An updated sense of Unity

In early August I was talking about learning Unity in your own time. The original post mentioned that there were some issues completing the tutorial as described in more recent versions of Unity, and went on to say that there was 'nothing major'. This is wrong. I had originally completed the tutorial using OSX Unity 3.x, and have recently completed the tutorial on Windows 8 Unity 4.2.

Where you are really going to hit issues is with the sound. It turns out that the way in which Unity handles sound has changed over the years, and the Lerpz tutorial was never updated to accommodate these changes. This is something that the author of the tutorial freely acknowledges. His suggestions for getting your sound to work properly in the more recent versions of Unity didn't work for me. I scrounged around, and managed to learn a lot about the new Unity sound system in the progress. A few of the methods have changed, and some of the tags and components work slightly differently. It's a more complicated system, but not so complicated that you should be worried.

If you reach the audio section of the Lerpz tutorial ask a question in the comments, and I'll help where I can.

All our wired futures

There was a recent discussion in Australia about the merits of the Labour Party's proposed National Broadband Network, which would see nationwide access to extraordinary bandwidth. The infrastructure for high-speed internet would be available to everyone, not just those that could afford it. The most frequent argument against their plan focussed on our current need for such a bandwidth, of which there is admittedly none. We do not need access to this bandwidth now, but we will need it. The best time to build infrastructure is before it is required.

The discussion stopped after the election, when our communications infrastructure future was decided. The Liberal Party's Fibre-to-the-Node plan will not future-proof us, it will create a system in which new tools will not be supported, and new tools will not be created. With such a small percentage of the population  able to justify the cost of fibre-to-the-Home, few will take it up, so few developers will see the point in developing high-end services, so no one will bother upgrading. The argument is cyclical.

The Labour Party NBN was a future of possibilities. In its scope it would've been a wonderland of centralised health networks, high speed government records searches, increased Australian internet entrepreneurship, and truly (most importantly) incredible educational services and resources. Under their proposal we would've been future-proof.

If you can't see the possibilities, the problem isn't the technology: the problem is you.

Boxes and drives on the interbutts

I had a Dropbox account quite a while ago, and for whatever reason that it was at the time I never really got into it the way that I have recently. I couldn't tell you what it was that failed to grab me the first time around, but I eventually forgot which e-mail address was attached to the account and abandoned the whole endeavour. I'm back now, and I get it this time. It makes a lot of sense to be signed up.

If your electronic things number to many, the convenience provided by any kind of cloud storage is invaluable. Pads, phones and tablets seem to have a better time with Dropbox though. It runs deep. It's integrated up the wazoo. It feels like every second app I use on a regular basis is ready to give whatever it's up to to the rest of all of the things that I have. This is more than can be said for Google Drive and SkyDrive, which both seem to be totally content with their own extensive self integration.

I also like my Google Drive. I pretty much live there. All of my work, uni and writing files are there. Actually, pretty much everything except for media and code. I generally don't keep media in the cloud and I use bitbucket for code. For everything else, Google Drive more than meets my needs.

I've given up on SkyDrive. That is my official stance for the time being. I was kind of into it for a moment, but its convenience was based entirely on some strait arse situational specificity whose boundaries became frustratingly apparent. I've had a lot of issues with SkyDrive that revolve around browser support and plugins. I'm not sure if this has been resolved, and to be honest I'm past the point where I actually care anymore. I don't feel like I can rely on it, which defeats the purpose of such a service. If you live your entire life inside the Windows box, especially the Windows 8 box, SkyDrive might be a kind of okay option for you, but I'd probably still sign up to one of the other major offerings instead.

I run Google Drive and Dropbox in tandem, along with a couple of other specialist services. I'm very happy with this arrangement, and it works very well for me. I'm not sure I would be truly content in my cloud storage without any of them. That said, I was completely content with SkyDrive and Google Drive at one stage, and it is only now that I can see what I was missing out on. Sign up to all of the things, and figure out what works for you.

Cooking with Steam

There are a couple of things that re important to me. Actually, 'a couple' implies that there are actually a couple of things. There are more. There are lots of things that are important to me that I am fairly certain that most people don't actually care about. The two (of the) really big ones are education, specifically educational gaming, and digital rights management.

I've got a hard on for Steam at the best of times, and that is something I say proudly. When Gabe Newell speaks, I take a knee and brace myself for the knowledge. Apart from his recent comment on the future of gaming on Linux, there have been two other recentish announcements from the saunaed halls.

Steam has announced 'Family Sharing', which is a thing that makes an awesome amount of sense, and is distinctly different from putting your game library on every machine you come across. What it lets you do is authorise other accounts to use your library when you aren't using it. I've had a little dream about something like this for the very simple purpose of having a second 'living room account'. The living room account would open straight into Big Picture Mode (Steam Interface designed for use with TVs) and it would only have full controller support games installed on it. Everyone who lives in a house can then list the 'living room' account as their family. It essentially allows you to have a communal console for when that's whats going to happen that night.

By far the most exciting something that Steam is doing though is Steam for Schools, and its 'Teaching with Portals'. There is also a product available through the service called Universe Sandbox, which I haven't had a good look at yet, but I am super excited about. I can't actually have a look at it on my own, because I am not a teacher at a school. I know a couple of teachers, and I plan on co-opting them into assisting me in my endeavours.



EDIT: Universe Sandbox is available on the regular flavour of Steam. Even though I was referring to not have access to Steam for Schools, I assumed that there was a package deal thing going on. One can obtain Universe Sandbox through the Steam store for $9.99USD. 

The Time Lord's Time Sheet

It has occurred to me recently that for a lot of people in my life, I am "The guy that you ask" when it comes to Doctor Who. I'm not at all unhappy about this. It is my favourite show, and I honestly remember a time when no one I knew wanted to talk about it at all, and I was completely convinced that I was the only person I'd ever met who actually watched it. I was a small child at the time, and those years are far behind me now. With the recent increase in references to the lore and history of the show within the show, the job of offering explanation has fallen to me. Once again, not at all unhappy about it. Great show. If you don't, you should. Really.

I might have said this here before. I'm not checking. People ask me on a semi-regular basis, and seeing as they're not prepared to read through old posts, neither am I. I don't thin I did. I actually think there might have been a reason that I didn't mention this earlier, but seeing as the details have been in the news over the past coupe of months I figure that I'm not really delivering any spoilers. If you think that that might be an issue  for you, don't keep reading.

The crux of the matter is that time lords get twelve regenerations, which gives them thirteen lives. I know this isn't really a spoiler, as it comes up from time to time, but it's important for where I am going. I'm frequently surprised at how many who watch the show regularly aren't aware of this little tidbit. What this means is that there are allowed to be thirteen Doctors before they have to introduce plot elements allowing him to have more regenerations. I bring this up mostly because I can count. There were seven Doctors over the original, '63 to '89, run of the show. Then the Eighth appeared in the television movie in '86. Finally, there have been three incarnations since the shows revival in '05, with a fourth taking on the role at the end of the year. This is twelve. 7 + 1 + 4 = 12.

However, at the end of the most recent season finale, it was revealed that there was a previously undepicted incarnation of the Doctor, who would bump all following incarnations along by one. Meaning that Matt Smith is actually playing the Time Lord's twelfth incarnation, and more importantly Peter Capaldi will be playing the thirteenth.

I am fully aware that the other Doctors don't let John Hurt's incarnation use the name, but I think if time lords could just duck on down to deed poll in order to get a few extra goes at bat, the Master and the Doctor would've had a very different relationship. A couple of folks have suggested that he might be the Valeyard, who was meant to be a kind of anti-Doctor that was the purest distilled essence of The Doctor's cranky-pants side who manifested between the twelfth and last incarnations. I know that the Valeyard got a lot more face-time in the spin-off material, but in the show we never really got a completely satisfying explanation of how all of that actually came about, and whether or not it was possible between other incarnations. I'm fairly certain that John Hurt will be playing the actual Ninth Doctor, and that he was the one that took on the brunt of The Last Great Time War.

The short of all of this is that the new Doctor might actually be the last natural incarnation. What this actually means for the show, the plot, the Doctor's opinion of the Master, and whatever else you can think of is anyone's guess, but it is a good time to be a Doctor Who fan.