Is this the wake-up call to global warming that the world needs?

Climate change could cause a drop in beer production within 25 years, a scientist has warned.

Source

I’m scared.

Interesting - just a few days after I mentioned the apparently poor sound quality at Vector Arena, there’s an article about how the venue plans to improve things this year.

I doubt they’re reading my blog.

It sounds petty - hell, it is petty - but the anti-piracy warnings that seem to come standard on all DVDs seriously annoy me. These things can’t be skipped with the “fast forward” or “next scene” functions so I’m forced to be reminded every time I watch a movie that I didn’t actually copy it… presumably if I had copied it, those warnings could have been edited out.

This has been a feature of the PC gaming industry for some time as well. To combat the problem of piracy, game makers started requiring CD keys, or that CDs be left in the drive at all times, or in some extreme cases advanced solutions are implemented which makes things harder for crackers but much worse for legitimate users. Regardless of all this, the games eventually get cracked anyway and the pirates get their game; maybe they just had to wait an extra couple of weeks.

Anyway, the point of this - and this applies to the music industry as well as DVDs and games - is that it sucks to pay for something and then be treated as a potential thief. I recently picked up Galactic Civilizations II (currently $29.95 by the way, awesome deal for a great game) and it’s quite a breath of fresh air. I’ve installed it on my desktop PC and my laptop and I can fire the game up on either completely disc-free. This is how it is supposed to be. The developer even lists this as a feature on its official site:

• “No CD copy protection. Once you install, you never need your CD again. You can even use the included serial # to re-download the entire game from us years from now.”

Brilliant.

It’s been some time since I last gave away any clues on the progress of Gameplanet Store’s New Site project… so I thought I’d write a quick summary of what’s been going on recently.

Firstly, this is taking a lot longer than we hoped! As developers we are probably fussier and more thoughtful than we need to be at times - as an example our new category and product pages have both been through at least two or three overhauls each since the originals were “almost done” a couple of months ago. I’m pleased to say however that it’s looking good and at the moment (today?) I’m really pleased with our category designs. They should prove to be more useful as we have added a few browsing options for most sections including the oft-requested “Best Sellers” section so you can see the top products from key categories.

We’ve also split up the Release Schedule into “New Releases” and “Coming Soon” which we think is a definite improvement.

Another thing that is keeping us very busy is back-end changes. I won’t go into detail here but our product database has been overhauled (for both speed and expandability reasons) and of course this has created the need to recreate many of the back-end tools that the entire team uses on a daily basis. There’s the obvious things like product management but also major site components like order processing (there’s another reason this has become more complex which I’ll explain at a later date) and certain areas of customer service. Recoding stuff that we already have isn’t the best task; but it has also allowed us to improve on some administrative pages which we haven’t touched in years so it will eventually be worth the effort.

We’re slowly getting there though and we’re still very excited and eager to get it launched and share our efforts with you. More news soon.

Up until this point I had managed to completely avoid the buzz surrounding English rock band Muse, but this week I decided to purchase the new H.A.A.R.P. CD/DVD combo; mostly because at under $30 for a CD and a two hour concert DVD it’s a very sweet deal and I knew I’d like some of it.

I wasn’t actually expecting the band to be as impressive as they are, however. The live show is truly something to behold and it reminds me again just how small New Zealand is. The concert was filmed live at Wembley Stadium in London, a venue that holds around 90,000 people, and Muse sold out two nights in a row. The atmosphere and sheer scale must be something that people living in NZ simply cannot comprehend because we have nothing quite like it.

It is however pleasing that more of the big acts are visiting Aotearoa lately. I caught the sold out Chili Peppers concert at the 12,000 capacity Vector Arena last year and despite claims that the sound quality isn’t up to standard, it was certainly a kickass show and the fact that more bands are now including Auckland in their tour schedule is encouraging.