Taiwan 2011 - Heading out

Woo - just back from a long overdue holiday to Taiwan.

We haven't really been on vacation this year as we have been using our leave to take Gerry to various P1 interviews and events.  As such, its been a very long year and it was really good to just get away from everything for a week.

Its also been a while since I blogged so I'm gonna take it easy with this first post.  Just some pics of the kids in the airplane on the way to Taiwan.  Stay posted for more updates on what we did in Taiwan in the coming weeks!

Can you guess who it is?

Yup - its Gordon!

For Gordon, this is the first flight that he has been on.  As you can guess, he was pretty excited to be riding in an airplane.

Gerry with his kids meal - he couldn't wait to tuck in

In case you are wondering, Gerry is eating mashed potato made to look like a face.  There were peas for eyes (which Gerry promptly threw away - he hates peas), a slice of young corn for a nose and a carrot for a mouth.

Gordon - not looking quite so excited at the prospect of airline food

Despite the picture, I was told that Gordon really enjoyed his meal.

And just to close off - a picture of Gordon looking cute

Gordon and the fairy tale

One of the things which the school did recently was to have a themed open day.  The theme, as you can probably guess from the title, was fairy tales.

Getting ready to go through the rabbit hole

In one of the classrooms, they had big posters depicting different fairy tales which you could take a picture in front of.  To go with the theme, they also had various props to go with them.  Unfortunately, I couldn't get Gordon to play along...

oink! oink!

You shall go to the ball!

The open day was especially fun for Gordon as the PN children don't normally get to go to the playground to play.

Beep! beep!

The parents also took part in preparing for the open day as we had to prepare some of the decorations.  In Gerry's case, we had to turn him into a member of the Red Queen's card army (from Alice in Wonderland).

Gerry - King of hearts

Mucking around at home

Hola!  Time for some more pictures!

One of the books which Gerry read recently talked about the children building a Chinese Dragon so that they could do the dragon dance.  Naturally, Gerry immediately wanted to copy it.  Unfortunately, there were only two of us so he had to settle for a lion dance instead.

Also, I don't have any creative talent.

The towel is the lion.  Really.

It works if you add a dash of imagination.  Honest.

 Gordon's tastebuds continue to develop as he has now discovered the joys of jelly.  Actually, Gordon is a strange one.  He clearly enjoys eating and eats a lot (just like me).  However, at some point in the last couple of months, he has picked up a habit of not being willing to try anything new (just like the missus).

My jelly!  Stay away!

 We recently bought a Junior Engineer kit for the kids.  Its of box of different blocks and connectors with the tools to put them together.  The whole thing is made of plastic and you don't actually need the tools to put things together.  However, using the tools adds a whole new dimension of fun for the kids.

Look - a tank!!

My toys!  Stay away!

Back to school

After due consideration, I have decided to continue with this blog albeit in a reduced capacity.  Actually, the truth is that I'm posting again because my dad asked me a question which I wasn't able to satisfactorily answer.

He asked - if you don't update your blog, how can I get to see pictures of the kids?

Hmm.

You see, I don't want to upload all my photos onto picasa or an equivalent.  Which leaves me with the option of email.  Obviously, I can't email all photos to him so I will need to pick and choose the better photos to send him.  At which point, I might as well put them into this blog (as you can imagine, selecting photos to upload generally takes more time than the actual upload itself).

In other words, you can thank my dad that this blog is still alive (and let me just add - This was a triumph!).

Gordon's first day at school
Of course, the big thing that has happened recently is that Gordon has now started school!  Huzzah!

Granted, its just PN but still, huzzah!!

Photobombed by Gerry

First day in school and Gordon heads straight for the toy car

Go on Gordon, clap!

Gordon didn't actually seem that eager to be at school.  For the first several days, he didn't show much emotion in class and tended to spend his time scoping out the teachers and other kids before deciding to take part.

Still scoping

Food!!

 Naturally, he reticence to partake in school activities didn't stop him from stuffing his face.  :)

State of the blog 2011

The first thing I should do here is apologise to anybody who is reading this blog post. You see, normally, when I write something on this blog, I write for my reader(s). It could be a picture update of the kids or it could be for the purpose of shooting my mouth off and giving you my thoughts and opinions on what is happening in the World. Either way, it is primarily written for other people to read.

However, this particular post has a completely different purpose. For a while now, I've been struggling with a fundamental question surrounding this blog. I haven't come to an answer yet but I get the feeling that my brain is going round in circles without treading any new ground. In essence, I'm hoping that by putting my thoughts into writing, it will help me clear up some of my thinking.

I've now been blogging for just under 4.5 years (I started in January 2007). When I first started writing this blog, it was primarily as a way for me to get familiar with what this whole "blogging" thing was about. After a while, I even realised that I liked shooting my mouth off and spreading my own unique brand of random rubbish onto the world wide web (the old adage around opinions and assholes springs to mind here).

Eventually, I got into a steady rhythm of posting 3 articles a week (2 on this blog and 1 on my gaming blog). However, you have probably noticed that recently, that publishing schedule has gone to Hades in a handbasket.

Believe it or not, this isn't because I have run out of things to say (although I will admit that I have repeated myself on numerous occasions). The problem is that, due to work and family commitments, my "me" time is, on average, limited to around 30 minutes each day with a bit more at the weekend if I stay up late. And into that brief slot of 30 minutes, I'm trying to slot in gaming, reading and blogging.

Something has to give.

The thing is, despite what I said above about spouting random rubbish, I actually try and put some thought into my blogging. I might not always succeed, but whenever I post my opinion, I try and back it up with reasons why that opinion is valid. I always try to sense check what I'm posting and sense check articles which I link you to instead of just believing anything I read online. This takes time.

Time which is increasingly hard to find. The reality is that I just don't have time to regularly post anymore and, if I'm being realistic, I don't see this situation changing for at least several years.

So what does that mean for this blog?

This is the question which I have been struggling with recently and to be honest - I really don't know. I am hesitant about formally killing the blog as, on the rare situations where I do have time to post, it would be useful to have a forum to spout off from. On the other hand - if my posting is so rare, then it is unfair to expect anyone to check on this blog either regularly or semi-regularly on the off chance that I have written something.

So, that is where my thinking is currently at. Not sure what will happen to this blog but will let you know if and when I come to a decision.

I'm getting younger!

As you know, I play videogames. A lot.

This always seems to surprise people who don't play videogames. They never seem to understand why someone in his mid-thirties would be playing with videogames. Of course, one of the things they don't know is that I am actually in the perfect sweet spot for videogame publishers as I am exactly the same age as the average gamer.

Or at least, I was.

The latest news is that the average age of a gamer is now 37. Which, for the first time that I can recall, makes me younger than the average gamer (but only just). Which means that from now on out, I can expect games to no longer be catered to my tastes but to those old guys who don't have any reaction times worth speaking of.

All joking aside, for the average age to go up at a more rapid rate than my own aging is trending the opposite way to what I expected (assuming this is a trend and not just a statistical anomaly). On one level, there is obviously a pressure on the average age to go up as the people who are playing games get older (like me). However, there is another pressure on the average age to either go down or stay steady as new kids start taking up the hobby.

For the average age to go up more at a more rapid pace than my own aging seems to imply that older gamers are starting to take up the hobby. To be fair, they may not be playing the same AAA reaction based FPS shooter that younger gamers love but that doesn't change the fact that older people are taking up videogames.

Which is pretty frakkin' awesome if you think about it.

Apple sucks

Apple is a strange kind of company. They have a reputation for being a consumer friendly company and, at times, they take actions which are very consumer friendly. But on the other hand, they also do stuff which looks seriously sketchy from a consumer point of view.

The latest case in point is their action against a young entrepreneur who had the idea to sell white iPhone 4 conversion kits prior to the launch of the white iPhone 4 (worth mentioning that I found this post via Techdirt - love that site!).

Reading through that article as well as the various articles it links to, it appears that some 17 year old kid in the US managed to build up a relationship with a supplier in China for white iPhone 4 repair parts from Foxconn, one of Apple's suppliers. This was before the white iPhone 4 actually launched and judging from the articles, it looks like a lot of people were really looking forward to buying a white iPhone 4. The kid realised that there was a market opportunity here (smart kid) so he sold those repair parts as a conversion kit so that people could convert their iPhone 4 into a white iPhone 4.

And for this, Apple is suing the kid for trademark infringement.

Apple - Really? You are going to sue a 17 year old kid for, what is effectively, the buying and selling of iPhone 4 parts?

What are you going to do next? Sue me if I ever sell my iPod nano?

Apple's decision is baffling on many levels and makes me suspect whether there is more to the story than initially meets the eye. With that said, I can't think of any likely scenario where what the kid did could be considered wrong (the only thing I can think of is if he tried to pretend he was an actual Apple representative but if this is the case, I'm pretty sure that the news would have covered it as well).

Update: hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha

DVD Factory Ltd

One of the limitations that the missus and I put on Gerry and Gordon is the amount of time that they can watch TV. Actually, they don't even get to watch TV but rather, we have a stack of kid friendly DVDs that they are allowed to watch for limited periods of time during the day. The problem with this approach is that kids are not particularly good at looking after DVDs and you can expect your nice new DVDs to get scratched, stepped on, bent and thrown around with reckless abandon.

In my dad's day, you would have to just suck it up and spend a ton of money on DVDs (or rather, VHS?) while bringing out the cane to teach those damn kids a lesson about respecting property. Damn kids today are spoilt rotten anyway and could do with a little thrashing ... sorry, where was I?

Oh yes - DVDs.

Luckily, with the wonders of modern technology, I've gotten around this issue by making a backup of the DVD and then giving the backup to the kids while the original DVD goes to a safe location. Anytime a DVD gets too beat up and is no longer playable, I simply burn another DVD and the kids are back in business. As you can imagine, spending less money makes me a happy pappy!

After running this system for a while, I recently realised that there is a downside to this approach. As the backup DVD is simply the DVD+R plus the name of the DVD written on the face, its hard for the kids to find the right DVD that they want to watch. Basically, all they see is a stack of dull looking DVDs with lots of words on them. We needed a way to make it easy for the kids to find their favourite DVD.

Cue the DVD label. Over the weekend, I went out and bought a stack of DVD labels. Coupled with a quick online image search, I've been able to print out labels with different graphics for the different DVDs and I have to admit - the results have been pretty spectacular. Granted, you can tell that they aren't original DVDs as the graphic doesn't always line up perfectly with the disc but at first glance, they look pretty authentic (particularly to kids).

Or another way of looking at it - I now have all the tools to start my own pirate DVD factory...

Laptop vs Desktop

As I mentioned on Monday, I now have a new desktop PC. Which might make you wonder why I went with a desktop this time considering that I deliberately went with a laptop 3 years ago. Was this an acknowledgement that I had made a mistake with my laptop purchase?

Not as such, no.

The reason I went with a desktop is simply because I already have a laptop and didn't see the need for another one. Bear in mind, although the desktop will be "replacing" my laptop in that I will probably use my desktop more often (particularly for games), the laptop is still invaluable to me. The laptop gives me a couple of key advantages:

Portability

The first is obviously portability. If I ever go on holiday, I can take my laptop with me which clearly isn't possible with a desktop. This has several major advantages - the biggest of which, from a hedonistic point of view, is that I can take my PC gaming with me.

Also, with the installation of Dropbox on my PCs, I now have access to key files even while I'm on holiday. That is, assuming that I did adequate planning and put those key files into my Dropbox folder in the first place.

Now all I need to do is find a way to change the default save locations for my games to my Dropbox folder and I will effectively have a cloud save game system!

Multiple home PCs

The second advantage of having a laptop is that I now have 2 home PCs. In the past, with just one PC, it could sometimes get awkward when both the missus and I want to get online. Or rather, it could get awkward for me as I generally lost such arguments and corresponding PC access...

With an additional PC, we can now both be online at the same time. And with one of the PCs being a laptop, it doesn't take up much space in the event that I'm not using it. Granted, this doesn't happen that often but considering how important internet access is in this day and age, the value in being online and connected should not be underestimated.

Conclusion

In short, I don't regret my laptop purchase. In fact, I might even end up alternating between buying laptops and desktops on a go forward basis to ensure that I always have two usable PCs. With that said, who knows how tablet PCs will develop in future. In three years time, I may no longer have any need for a laptop at all as I will just be using dumb terminals to log into my home PC.

Dell XPS 8300

You may recall that approximately 3 years ago, I purchased a Dell XPS 1530 laptop. And after around 3 years of use, the DVD drive has started to break down.

To be fair, this wasn't really a surprise. The DVD drive on my old XPS 1530 was a slot drive and slot drives are notoriously prone to breaking. The laptop itself is still working fine - its just that I can't use the DVD drive (which is annoying). Still, after 3 years of solid use, I guess I shouldn't complain too much. All of which is just a really long winded way for me to say that I was in the market for a new PC.

Cue the XPS 8300.

Its a pretty nice machine which, although not top end, is good enough for my purposes. I went with the i5 processor as being a nice middle ground to avoid the extremely high premiums charged for the newest tech. However, a 23" monitor, 8GB of RAM and a 2TB HDD soon brought the cost up to just under HK$8,500. Granted, not exactly breaking the bank but still considered relatively expensive by modern standards. A fair price to pay for the specs I was getting though.

And after using it for about a week, I have to say that I love how much faster this machine is relative to my old laptop. It's incredible how much zippier everything is - particularly noticeable whenever I move files around. I also played the last couple of campaign missions of SW:EAW on my new desktop and the improved graphics and speed of saving/loading just blew me away.

Sony

You may recall that I am currently boycotting Sony. The main reason for this is that I felt that Sony are an extremely arrogant company which had led to them undertaking either a lot of anti-consumer activities or marketing with an attitude of "you should be privileged to own our product". And frankly, all of that added together just rubbed me the wrong way.

With that in mind, I have to admit that it was with a certain level of glee that I read about all the recent troubles that Sony has been having with hackers. Those news articles also strengthened my conviction to boycott both Ubisoft and Capcom for requiring players to be online to play their games (in short, PS3 owners couldn't play their Ubisoft and Capcom games as PSN was down).

But then, Sony went and did this.

For the first time that I can remember, Sony actually had a pretty good response. Basically, read the blog post from Shamus that I linked to as I can't believe how closely my views aligned with his with regard to Sony.

Could it be that Sony have learnt their lesson? Could it be that Sony are no longer the arrogant behemoth that I despised? Could it be that Sony would be leaving my boycott list?

Or then again, maybe not.

Gerry goes camping

The highlight of the recent Easter holiday was, without a doubt, the overnight camping trip to Ma Wan that we took Gerry on.

I say camping trip but the reality is that the trip was targeted at families so the whole thing was very civilized. For example, instead of pitching our tent on the ground, we actually pitched it on a viewing platform near the top of the mountain.

Gerry helps to pitch the tent

Still, the actual act of pitching the tent and sleeping in sleeping bags was genuine so in that sense, we did manage to capture the camping feel.

Success! We are now formally "roughing" it.

The weather was also beautiful for the two days that we were in Ma Wan. In a sense, we were extremely lucky as the weather the following day turned a bit rainy.

On the second day in Ma Wan, we got to hang around the recreation centre. For some reason which I can't quite fathom, Gerry and I ended up building paper airplanes while everyone else was building butterflies. Still, I have pretty good paper airplane skills so it wasn't long before the other kids were clamoring for their own paper airplanes.

Can you spot the airplane?

The Ma Wan park also had an outdoor play area where Gerry and I managed to get a bit of exercise. Lots of fun but tiring on the muscles (hey, I ain't no spring chicken!)

Taking a quick break

Actually, one thing which did impress me was how much confidence Gerry now has in his physical ability. He was the youngest kid willing to climb the ropes and managed to do it all on his own.

Spider-Gerry goes to work on the ropes

Gerry doesn't get a bow wow

Gerry has always loved singing so its a good thing that he has a pretty nice voice. This was recognised by his school recently when they put together a kindergarten choir to enter into some competition. The school hired a singing teacher to help them select children for the choir and to teach the kids the song.

By now, you can probably guess that Gerry was selected for the choir.
:)

I don't have any footage of the competition itself (video's weren't allowed) which is a shame as the children gave a really good performance in the competition. Several days after the competition, the school gave a repeat performance at one of the local fairs in HK which I managed to capture below for your viewing pleasure.

Family - harbour crossing

Just realised that I'm way behind on posting pictures of the family so time for another family photo binge!

Way back in February (as I said, I'm way behind on posting pictures of the family!), back when the weather in HK was still cold and people were still wearing sweaters, we took the kids out to TST for a boat ride. Granted, the boat ride was only to HK Island, but hey, the kids enjoyed themselves!

And I have pictures to prove it! Look at that grin!

After we got to Central, we hung around the harbour area and watched people fish. While some may have called it relaxing, I think Gordon was just happy to be out of the house.

A rare contemplative moment captured on camera.

And on the way back, I finally manage to get some proof that I am along for these trips!

"Help, help - I'm being attacked!"

Browser wars

Woot! It looks like wysiwyg editing is back on Blogger!

Anyway, as I mentioned last post, I recently installed Chrome on my PC. Up till then, I had been using Internet Explorer - something which you might not have known or guessed unless you had seen the stats on wikipedia which mentions that approximately 90% of people in China use IE. Wow.

Recently, I had a friend who expressed surprise, and not a little disgust, to hear that I was using IE. What I told him at the time was that I couldn't be bothered downloading a new browser just for the sake of switching. Furthermore, I'd always heard that some websites are only optimised to work with IE which means that even if I installed a new browser, I would still have to keep IE around just in case. Admittedly, this is based on just hearsay as I don't have any actual experience of this.

And then Microsoft released their latest version of IE. Which meant I had to download a new browser anyway. At this point, I also started to question whether it was really the case anymore that some websites only worked with IE.

So with that seed of doubt in my mind, I also downloaded and installed Chrome. And overall, I have to say that I like it. I don't know if this is a problem with the latest release of IE but the new version of IE doesn't look particularly great in terms of its color scheme whereas Chrome actually looks quite nice. In terms of functionality, both seem fairly close although I haven't started to play around with any add-ons yet so I'm not sure how big an impact that would have. And more importantly (from a functionality point of view), I have yet to encounter any website that didn't render properly in Chrome.

Another criteria people often use to compare browsers is speed. However, I don't have any tools to measure this myself so have to rely on other websites which seem to indicate that Chrome is faster than IE.

In short, this blog post brought to you via Google (Blogger and Chrome).

I hate html code

I don't know if I told you this before but I hate html coding. Or, if I'm being a bit more precise, I hate having to deal with html coding on my blog. Why am I complaining about html coding on my blog now despite having used blogger for several years?

Well, recently, something changed.

In the past, whenever I created a blog entry in Blogger, it was always super easy. I would login to Blogger and click the New Post button. At that point, I get a big textbox and I would just type in whatever I wanted to say into that textbox. Blogger also supported basic text formatting so I could easily get to a new paragraph by simply hitting Enter twice. The html coding was still there in the background but I could just ignore it and do my own thing.

And then, over the weekend, I popped online to prepare my gaming post when - quelle horreur! Last Thursday's post was just a wall of incomprehensible text with zero formatting! Somehow, all of the text formatting had been lost after posting. I edited the post to put back in the paragraph breaks but quickly realised that none of the text formatting was being kept. In the end, I had to go into Edit Html mode so that I could manually enter in line breaks using html code which was a huge pain in the ass!

The annoying thing is that I don't know why this has happened or what I can do to correct it. I recently installed Chrome on my PC (giving it a test run which I'll talk about in future) and I can't help but wonder if that has anything to do with this. If so, considering that both tools are by Google, what a frak-up.

In any event, I hope that this is just a short term issue. If I have to frak around with html coding every time I make a blog post in future, then, well...

England the new Germany?

I read this article and couldn't help but think that, assuming this isn't the usual case of media misrepresentation, Capello has started to become delusional. In short, after playing several youngsters and only managing a draw against an admittedly impressive Ghana, Capello is in a good mood about the future of England.

To be fair, this is probably an accurate assessment if you were only looking at recent games as England have done well recently. However, Capello goes on to say that he hopes that people will talk about Engalnd the same way that they were talking about Germany after the recent World Cup.

Que? Is this for real?

For starters, this impressive performance by England was in an international friendly. In case you forgot, England generally do well in friendlies and in qualifying competitions. Where England traditionally screw up is when they start playing in big tournaments at which point the players immediately fold and put in awful performances before being knocked out of the competition. By now, this is a pattern which is all too horribly familiar for any England football fan.

Now, lets look at Germany. With a squad of young players, they were able to play attractive attacking football in a major tournament and, although they didn't win the World Cup, they managed to get third place (after being knocked out by the eventual winners).

Is there any surprise that Germany were heaped with praise? There simply is no comparison and to suggest otherwise is insulting to Germany's achievement at the World Cup.

Little Zangief

The latest viral craze to sweep the interwebz is the story of Casey Heynes. In case you have no idea what I'm talking about, check out this article.

In brief, a boy, who has been bullied for many years, finally snaps and delivers onto his tormentor a piledriver into the concrete. The whole thing was caught on video (by his would be tormentors) and uploaded onto multiple video sites. I won't link to the video itself as some of the sites are actively taking down the video but if you do a search on google for Little Zangief, you should be able to find it quite easily.

As a result of the fight, Casey was suspended from school for 4 days while Richard Gale, the bully who got smashed into the ground, was suspended for 21 days (I believe the school upped the suspension after initially giving a 4 day suspension).

Now, I don't want to give the impression that violence is the right solution but really? If you watch the video, its obvious that Casey isn't looking for a fight. In fact, you can see that the bully gets in several punches before Casey finally snaps and hits back. From the evidence in the video, what kind of message are you sending out by suspending him for retaliating?

Bear in mind, the bully is continually punching him. This isn't a case of verbal abuse. This is a case of actual physical violence. Furthermore, the fact that this is being filmed pretty much tells you that the bullies had planned this in advance which means that they have probably done this before. In a situation like this, are we seriously expecting the kid to just stand there and act like a punching bag?

One last comment on Tina Gale, the mother of the bully. One of the myths around bullying is that bullies are caused by bad parenting. I'm calling it a myth on the basis that I don't know if this has been proved and not because I think its false. In this case, I can believe its true.

After seeing the video, she actually has the gall to demand that Casey apologise to her son (and did I mention that Richard Gale has apparently refused to apologise to Casey for punching him without provocation?) while claiming that she teaches her kids to walk away from fights. Teaching kids is about more than just what you say. They also learn from how you act. Its patently clear from watching her reaction to this that she has been teaching her kids all the wrong lessons.

The fact that she is trying to act like the victim is laughable.

Reputation

This is going to be a long post today but the concept of reputation is something which has been on my mind lately as a result of a rare personal convergence of TV shows and the gaming industry and I really wanted to get my thoughts on this down before I forgot them.


Recently, I've been watching the first season of Glee which, although the concept is a bit hypocritical, is a really entertaining show. One of the concepts explored in one of the episodes is around how a good reputation can take a lifetime to build but only a moment to destroy. Although the show was focused on the reputation of an individual, the concept also applies, to a certain extent, to companies as well.


Which brings me onto BioWare and Dragon Age II.


Who is BioWare
BioWare is a Canadian company which develops video games. Although founded in 1995, with its first game released in 1996, it wasn't until the release of Baldur's Gate in 1998 before I was made aware of this company. If you are aware of your video game history, then you would know that BioWare arguably brought about a renaissance in computer role playing games with the release of Baldur's Gate. They further cemented their reputation with the release of Baldur's Gate 2 in 2000 which many people, myself included, consider the finest cRPG to be released on any platform.


Since then, BioWare have continued to release a plethora of highly successful and critically acclaimed role playing games across multiple platforms. It is fair to say that BioWare are one of the premier, if not the premier, western developer of story based role playing games. And over this 16 year history (with 18 games/expansion packs), BioWare has deservedly built up an almost rabid fanbase. This is noticeable as, despite having some very valid criticisms labeled against the "formula" which BioWare uses in their games, their games have continued to enjoy critical as well as commercial success.


Which makes it fascinating, from a reputation point of view, to see the public reaction to the launch of Dragon Age II - BioWare's newest game. In brief, there has been a massive public backlash against DAII from some of BioWare's fans. A backlash which is probably unprecedented for BioWare. And a part of me wonders if this is due to the drop in reputation which they have suffered in recent years.


EA Effect
Looking back, the acquisition of BioWare by EA in 2007 was probably when some fans started to question their faith in BioWare. In fact, I mentioned on my gaming blog at the time that the forums were already ablaze in hate mail. Although I don't have the same level of hate for EA that other fans appear to have, I do have to admit that EA's history with purchasing developers did make me worried.


EA is a company which, despite starting with noble intentions and building an impressive reputation not long after it first launched in 1982, is now a company which is hated with a passion by many hardcore gamers (a hatred which has been acknowledged by EA as John Riccitiello, their CEO, has made excellent progress in repairing some of the bridges which EA had burned under previous ownership). In EA's defence, some of that hate is definitely misdirected. For example, EA acquired BioWare just prior to the release of Mass Effect and certainly at too late a stage to have any impact on the development of Mass Effect. Despite this, there were many claims by fans that EA had already ruined BioWare as was evidenced by the direction which BioWare had taken with Mass Effect.


Nonetheless, the impact of EAs negative reputation amongst hardcore gamers was clearly seen in the criticisms leveled against BioWare.


Dragon Age: Origins
Although the Mass Effect series of games was a radical departure in style for BioWare, it was an undisputed success for BioWare. It brought in a whole new group of fans who were less interested in the hardcore mechanics of ye olde cRPGs. Meanwhile, BioWare's older fans, some of whom were not fans of the new direction which BioWare were taking with Mass Effect, were comforted by the knowledge that they would still get some love with the release of Dragon Age: Origins - a more hardcore cRPG which was billed as a spiritual successor to Baldur's Gate.


And in fact, the release of DAO seemed to placate many fans. The game was another critical and commercial success. It garnered a metacritic rating of over 90% and picked up numerous awards. In addition, although I don't have any actual sales figures for this game, reports indicate that by February 2010, the game had shipped over 3.2 million units.


Which finally brings us to Dragon Age II.


Dragon Age II
From an older, hardcore fan point of view, problems with Dragon Age II showed straight from the start. Some of the changes being planned for the sequel had been announced in previews and the forums had been set alight with complaints about the direction which BioWare were taking. In essence, some fans were afraid that BioWare were turning the Dragon Age franchise into an action RPG.


And then the game itself was released.


Despite receiving critical acclaim, the game was disappointing to many fans who stormed onto the user reviews section of metacritic to pan the game (BioWares extremely clever response to this was to blame 4chan and to get their employees to post positive user reviews - there is so much wrong with that but I will have to skip for now as this post is already too long!). In essence, a lot of fans were disappointed that Dragon Age II had departed from the hardcore cRPG style of the original Dragon Age and was geared more towards the "console" crowd who liked Mass Effect.


But what is wrong with Mass Effect "style"?
The answer, of course, is that there is nothing wrong with the Mass Effect "style". I suspect the reason that fans are so up in arms is twofold.


Firstly, the Mass Effect franchise was always developed more as an action RPG. So when BioWare released ME2 with an even greater focus on the action elements, the fans generally accepted this as it was a refinement of the style of game they were always making (although its worth mentioning that there were also a lot of fans who weren't happy).


I suspect the other key reason is that the Dragon Age franchise was originally billed as a more hardcore cRPG style game. The switch to an almost, but not quite, arcade RPG style with DAII meant that a lot of the original fans of DAO felt they were being left high and dry. And with no other hardcore cRPG in the works by BioWare, it really does feel as if BioWare have moved away from this particular niche of fans. Is it any surprise that the older hardcore fans are pissed?


The upshot of all this is that a lot of the reputation and goodwill which BioWare has built up over the years has been eroded. And this lessened reputation is having an interesting knock-on effect.


How many people believe what EA and BioWare say?
The biggest recent uproar surrounding Dragon Age 2 is to do with the EA account which your BioWare games are tied to. In brief, a forum ban for a user lead to him being locked out of the game he legally purchased although EA very quickly apologised and said that this was a mistake. You can get some more details around the controversy here.

What I find interesting here is that EA and BioWare aren't being given the benefit of the doubt by many people. In fact, there are a large number of people who have already decided that the only reason EA backed down was simply due to the amount of bad press they had been getting. Looking at it another way, if EA and BioWare had a better reputation - would people be so cynical?

Long term impact
At the end of the day, I have no idea what long term impact, if any, there will be from this. In fact, I can't even tell you whether a good reputation is important to a company selling video games. After all, the only people who pay attention to the issues outlined above are hardcore gamers which only make up a small portion of the market.

One thing I do know though. Now that BioWare has lost their halo - it will be extremely difficult for them to get it back.

Gerry and the hotpot

One of the good things about the school which Gerry currently goes to is that the teachers also take a fair amount of pictures of Gerry in class. Recently, during the cold, cold month of January, they had a hotpot in the classroom where each of the children took one food item into class.


Some vegetables, sausages and noodles. Overall, a decent selection of food.


Gerry finally gets his chance to grab some grub


At home, Gerry won't eat sweetcorn unless we cut if off the cob.


Cueing up for seconds :)


I can't actually tell what he is eating in this picture - looks like he is enjoying it though!

Tablets

The Tablet market is something which I have been watching with keen interest. As you know, I have no interest in the iPad and to date, there really hasn't been a serious alternative. Of course, that has recently changed as a slew of Tablets are about to hit the market - the most prominent of which is probably the Motorola Xoom which is running the new Honeycomb OS.

However, despite my interest in the market, the truth is that I don't really see how I would benefit from having a Tablet. Or rather, I don't see the benefit in having a Tablet outweighing the cost of me having to cart it around with me on a daily basis.

Currently, the only gadgets that I carry around with me are my iPod Nano and my phone. The phone goes on my belt and the iPod Nano is so small that it easily fits in my pocket. This is a great setup as it means that I don't need to carry a bag when I leave the home. If I buy a Tablet, this would mean a significant change as I would have to start carrying a bag even if the Tablet was all I was carrying (and I know I would hate this from my past experience with carting a PDA around).

All of which meant that I was actually pretty excited to hear about the HTC Flyer. The Flyer is a 7" Tablet to be released by HTC and, with all the excitement focused on Xoom, the Flyer really didn't get much press.

What really makes the Flyer stand out for me is the pen. One of the pens functions is to sync up what you write with audio that you are recording. In effect, the Flyer, in addition to being a normal Tablet, also doubles up as a digital pen ala the Livescribe. Of course, the major bonus of the Flyer is that you no longer need the specialised paper that Livescribe requires.

This is a major selling point for me as it immediately pushes the Flyer beyond the normal media consumption device which most Tablets are and into the realm of productivity boosting tech. This is something which I could easily justify carting around on a daily basis. The only problem is that it only has an estimated 4 hours of battery life when watching video which is pathetic when you compare it to the 10 hours which the iPad gets or even the 8+ hours which the Xoom gets.

le sigh. I guess I just need to keep an eye on the market a little bit longer.

Family - a day in Disneyland

With the HK weather improving in January, it was time for another trip to Disneyland!


As you can see, Gordon was really eager to get inside.


We were actually quite lucky in that we got there just in time for the afternoon parade. We managed to get some seats by the side of the road and I managed to capture this great picture while we waited for the parade to start.


Of course, the problem with that plan was that little children tend not to have the patience required to sit and wait.


A rare picture where Gordon is looking at the camera.


And here is Gordon defending the Earth from Zurg and his diabolical plot to capture all our energy!

Gordon - in and about

After so many pictures of our holiday in Japan, its time to bring things back down to Earth. The more observant of you will have noticed that there weren't any pictures of Gordon in Japan. This is because we didn't take Gordon with us.

So, as an apology to Gordon, here are some pics of the little tyke at home.


Normally, Gordon doesn't like me touching him. Luckily for me, the nice shiny camera has him distracted.
:)


You have no idea how precious this picture is. I'm holding Gordon and hes actually smiling!!


I get the feeling he is standing there and wondering why the scooter isn't moving.


Thomas the tank engine gets another young male fan.


For some reason, he looks positively vicious in this pic. I'd better remember to stay on his good side...

Gerry in Japan - Tokyo

As you can probably gather from the previous posts, we didn't actually spend much time in Tokyo itself. This was mainly because there were more interesting family activities outside of Tokyo itself. Which isn't to say that there wasn't anything to do in Tokyo or that we didn't spend any time there.

On the last day, we went to a Toy Kingdom where, after paying the entry fee, Gerry was allowed to spend several hours playing with whatever he liked inside the Kingdom. There were a huge variety of different toys which he could choose from. However, he didn't actually get to see most of them as he was captivated by the toy trains right from the start and didn't want to leave after he got started.


Here you can see him pushing his trains around. The trains themselves are battery powered but he preferred to push them manually. Never realised that he was a control freak until now.


To be fair to Gerry, the toy trains were actually the most popular section among boys - which you can see reflected in this picture.


Gerry with the full setup. Other than the elevated ring section, Gerry built the entire thing himself.


And after a hard day of playing, what better to top it off than a snack! Gerry is eating a crepe filled with cream and chocolate (and his mouth doesn't stay that clean for long!).

Gerry in Japan - Mount Fuji

The main reason that we chose to go to Japan with Gerry is because of the Fuji-Q Highland theme park. It sits pretty much at the base of Mt. Fuji and is a pretty big themepark, the main highlight of which (for Gerry at any rate) is the Thomasland mini-theme park inside it.


Here we are at the base of Mt Fuji which, for those of you who aren't aware, is an active volcano.


This is Percy. I wouldn't have known that 3 years ago.


One of the cool things about Thomasland is that it has mini versions of popular adult rides. Here you can see Gerry after a brief plunge down a water coaster!


And here is Gerry on a roller coaster. Its worth mentioning that I am suffering from hat hair and that the ride isn't actually that fast.


The theme park also had a lake which had frozen over. This was Gerry's first time to go ice skating and, despite a couple of falls, he really enjoyed himself.