasonable gaming handheld.

It would however, have been nice to have better hardware support aimed at gaming and this is where the new device sounds to be a step up, with 3d acceleration, higher res screen, touch screen, more memory and wifi. All of which will increase the possible capabilities well beyond that of the GP2X which already has great emulator support and homebrew capabilities.

That said, I already have a GP2X that I’m more than happy with, the new device could just be a joke (or never make it into production) and there’s another gadget that has caught my attention more that the possible GP2X successor has.

OpenMoko

I’m not really into mobile phones, the last phone I bought was a nokia 3210 although I’ve since upgraded via a hand-me-down from my brother to a newer nokia. Even so, I very rarely use it. That may be set to change with the pending release of the Phase 2 device from the OpenMoko project.

Currently you can buy the Neo1973 (GTA01 rev.) phone which has been designed specifically for the OpenMoko project. Now the idea of fully Open Source mobile phone is very very interesting, however it’s the phase 2 hardware (GTA02 rev.) that interests me even more.

Adds to the Phase 1 phone:
* 2D/3D-Graphics-Accelerator
* 2 Accelerometers (model and number is uncertain)
* Faster CPU - S3C2442/400
* WiFi: Atheros AR6K (see also [4])

The possibilities for development on this from low level hardware hacking and coding through to end applications and games is mouth watering, at least for a programming/hardware geek

The fact that the current version on sale has the disclaimer:

What you CAN NOT expect yet
* reliable means of making phone calls, esp. not from the UI
* reliable means of sending/receiving SMS, esp. not from the UI

and the list goes on… would make most people think twice about buying a “phone” that can’t really be used to make calls yet. But I’m sure any geeks reading this will find that only adds to the attraction.

The Phase2 hardware with it’s higher res screen would make a great replacement for my current phone and Palm Tungsten C, which I use for reading ebooks and appointments. Given that it’s totally open source you can bet someone will develop most of the common apps and any that are missing will make for a good project to work on. Roll on October….