Its about a year and a half since I bought a Digital Piano and finally started practicing daily. In that time I’ve progressed quite well and the pieces I’m able to play (albeit still at the late-elementary / early intermediate level) are finally starting to increase in length to a few pages.

This has brought about a problem I’d not really considered up to this point that I’m sure plagues all pianists. How to turn the page without interrupting your playing. Given time I’m sure I could get used to reaching up and turning the page and make do with copying a few measures from the next page to get me to a suitable place to turn the page, but I’d rather not

A product called the AirTurn provides a solution to this problem. However, as a hardware hobbiest I decided to roll my own. Using a Laptop or LCD monitor to display the scores in either Adobe Reader or Music Reader and a serial connected foot pedal to fire off a PG Down event.

Above is a picture of the final device and below are a few screen shots of the pedal turner .NET application which monitors the serial port and sends out PAGE DOWN keyboard events to the activate application whenever the pedal is pushed down.

The application and documentation, which also includes brief instructions on how to build your own serial connector (it’s pretty simple!) can be downloaded here

As a side benefit to going digital, there’s no more printing out digital music from the various on-line stores and no more hunting around for a specific score amongst the thousands of downloadable public domain scores.

With PDF Annotator or MusicReader, it’s also possible to annotate the scores, adding fingering information and highlighting practice sections. Plus re-ordering pages so they’re out of sequence is great for handling all those jumps back and forth in a piece. Currently I’m using the demo of MusicReader, I’ve not yet decided whether to purchase it. I want to make sure there isn’t a better alternative. . I’ll be buying a copy this week

I’ve demo’d several other apps, but mostly they’re related to music notation rather than playing from a score. Theres some pretty cool OCR software available for music that’ll scan a score, convert it to various formats including MusicXML and allow you to play it back. Unfortunately, all the apps that include that kind of feature do not seem to offer any kind of library management nor are they as suited to playing from and annotating scores as MusicReader is.

From what little I’ve used of MusicReader so far, one feature I’d like to see added is a layer option. Having the ability to erase all annotations on a given layer whilst keeping marks made on other layers rather than having to be careful what you erase. Plus an option to toggle the visible layers.

I guess I can’t discuss paperless playing without mentioning Hugh Sung, who’s blog and youtube videos put me onto MusicReader and the pedal page turning idea in the first place. His company produce the AirTurn, which is a USB device that allows you to connect a set of pedals to your PC without wires. His site is also responsible for the expensive notion of buying a table PC that I now have stuck in my head, hopefully the idea will remain there and not make it to my credit card

Gears 2 was released on Friday and my first impressions are pretty good but there are several problems too.

Co-Op

A friend and I played through the co-op campaign on normal yesterday and were pretty happy with the game. It’s basically the first Gears with some new locust types to kill and a more engaging story and characters. I actually remember the names of the characters this time around, it’s hard not to when you have a better storyline such as with Dom and better characterisation as with Carmine.

Bugs

Gears 2 is certainly “more” and “bigger” than the first, but unfortunately that includes bugs as well. However, considering I only bought the first Gears about 3 months ago by which time all the major issues were probably patched, I’m hopeful we’ll see a patch for Gears 2 that resolves most of the bugs.

One of the more annoying bugs I’ve encountered a few times is a weapon bug where by selecting a weapon causes it to vanish from the selection wheel, after selecting each weapon you’re stuck with the last selected weapon, unable to pick-up or drop or use any weapons at all. There was a similar bug in the first Gears but you could usually cycle out of it, this one needed a restart from the previous checkpoint to clear.

I’ve also encountered quite a few rendering bugs where the floor and walls vanish and my character just hovers in mid air, occasionally falling down through where the floor should be, then popping back up again. Another bug was where the host could see Locust, yet I could not. This happened in particular on the level where you’re defending the city from the incoming reavers and have to kill 3 or 4 of them. My friend could see and shtot the reaver in the courtyard, I could see nothing.

Fingers crossed those will be tracked down and fixed before too long.

To sum up the single player/co-op campaign, I loved it. Really enjoyed the levels, even though it’s more of the same from Gears, there was just enough variety to make it a joy to play through. I’m looking forward to playing through again on Hardcore and Insane.

Photo-Cam

The addition of a screen-shot facility is welcomed, especially with the integration with the Gears Official website where you photos can be included in a Gallery. Not as impressive as Bungies Theater mode though, but a feature I think more games should include.

Multi-Player

Now the multi-player side is a different matter entirely. Epic have gone with a Halo 3 style of matchmaking, which is a great idea. It means we get to “party” up with friends, then have the system locate similar skilled players to populate the free slots in our team and match us up against an opposing team of similar skill.

However, there appears to be something wrong with how everything is working, we spent several minutes sat watching the game try to find 3 players to fill out our team with, then after several more minutes of trying to find a team to play one of our teams players quit, causing the search to begin again. After about 10-15 minutes we finally got into a game.

The only play-list we were matched up straight away and into a game within under a minute was the wingman mode. All the other modes were the same story, wait 5+ minutes to find a match, or never find one at all in the case of territories. I tried several times on Saturday to play just one game, but didn’t get a single match.

Unlike with Halo, there’s no indication of how many people are playing in the selected playlist. So whether nobody was playing territories, or there was something wrong with the match making (bug/overloaded?), I’ve no idea. It’s certainly more frustrating trying to get into a game than Gears 1, though I’m hopeful the situation will be resolved in the coming weeks which makes this a minor complaint.

P.S I’m aware of the NAT issues that can slow down matchmaking, my router is configured correctly afaik and the 360 shows NAT as fully open. I had to sort this out a while back due to voice comm problems in Halo 3.

Playlists

Speaking of play-lists. I hate these. In Gears one, I enjoyed playing Execution, I disliked playing Warzone. This wasn’t a problem, just set the search filters, find a game with a low ping and off you go, took under a minute to find and get into a game. With Gears 2, I have to hope that the “team” I’m matched with, want to vote for Execution and not Warzone or Guardian. Otherwise I could be forced to play a mode I dislike, or worse, quit out and ruin the game for the rest of my team.

I have the same issue with Halo 3. I enjoy death match games, yet there is no ranked “Slayer” only mode in Halo 3, you have to instead just play Social Slayer (we don’t have that option in Gears 2). There is the option to veto a game mode, or map in Halo 3, but then you’re stuck with the next choice, which could (and often is) be an even crappier game mode.

This is one area where Gears 2 has improved on Halo 3’s system, although they have the same annoying use of play-lists, they do show BOTH game mode options and then maps at the same time. Allowing players to vote for one or the other rather than having to veto and hope the alternative is better.

Still, I dislike the idea of playlists. Map cycles I’m fine with, it’s not often I really dislike a map enough to not play it the odd time it comes around in a cycle, but for game modes, why should I have to play king of the hill or odd-ball when I just want to play slayer (in Halo3), or Guardian/Warzone when I want to play Execution in Gears 2?

Ghost Cam

The Ghost Cam is a nice idea, when you’re dead you get to “spectate” the match. However, it does mean you get to tell your mate exactly where the enemy players are hiding. This will probably be even worse when the new 360 dash is released if it includes the option to private chat to more than one person at once!

I couldn’t see any way to join games that have Ghost Cam disabled. Wingman just doesn’t see like as good an idea, when you kill off one player only to have him watch his Wingmans back via the ghost cam, or go scout ahead for him. Why is this Cam available in Public games which are Ranked?

Ranked Games

Speaking of Ranked games, where is the option for _SOCIAL_ games? Gears 2 has two server types, Public and Private. If you join a Public play-list, you get placed in a team with other players and play a ranked game with most of the options locked so you cannot change round duration, map etc which makes sense, it is a ranked game after all and needs to be kept consistent and fair (see ghost-cam above).

Private, allows just you and your friends to join, again this is a good idea. Sometimes you just want to play with your mates in a relaxed game and perhaps have some bots to pad out the numbers (I like the fact bots have made an appearance btw

However, what is missing is a SOCIAL mode. Why can’t we host a server just like with Private, where you can select the map, round time, game mode and so forth but still allow ANYONE to join it. Then once you’re all in the game, the same players continue to play together map after map, game mode after game mode, with drop-in/out replacement of players mid game. Allowing you to play with and against friends, but having random people fill out the remaining spots rather than bots.

This is something I found useful in the first Gears when you’ve had enough of the Ranked games (especially when you’re sat watching players on your own team in death cam glitching, map exploiting and cheating in general), you could go online with a few mates and let other random players fill out the numbers. As it’s an unranked game, the number of glitchers was greatly reduced. Give the host the option to kick/ban players from the current game in social and it’s problem solved. This is missing from Gears 2 though

On the whole, I’m a very disappointed with the current way the multi-player side works. Not game play wise, I really haven’t played it enough to be able to form a good opinion of that (what little I have has been pretty good fun), but just in the way you have to find a game. It takes too long and you cannot simply play the game mode you want. Could Epic fix this, I’m sure they could and I’m hopeful they will.

Hoard

Get a few people together and see how many waves of Locust you can defend against. What more is there to say about this game mode than it rocks. This mode works well in both single player and on Live, the matchmaking works fine too because it’s the only “mode” in that play-list. So you get exactly what you want, with the exception of maps, but that adds a bit of variety and you can always host your own map and invite friends to join.

Achievements

Achievements are weird, they’re meaningless, yet you just have to try and get them Gears 2’s achievements are better than the first in that they’ve removed the grind based ones, i.e “Kill X people with weapon Y” and most importantly they’ve made it so you can get these in non-ranked matched too. There was an irritating tendency for players to spoil ranked games because they’re trying to get the Chainsaw or some other kill achievement rather than playing the game. Sure, players can now “boost” by getting achievements in private games, but who really cares, if they want to, let them. For everyone else, you can finally enjoy getting the achievements without ruining other peoples matches.

On the flip side, the achievements look like they’re going to be way too easy to get this time around. The grind ones that have been removed wouldn’t have been so much a grind now you can do them in co-op.

One nice addition though is the ability to see how far you are from getting a given achievement and knowing how many collectables are in a specific part of the game. It’s more fun hunting when you know roughly where the item should be.

I just wish the achievements were not quite so easy to obtain. The only one that looks to be semi difficult is surviving the Hoard to level 50.

Map Code

One interesting extra item shipped with the game. A redeemable code allowing you to download several of the original games maps, redone for Gears 2. Why isn’t this just available as a free marketplace download? Is it just a ploy to to limit the purchase of pre-owned copies? Or an attempt to stick it to the pirates with the unfortunate side effect of also affecting those that are strapped for cash and buy the game pre-owned?

I’m hoping it’s aimed at pirates, but it still seems like a stab at those who buy pre-owned too.

Final Thoughs

I think the multi-player side is been spoiled by a few issues with the way you find games and the limitations of play-lists and lack of social host options. Other than that, the game is a worthy sequal to Gears and with the exception of the current bugs (which will hopefully be patched before too long) the singleplayer/co-op/hoard side of the game is incredibly good fun.

Don’t let my blog post convince you the game isn’t worth getting. Far from it, it’s certainly worth the money (£30 in Asda). I just felt like covering some of the parts of the game that don’t appeal to me, there’s plenty of good stuff in there that I’ve not mentioned. I just hope the matchmaking system isn’t the way all games are going in the future, at least not unless they include playlists that have only one game mode.

Not only are Baen Books selling DRM FREE EBooks, but they’ve gone a step further by providing the first and sometimes second book in several series for free. Not a bad idea considering if you like the first book in a series it’s likely you’ll want to read and thus purchase the rest of the books in the series.

Here’s what they have to say about this:-

Baen Books is now making available — for free — a number of its titles in electronic format. We’re calling it the Baen Free Library. Anyone who wishes can read these titles online — no conditions, no strings attached. (Later we may ask for an extremely simple, name & email only, registration. ) Or, if you prefer, you can download the books in one of several formats. Again, with no conditions or strings attached. (URLs to sites which offer the readers for these format are also listed. )

Why are we doing this? Well, for two reasons.

The first is what you might call a “matter of principle.” This all started as a byproduct of an online “virtual brawl” I got into with a number of people, some of them professional SF authors, over the issue of online piracy of copyrighted works and what to do about it.

There was a school of thought, which seemed to be picking up steam, that the way to handle the problem was….

You can find out why on the Baen Library Intro Page as well as the complete Baen Catalog

Another interesting part of the Baen site is the “Webscription eBooks”, which for $15 gains you access to 4 books. What’s novel about this is that you get access to the 4 books 3 months prior to their official publication, not the full book mind, just the first 1/3, then a month later you get the 2nd 1/3 and finally 1 month before official publication you can download the full book. All for a single payment of $15. Of course you can continue to pay $15 per month and every month gain access to 4 new books.

The idea of getting early access to only part of the book isn’t really something of interest to me, however if you’re a big fan of some of the authors that use Baen publishing, then the prospect of getting your hands on part of the book 3 months in advance as well as the complete book 1 month in advance of its official print publication may be quite appealing.

Still, the reason I decided to do what amounts to a sales pitch for Baen Publishing, is that they’re doing something I’ve wanted to see for a long time. DRM less publishing.

Considering when you buy a book in print you get to read that book and won’t find that you’ve lost access to it one day because you’ve upgraded your coffee table or had to change the model of your reading glasses.

Yet with EBooks, we’re expected to accept that if the maker of the software used to read the encrypted, DRM ridden books, stops been made or isn’t available for a future PDA we may buy or perhaps new OS (vista?), we would lose access to all our library of books.

With DRM less EBooks, this isn’t an issue. Buy once, archive it in a few format such as mobipocket reader, txt and html and you’re pretty much safe to assume it’s going to work or at least be importable into a wide range of ebook readers in the future. Even if it means converting the EBook into a proprietary format to get it onto your PDA of choice. The fact that you have a clean archived version of the book (html/txt etc) means you can continue to convert the book and never lose access to it. No need to worry about replacing broken PDA’s with new models, or perhaps if Sonys EBook hardware ever takes off, moving your library over to a new device.

Not only is the lack of DRM a big big plus, but the prices on the print and ebooks are reasonable too.

I’m sure it’s going to take time before EBooks take off en-mass, assuming they ever do. But I personally will never purchase an EBook that contains DRM, so I can honestly say I hope Baen books are around for a long while, I imagine I’ll be visiting their site a lot more in the coming years.

If only other ebook publishers would follow suit, it wouldn’t kill them to drop the DRM and it’d be nice to see EBooks cost less than their printed counterparts (I doubt the cost savings are been passed on to the authors! Maybe I’m just jaded)

Baen Publishing is doing DRM less ebooks, music.podshow.com is doing DRM less indie music and Stardock are making copy protection free games (well they use serials, but it’s at least a non-Draconian form of protection) All three are placing their trust in the consumer rather than assuming everyone is a criminal and really deserve as much success as they can get.

For anyone that hasn’t already seen it, I’ve posted a Shelled! postmortem over on the GarageGames Site. You can also download the PDF version.

You may have noticed the books on the right hand side of this blog. I thought it was about time I started listing which books I’ve read, I’m reading or I’m planning to read. Hopefully I’ll give a short review of each once I’m done. For those in the UK I’ve added a link to the Amazon page for each book too, yes I’m after the affiliate commission but I’ll only recommend books I’ve read and found useful. Besides which, it would seem most people that read this blog are not UK based anyway.

Hope you all have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

PS: Guitar Hero ROCKS! Go buy it

Shelled! is finally out the door and it’s FREE! For those that don’t know what I’m talking about, head over to www.shelledgame.com to read about the game and download it.

I played for a few hours the other night, with 5 other people, great fun. Very easy for the odd grudge match to develop when you get shelled by another player The poor AI always take a pounding in round 1 while everyone tries to stock up on cash for those nukes and high fives.

Out of all the shell types, there are only two I find I don’t use at the moment. Every other shell has its uses depending upon the terrain. Slider shells are useful on very hilly terrain, high fives are great for a quick fly by shelling, the machine gun works great as a defensive shell when your jets have overheated and you have a tank inbound. The use for the leveler isn’t obvious at first, but it can give a slight advantage on a few levels, I’ll leave you to figure our which and how but a hint is the rocket comes into its own on the same level.

You could play Shelled! using nothing other than the default shell and do fairly well, but if you happen to play another human player that has discovered fly by high five shellings, you’ll be in for a hard time making first place!

The game has a few nice tactics, which may at first not be apparent, after a while though I’m sure most people will work them out. Remember the machine gun is your friend, turtles with rocket jets are meant to fly and although the nuke is costly, nothing says good night better than a direct hit with one

I’ve had a great time developing Shelled! and wanted to say what a pleasure its been to work with Joshua, Andreas and everyone else on the Shelled team.

Happy Shelling

I have become quite attached to the Douglas Adams inspired sub domain, but, it isn’t all that easy to remember for new visitors let alone telling it to someone over the phone and having the simpler “42.figmentgames.com” just doesn’t have the same geeky appeal

I’m moving the blog to the easier to remember “blog” sub domain, “http://blog.figmentgames.com”. The old “00101010″ sub domain will remain active for the foreseeable future with a 301 redirect in place, so existing links and subscriptions should remain valid.

That said, if you do subscribe to this blog, I’d recommend you update your feed url from “http://00101010.figmentgames.com/feed/” to “http://blog.figmentgames.com/feed/” along with any back links you may have in place.

Having just watched the final episode of season 7 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, I’m not sure what to think. On the whole, I felt it lacked something, although I’m having trouble putting my finger on it.

Perhaps it was the “UberVamps” appearing to be a lot less “uber” in this episode than before. I could accept the slayers been able to easily kill the “UberVamps” having fought them in the past and learnt their weaknesses, but the non-slayers been able to do so much damage didn’t feel right. Perhaps if some form of additional help had been granted by Willow for the non-slayer crew it would have made more sense.

I’m sure this was probably a case of Josh Whedon having to choose between making an epic finale to the Buffy series with lots of action and vamps been killed left, right and centre, or having longer fights with just a few “UberVamps”. It’s pretty obvious which was more fitting for a final episode

Maybe it was Buffy going from stabbed and dying to full of fight in short order?

Perhaps I’m just been too hard on the final episode and suffering from that “The End” feeling that tends to accompany the close of any good series or movie trilogy. It certainly had that epic feel to it which did justice to an overall great series and allowed each of the main characters a chance to play a sizeable part in the final outcome especially Willow, Spike, Buffy and the slayers.

Looking back over all seven Seasons, Season 5 stands out for two reasons. Firstly, it seemed to be a pivot point in the style of Buffy episodes. Although having occasional moments of that classic quirky humour so prevalent in seasons 1 to 4, overall, it had a much darker feel to the episodes which only continued to increase throughout seasons 6 and 7.

I’m not really sure if I liked the darker feel of the last three Seasons, although it did work wonders for season 5. Which, having now finally viewed all 7 seasons, brings me to the second reason Season 5 stands out. I’d have to say without doubt it stood head and shoulders above the rest. Aside from the gradual build up each episode brought, the 100th episode and Season 5 finale “The Gift” made for a awesome and moving end to a great season. I was literally stunned after watching that episode to the point of sitting through the end credits.

After that though, the dark edge to the episodes went a little overboard in my opinion. I liked Buffy for its quirky humour the core characters were notorious for in Seasons 1 to 4. Although the humour still crept in now and then in 6 & 7, it was either not quite as often or otherwise drowned out by the darker feel.

Still, I’m glad Seasons 6 and 7 were made, otherwise we’d never have had a chance to watch the (imho) best ever individual TV episode “Once more with feeling”. I’ll admit, it wouldn’t have been quite the same without all the ground work of Season 5, but, out of every TV series I’ve seen to date, it’s my favourite, which is saying a lot considering how many good episodes Babylon 5 had.

Overall a very enjoyable series to watch, still not enough to beat my opinion of Babylon 5 though, but never the less a noble attempt

If you haven’t seen Babylon 5 or Buffy yet, what are you waiting for. You can now get Babylon 5 : The Complete Universe on DVD, all 5 seasons in one box set. You can also get Buffy The Vampire Slayer – Series 1 – 7 on DVD as well.

Game Tunnel posted a preview of Shelled! back in July, they’ve just followed up by posting an Interview with Joshua Dallman of Red Thumb Games.

Looking at the images in the interview I’d forgotten just how much this game has changed over the last year from the original Sci-Fi theme previewed at IGC to the current cartoon style. I can’t wait to play the final version, which considering I’ve been testing (usually ending up playing rather than testing ) the dev versions pretty much daily for over a year speaks for itself.

Anyhow, go read the interview already

Many, many years back when I still in primary school I remember taking Piano lessons once a week. I enjoyed the first few but soon lost interest and shortly afterwards packed it in.

Some years later I wish I’d stuck with the lessons. I bet this is a sentiment shared by hundreds of people that had the opportunity to take Piano lessons when they were younger and never stuck with it, only to regret it later in life. Over the years, every now and then, I’ve messed around trying to play the odd tune I liked the sound of but nothing more.

Three week ago I got my hands on The Piano Handbook and decided to pick up learning to play again. The book itself is very easy to read and includes a fairly interesting history of the Piano in the first chapter, although not a topic I’d normally be inclined to read about, it was quite interesting.

The remainder of the chapters are where the fun begins. So far I’ve finished working through the first unit although my timing isn’t all that great not to mention coordination. Several of the tunes are straightfoward (as you’d expect for the first unit) the pieces I’m currently struggling with however are those that involve dotted notes which make the normal 2/2, 3/4 or 4/4 time counting a little trickier. Still I’m sure its just a matter of time and practice, I remember counting rhythm wasn’t my strong point during lessons anyway.

So 3 weeks later, I thought it was time I recorded myself playing. The last piece of Unit 1 is the Morning Hymn which is a 3/4 time with dotted notes My timing isn’t consistent and it took several (ok more than several) attempts to get a recording without pausing, still I don’t think I did too bad.

Practice makes perfect, but I think once I’ve reached a reasonable level with the unit 1 pieces I’ll move onto unit 2 and re-visit unit one less. Most of the more interesting pieces (which typically are for the most part also the more complex pieces) are deeper into the book, still it’s something to work towards

I think my biggest problem at the moment is my weaker left hand, mainly the little finger and ring finger. Playing notes with them isn’t a problem the first time, but playing subsequent notes is, such as alternating between the two fingers. Hopefully this will improve as the fingers are used more and more for note playing.

Anyhow, heres the recording, Morning Hymn ~680k ogg format

Played using a midi keyboard hooked through an M-Audio 2496 sound card (with under 6ms latency ) with Ableton Live 5.2 software (the demo shipped free with the sound card but a recent FREE upgrade offer for m-audio owners means I now have the full 5.2 software!) then output to my iRiver which did the actual recording straight to wav format (converted to ogg with Audacity).

The M-Audio is a really great card considering it only costs around £50, the sound quality is awesome with no audible noise (unlike my previous sound blaster and on-board sound), plus in addition to the Stereo RCA input/outputs it has midi in/out and digital outputs.

The Piano Handbook by Carl Humphries is available from Amazon.co.uk

PS I know keyboard != Piano, but it’s all I have, we sold the real Piano many years ago.

and the winner is “Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Once More, With Feeling”, at least I’m sure it would be if there was such an award.

As a complete series Buffy doesn’t take the top spot on my favourites list, that honour is reserved for Bablyon5 for which other tv shows to date aren’t even in the same league. That said, I’ve still really enjoyed watching it over the years. Somehow though I managed to miss most of season 5, and all of season 6 and 7, but having just had sky put back in and season 5 of Buffy happening to be re-screening I’ve been catching up. Which brings us to Season 6 and the “Once More, With Feeling” episode.

Outside of theme park stage shows I can honestly say I’ve never really watched any type of musical, I’ve tried, but they never hold my attention. This episode however really does stand out, I mean its even spawned fan sites for just this single episode, that’s unusual isn’t it?

If you’re a Buffy fan I’m sure you’ve already seen the episode, what with it been 5 years old and all . If however you only watch a Buffy episode now and then, this is one to watch sooner rather than later

A few short samples are available on Amazon who sell the sound track. Although they don’t really do the songs nor the episode justice.

• Under Your Spell
  
• Walk Through the Fire