Star Wars Day

May the Fourth couldn't be a more apt day to announce the winner of my Star Wars competition!

The winner of the limited edition mimobot Boba Fett is Ian Cook, whose comment eloquently distilled the character of Star Wars' most notorious bounty hunter in a USB flash drive:

"A Fett shaped memory stick .. To truly guard those precious files .. Unless someone offers him the right price to divulge their contents .. Curse those mercenary bounty hunters ;)"

Congratulations Ian, please DM me on either Facebook or Twitter and Boba Fett will be on his way to you very soon.

Thanks to everyone who took the time to leave a comment, and please remember to subscribe by RSS for future 'give-away' competitions. If you're an Indy fan stay tuned for an awesome Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull tie-in with DK Books!

The Long Good Friday

Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory has consumed many, many hours since its surprise debut on the Mac this week. The past few nights have witnessed the destruction of tanks, city walls and beach defenses! In the latter I served as an Axis soldier equipped with a Panzerfaust. For an adrenalin-fueled 30 minutes my team (of 30) held back Allied forces and prevented them from breaching the sea wall defenses. The maps are lavishly detailed and none more so than the Cathedral and Egyptian tomb (evoking the adventures of Indiana Jones).

The key ingredient in ET is team co-operation (up to 64 players) and the ability to increase one's skill (not unlike an RPG). Incidentally PunkBuster precludes any players from cheating and a voting system kicks troublesome team mates (those who deliberately engage in friendly fire) off.

A technical tip for anyone using that pile of junk known as DivX. To avoid the DivX conflict uninstall the application (it's taking up valuable HDD space anyway).

Maniac Mansion

It's very rare to stumble across an application that is a revelation. Earlier this year MacMAME earned such a distinction - authentic arcade action delivered directly to your desktop - and now ScummVM joins the pantheon!

ScummVM derives its name from 'Script Creation Utility for Maniac Mansion' and is a 'virtual machine' for several notable graphical point-and-click adventure games. For example LucasArts' The Dig, Day of the Tentacle and Full Throttle. Loading Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis rekindled halcyon memories of my Amiga adventures and the often delayed fourth installment in the movie franchise. Incidentally, the Maniac Mansion property was licensed as a family sitcom (in the US) and ran for several seasons in the early 90's. Did it ever show in the UK?

Both MAME and ScummVM are a Work-In-Progress and available for the majority of popular computer platforms. MacMAME now sports an improved OpenGL driver that fixes VBL sync and aspect ratio correction. Checking anti-aliasing (AKA smoothing) in MacMAME's front-end evokes graphical comparison with Sega's underrated and poorly marketed Dreamcast (NAOMI-based console). Playtime.

Google continues to rollout updates to their email service. Gmail POP3 set-up is a breeze in Entourage 2004 and the added benefits of SSL shouldn't be overlooked. As an avid user of Gmail, I hope that the final release retains this feature. Hotmail announced that support for offline reading and composing would be withdrawn sans subscription. If this happens, then Gmail more than meets my needs.

Time to read the latest developments concerning the Mac OS X 10.3.7 update.

Something Wicked This Way Comes

Referencing his Jazz roots John Williams' captivating score for Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban was one of the first albums that I purchased from iTMS Europe. Williams' dexterity at composing for franchises knows no bounds and traverses Star Wars to Indiana Jones and now Harry Potter. He weaves complex sonic narratives: from the opening Waltz to Buckbeak’s Flight (a signature theme in its own right, which recalls his work on E.T., Star Wars and Superman). The soundtrack is overflowing with urgency and light is threatened by shadow at every segue.

So, it would be remiss not to see the movie too! Today I ventured with one of my Uncle's to Plymouth's Vue (formerly known as Warner Village). We arrived early and decided on 'chow' from Pizza Hut. The service was excellent and I garnered an extra Pepsi (courtesy of the waitress)! A couple of Hutts (or Vogan look-a-likes) indulged in an all-you-can-eat banquet to the badly suppressed amusement of staff and onlookers alike!

OK. The movie. To my utter delight screen 9 is deserving of the moniker 'giant' screen - a luxurious widescreen canvas that outflanks the Odeon Leicester Square - resulting in retinal overload.

HP3 opens with a franchise flourish: the WB logo transformed into a signature motif that owes a debt to Tim Burton’s Batman. The film oozes oily evil from the outset, the colour palette delineated in black, white and blue. The sets capture the ambience of Anton Furst's production design for Batman.

Azkaban is far removed from the Christmas cheer of its predecessors. Performances are uniformly excellent, culminating in Watson’s Hermione outshining Radcliffe’s leaden Harry! The Dementors are clearly derivative of another literary source, however they are nonetheless chilling.

It is a dark time for Harry Potter full of ambiguous choices and emotions, but not for the franchise. I’ll be booking my seat for the next instalment in advance of 2005.