Ben’s Imaginary Band rocks

I sometimes wander about Jamendo, an excellent web site which collect and promote artists who feel like making their songs or, more commonly, albums available to the public under a Creative Commons License.

A few days ago I was then wandering about Jamendo and stumbled upon this album from Ben’s Imaginary Band. I was in the mood of listening to something calm and the tags “pop – indie – acoustic” did intrigue me. Thus I downloaded the album and since then I’m listening to it over and over.

Nocturnal Fables and Illusions is the first album from Ben’s Imaginary Band, a young independent and very promising Canadian artist. The album contains a total of 12 songs all acoustically very refined so that they give the album a halo of elegance. Ben sings his ballades with a warm a relaxing voice which almost lulls the listener while bringing him or her to a world of dreamy sensations. Among these ballades are a few of more lively songs -mostly in the second part of the album- which, also in this case, convey a sensation of equilibrium. My favourite songs are:

01- Underwater Waltz
02- Black Sheep
04 – A Reason Why
07 – My Self-centered World
11 – Chloroform For Your Ears

I won’t call myself a music savant but I dare say that this Ben’s Imaginary Band first album is a masterwork in its way.

Now just a bit of background of the name of the band. The reason of the name is that the band doesn’t exist, all is done by Ben. On his web site he tells the story of his music background and what most of all pushed him to write his first song recounting the events of an interesting yet terrifying Halloween.

I strongly invite you to listen to this album on Ben’s website and, if you like if, you can even buy a copy of it. You will realise that the price of $15.00cdn (approx. 12,4US$ and 8,8€) is very low compared to the quality of the album.
Ben’s says he will use the money to fund living expenses and new equipment while he make more music and, judging from what he already gave us, this is a very promising investment

Oh, and do not forget to spread the voice around your friends and family!

Here below you can see a video Ben’s recorded with his brother under the Dec-26th snow fall. He sings A Reason Why and wears just a coat over his pajamas, how cool!

My Fallout 3 review (XBox360)

I’m no IGN nor Game Spot guy but I anyway want to give my review of a title that’s lately stuck into my X-Box360 tray.

Fallout 3 is a first person action RPG and third installment of the Fallout trilogy. The game’s developed by Bethesda which is well known for their Morrowind and Oblivion games. As a matter of fact, as soon as I saw the game in action -well maybe just after the first introductory chapter- I felt Oblivion’s influence quite much, a sensation which got only stronger as I got diving into the game. I must say this was a nice sensation and a somewhat relieving one because, as we use to say, you don’t change the winning horse -or maybe you just customize and improve it a bit.

I am always scared, when awaiting for the sequel of a famous game to be released, that the new episode would spoil the series or spoil the gameplay and feel by attempting to revolutionise the game engine. But this wasn’t the case at all. Bethesda pick up the fruit of their tested and appreciated RPG engine and focused on the graphics appeal and story. Graphics and story are two great pros of this awesome game.

The year is 2277 and the location’s Washington DC wasteland. In 2077 United States fought a nuclear war against China resulting in the complete devastation of the American nation (what about China and the World we don’t know). After World War 2 Fallout’s timeline split from ours and in 2077 the World was in the verge of its development, relying on robotics and nuclear power for even the more trivial tasks as powering cars and trucks. Despite this technical and scientific advancement, society values remained those of the 50′ in our timeline. The society structure and values are pictured and described so well to be very present and strong in the game. By roaming the wasteland you can almost taste the ancient flavours even if they’re just a mere reflect and survive only through devastated structures, forgotten objects and worn out posters.
The game starts with your birth and the death of your mother (what a good sign uh..). You then play some brief sequence related to your childhood and adolescence sheltered in the safety of Vault 101 with your father. Vaults are huge and very advanced nuclear shelters manufactured by Vault-Tec before the nuclear mayhem and designed to protect just a selected number of humans from the devastation and fallout. You will soon discover that there are a few of Vaults in the DC area. However you will soon be forced to leave the comfort and protection of your home and experience a new strange, dangerous, devastated world.
You begin your adventure -and new life- in an effort to track down your father who escaped the Vault without giving any explanation to anyone including his only and beloved son. The outside world is shattered and you will soon meet the desolated ruins of what once used to be a suburb called Spring Vale. In my play session it was nigh time when I exited Vault 101 and the desolating effect of the destroyed houses, the smashed and rusted furniture and the occasional ancient skeletons, was impressive.

Despite the holocaust humanity hasn’t given up and the outside world is full of life. But humans aren’t the only one roaming the capital wasteland, radiation turned either human beings or animal into monsters. There are the so called Ghouls which are mangled figures of those that once were humans. They’re usually discriminated if not loathed mostly because of their aspect and because some of them are driven crazy by the radiation and get turned in Feral Ghouls which attack anyone who encounters them. Washington DC ruins swarm with Super Mutants, another human derived monster which are much more dangerous than the Feral Ghouls. The Super Mutants, whose origin I won’t discuss here, usually haunt downtown DC streets and buildings in packs and can master a wide range of lethal weapons, from hunting rifles to miniguns and rocket launchers. Speaking of mutated animals there are rad-ants, rad-scorpions, Yao Guais (a sorta freaking ferocious bear), Mirelurks (super armored biped crabs), molerats, and abominations like the Centaur (a puke-stimulating Super Mutant pet), and Deathclaws (freaking fast and deadly ferocious).
Humans are present in a variaty of factions. Within the Capital Wasteland humans live in towns made of whatever piece of scraps of pre war metal they can find, like parts of airplanes, like Megaton, or caravans, like Arefu. Beached on the Potomac shore a rusty aircraft carrier hosts Rivet City one of the most important and largest human settlement in the game.
Where downtown DC streets are deprived from human colonization, because they’re basically taken by the Super Mutants), they are also home of the Citadel, the stronghold of the local detachment of the Brotherhood of Steel, a national organization going back to the U.S. Army which struggles to somewhat normalize the nation by fighting minions (in this case mostly Super Mutants) with soldiers wearing Power Armors. Always present in your radio is the frequency of the Enclave, a mysterious organization which sports itself as the legitimate successor of the U.S. government. Other organizations present in the game are mercenaries, raiders (evil psychopaths, sociopaths killers),  slavers, Brotherhood of Steel Outcasts and regulators (a sorta rangers who kill evil characters).

Fallout 3 sports several game features very well developed. I’ve already talked about the story; another of these prized aspect is the Karma system. Fallout 3 gives ample free choice to the player. There are countless way to proceed in the game. Karma is a dynamic picture of what is Dungeons & Dragons alignment. Depending on how you choose to behave your character can be good, neutral or evil. There are actions which give you different amount of Karma points. For example, if you choose to set off the A-bomb resting in Megaton, instead of disarming it, you’ll get a huge amount of evil Karma points. More of that, by doing so several consequences in the game take place. The town is destroyed and the inhabitants killed, you can’t access certain missions, your home will be somewhere else and so on. If you’re evil then, raiders won’t attack you, slavers will recognize you as a friend, etc… Words travel fast in the Capital Wasteland. Every situation has at least one good and one evil way to be solved, but usually the options are many more.

Another polished feature of Fallout 3 is the V.A.T.S. combat system. Before speaking of that though I must say something about the Pip-Boy 3000, the ultimate gadget Vault-Tec originally gave to those blessed people selected to be sheltered inside the Vaults. Pip-Boy is Fallout 3’s green screen H.U.D. and provides the player several tools as the Geiger counter, the inventory, the map and much more. Among this more is the V.A.T.S. (Vault-Tec Assisted Targeting System), the ultimate tactical software for those player who like to take a breath from the action and have a more rational approach to killing. Once V.A.T.S. is enabled the action freezes and the Pip-Boy 3000 shows the image of the target with a part of its body coloured in green. According to the number of Action Points the character has, the player can aim one or more shots to different part of the enemy’s body or weapon. Each body part has an energy level which, once drained, causes the body part to become crippled, with evident consequences to the enemy combat behaviour.

Like all the GDRs games, in Fallout 3 the character is governed by main features and abilities which are improved or accumulated by means of Experience Points. S.P.E.C.I.A.L., which stands for Strength, Perception, Endurance, Charisma, Intelligence, Agility, and Luck, are the main characteristics which are mainly chosen at the beginning of the game and can marginally be improved during the game by certain abilities or items. The Skills are the various abilities (i.e. Energy Weapons, Medicine, Lockpick, etc..) that the main character can learn through the game. Each of them is related to a certain S.P.E.C.I.A.L.. Now, Fallout 3 gives the player one more way to improve the character by means of the so-called Perks. These are very special abilities (i.e. Computer Whiz, Cyborg, Gun Nut, etc..) which enable the character to do some special thing (like have access to the slavers or regulators organizations) or do something regular (like shooting or hacking) better.

Speaking of the general appeal, Fallout 3 graphics is pretty decent. More than that, it’s definitely very good. The fact is that technically it doesn’t show anything like a big leap from what seen with Oblivion. This isn’t a cons at all though. It’s clear that, having already an engine which was doing its job quite well, Bethesda teams focused on the story and the gameplay. However, apart from pure technique, the style and detail of the graphic representation of the world is impressive. The world is huge and, despite the prevailing desolation, there are many distinct location to go sightseeing. Downtown Washington DC you can come across the remains of the pre war monuments like the Jefferson Memorial, the National Library or the ruins of the Washington monument with the radioactive pool. Walking on the deserted streets of the Capital, looking at the grey and massive buildings, all focused to hear the sign of Super Mutant ambushes, it’s a rather disturbing experience.

Something that’s seen of one of the best aspect (and one helping the game to be awarded of X-Box 360 game of the year by IGN) of this awesome game is the Audio. From the metallic screeching of the doors to the frequency noises of the radio, the sound is all aimed to increase the sensation of loneliness and fall of the civilization. What has mostly struck me is anyway the music. The soundtrack is outstanding. All the songs are in perfect fifties style and as a matter of fact they’re all old songs from historical American singers like Cole Porter, The Ink Spots, Tex Beneke and Roy Brown). Walking on radiation scorched land listening to The Ink Spots singing “I don’t want to set the world on fire” is just priceless.

Well, I suppose this is enough for now. I could certainly go on ages writing about this wonderful game and I’m certain you’ll just like reading along, but you know.. I must go and play right now

If you like GDR games you better don’t miss Fallout 3.

Here below you can see the official E3 2008 trailer which shows some of the various aspects of the game

A super merry Christmas to you!

I join my son Robert in wishing you a special Christmas and a wonderful new year 2009!

Do you like flow charts?

Another amazing XKCD installment.

My PyQt Scribbles (Python and Qt) #3: A calendar in 30 or so lines

I often amuse myself exploring APIs and experiment classes and functions which seem attractive or curious.
I’ve always thought that experimenting is a much more interesting and effective way to learn something than merely theoretical study.

By messing around with PyQt classes I stumbled upon the QCalendarWidget class and I had a sparkle.

Being a project manager I happen to use calendars quite much for scheduling and I always find those I use rather uncomfortable. MS Outlook calendar is a mess and for some reason (at least that installed on my office pc) it doesn’t shows week numbers. The “Date&Time” XP app (the one appearing by double clicking the time displayed in the right corner of the systray) doesn’t show the week numbers and the navigation of months and years is rather uncomfortable. The big company calendar pinned on the wall is fine but during the last 2 or 3 months of each year we reach that “dark zone” where there’s me that must schedule activities in the first months of the new year and the huge calendar shows only the month of January(NewYear).
So I thought that this PyQt calendar could be a nice season-so experiment for my journey into PyQt.

I coded a bit and realised that the result was far more better than all the calendars surrounding me. No special functionality for the moment but it’s small, fast, simple, clean, easy to navigate and shows the week numbers. Yippee!!

I started from the first gui created in the previous installment so I won’t comment the parts already seen last time.

here we go:

import sys
from PyQt4.QtCore import *
from PyQt4.QtGui import *

class WizAndChipsCal(QMainWindow):
        def __init__(self, parent = None):
            QMainWindow.__init__(self, parent)
            self.setWindowTitle("Wiz and Chips Calendar")
            self.setGeometry(300,300,300,220)
            self.setWindowIcon(QIcon("C:/Python26/PyQt/Icon/date.png"))
            #self.setWindowIcon(QIcon("/home/MY_USR/PyQt/Icon/date.png")) - on Linux
            self.setToolTip("Hello to this Wiz and Chips fancy calendar!")

            self.CloseButton = QPushButton("&Close", self)
            self.CloseButton.setGeometry(26, 190, 50, 25)
            self.CloseButton.setToolTip("<font color=red size=2><b>" + "Press here to Quit" + "</font></b>")

            self.title = ("<font color=red size=4><b>" + "Wiz and Chips Pushable Calendar!" + "</font></b>")
            self.Label = QLabel(self.title, self)
            self.Label.setGeometry(45, 5, 250, 15)

            self.calendar = QCalendarWidget(self)
            self.calendar.setGridVisible(1)
            self.calendar.setGeometry(26, 30, 250, 150)

            self.connect(self.CloseButton,
                         SIGNAL("pressed()"),
                         self.close)

app = QApplication(sys.argv)
main_window = WizAndChipsCal()
main_window.show()
app.exec_()
# the underscore is used to avoid confusion with pyhton built-in exec()

And now some notes about the new parts:

from PyQt4.QtCore import *
from PyQt4.QtGui import *

This time I decided to import all the classes from the modules I need so to avoid using module prefix every time I need a module object (i.e. avoid -> QtGui.QIcon)

self.CloseButton = QPushButton("&Close", self)
self.CloseButton.setGeometry(26, 190, 50, 25)
self.CloseButton.setToolTip("<font color=red size=2><b>" + "Press here to Quit" + "</font></b>")

Here comes a new object: a push button. QPushButton is the class we need to create the button. The arguments are the button label and the parent where the button is placed.The ampersand before the “C” provides ALT+C to activate the button.One more time the setGeometry method sets the relative position(x,y) onto the screen and the size (w,h) of the Button.

We use setToolTip method we used before but we specify it for our button (self.CloseButton).
setToolTip accepts HTML tags so we can fancily specify size, colors and more if we want

self.title = ("<font color=red size=4><b>" + "Wiz and Chips Pushable Calendar!" + "</font></b>")
self.Label = QLabel(self.title, self)
self.Label.setGeometry(45, 5, 250, 15)

I want to create a title, within the widget, for our tiny app, so I create a label using the QLabel class.
Since I don’t want to put the label raw text directly as the label argument, I create instead a “title” object just to specify the text and then assign it to the label object.
QLabel accepts HTML tags so we can fancily specify size, colors and more if we want.

self.calendar = QCalendarWidget(self)
self.calendar.setGridVisible(1)
self.calendar.setGeometry(26, 30, 250, 150)

Here comes the funny part. PyQt QCalendarWidget() class provides a nice calendar which perfectly suits my purpose. setGridVisible() method creates a grid for the calendar once it’s set to 1

self.connect(self.CloseButton,
SIGNAL("pressed()"),
self.close)

Before we created a button but now we need to write some code to make that button actually perform an action.
This is somewhat tricky in PyQt (at least for me at the moment and compared to what I remembered of Tkinter). Anyway, we need to invoke the connect function* and tell it 3 things:
1- the emitter (the button in our case)
2- the signal to connect (SIGNAL(“pressed()”)
3- the function called to perform the action

* connect inherits from QObject class of QtCore module

Here below how the calendar looks in Kubuntu 8.10 (with KDE 4.1 and Oxygen theme) and MS Windows XP.

There are two things to be noticed about the final product. The first thing is that the calendar is quite functional and the second one is that, despite it’s apparent smoothness and functionality, the code is rather primitive and not so elegant. For example we haven’t used any layout manager to arrange our widget so we better remedy to this point later on.

Note for Windows users. If you save your calendar file with .pyw extension you will be able to open it smoothly avoiding python console to pop up.

Sam can keep his pony: this time the good prevailed over the evil

Maybe you read my two other posts (here and here) on the subject.

This is a story I took to the heart and it was just awesome to hear that all ended well.

Yesterday Antonia Spiteri was before the Committee of Adjustments, city of Caledon, Ontario, Canada, standing for the right for his child, affected by spastic quadriplegic cerebral palsy, to keep Emily, his pony friend and part of his therapy, despite the complaint and urge from a neighbour to make the animal removed from the property (which borders a cattle farm) because of.. it smells.

Antonia’s wrote me today on my Facebook profile that all went well. There had be virtually no fight during the session and all the Town parties involved into the question expressed their favorable opinion for the family to keep the pony, provided that the clean her (something they obviously already did).

To a National Post journalist, Caledon councillor Annette Groves said “While you have to enforce the rules, there are times when you have to use discretion and have to remember that you’re a human being and have to have some compassion, That would be the case in the case.”

My guess is that everything went so smoothly (apart from the stress of the past two months and the something like 1KCAN$ Antonia’s had to pay to rise the committee meeting) also because of the local society pressure, media coverage and international support, which surely worked as a powerful actuator alongside human natural justice feelings and simple rationale for the Town officials.

Christmas is coming and this year Sam’s received one of the most wonderful gifts a child could ever desire: another proof that his mum’s a real hero.

And by the way, the complaining neighbour did not show up.. and for the good I suppose

Photo of Sam and Antonia Spiteri and their pony Emily by Peter Redman, National Post

Fallout 3 Editor released

I am currently preparing my review of Fallout 3. The review will be out soon but I have just discovered on the official Fallout 3 web site that Bethesda Softworks released G.E.C.K. also known as Garden of Eden Creation Kit. Beside being a main element of the game, G.E.C.K.’s the ultimate goodie for the Fallout 3 nerd.

Basically we’re speaking of an editor which enables PC gamers to to expand the Fallout3 world with customized content created with this editor.

The tool should be somewhat similar to the Elder Scrolls Construction Set editor for those who’re familiar with it.

Guys at Bethesda already created a wiki with detailed instructions, tutorials and videos to walk you though the usage of G.E.C.K. To make feel those who’re not used to mods safe at home, the basic tutorial series is called “My First Vault”..

You can download G.E.C.K. from here.
Here below the first youtube video tutorial.

I have an Xbox360 version of the game so I won’t be the pleasure to mod the game… But for those having the PC version, have fun folks!

DHTML Visual Art

By googling around I stumbled upon the web site of geldoot, an artist which creates visual art by using dynamic html animations only.

It’s quite surprising what he manages to do and even more interesting the fact that he release the source code of his experiments to the community under a Creative Common License (this).

From the various artworks I found 2 of them especially interesting.

The first one is an animation showing many businesslike men hanging in front of the spectator’s eyes and moving around according to the mouse movement. I found them quite disturbing and somewhat recalling me the paint Golconda from René Magritte.

The other artwork is a three column animation of del.icio.us popular tags. The user can actually click any of them and warp to the corresponding del.icio.us bookmark page. Of this one the source code is especially quite interesting to be modified and implemented in one’s website.

The gallery of the artworks is huge so I didn’t have time to explore/try all the animations contained. If you find something amazing post a comment with the link so that I can have a look as well.

Delicious painkiller

Last Thursday night I got hospitalized for a terrible pain in the lower part of my back. They got me some pain killers to go and then sent me home in the morning.

Speaking of painkillers, it happened me to buy this locally brewed beer during one Sunday’s village Christmas market. It’s a 75cl weiβ, only 5,3 alc. and neither pasteurized nor filtered.
It proved a delicious refreshment. I enjoyed its fruity taste very much. I suppose I’ll go to the brewery shop to get some more very soon (and I must try the lager as well!)

How to write raw code in WordPress

As a corollary to one of my previous posts, and after extensive googling to avoid one bloody fastidious problem for one trying to blog about code (the WordPress auto-formatting which will trim your indentation and convert code enclosed between html tags in.. well what’s turns out to be in reality), I found this guideline by WordPress support which is definitely godsend.

class WizAndChipsCal(QMainWindow):
        def __init__(self, parent = None):
            QMainWindow.__init__(self, parent)
            self.CloseButton.setToolTip("<font color=red size=2><b>" + "Press here to Quit" + "</font></b>")
            #setToolTip accepts HTML tags so we can fancly specify size, colors and more if we want

While WordPress.com doesn’t allow you to use potentially dangerous code on your blog, there is a way to post source code for viewing. We have created a shortcode you can wrap around source code that preserves its formatting and even provides syntax highlighting for certain languages, like so:

#button {
font-weight: bold;
border: 2px solid #fff;
}

Wrap your code in these tags:
[sourcecode language='css']
your code here
[/sourcecode]

Any of the following can be used for the language parameter (using one is required):

• cpp
• csharp
• css
• delphi
• html
• java
• jscript
• php
• python
• ruby
• sql
• vb
• xml

Code in between the [sourcecode] tags will automatically be encoded for display, you don’t need to worry about HTML entities or anything.

Alex Gorbatchev’s syntaxhighligher Google Code project was used to implement this feature.