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Web Search Graffiti

The new Ceramics Study Galleries opened to the public at the Victoria and Albert Museum today and I went to have a scout around. They are packed floor-to-ceiling with the V&A’s massive collection, acting like a “live storage” system.

Here’s an artist’s impression because my phone ran out of battery:

V&A Ceramics Study Galleries.

Because the objects are packed so tightly, allowing little scope for labelling of individual items, other information sources have been provided. Digital interactives allow you to search the Ceramics Collection from “terminals” in the galleries and to my delight, the case labels and even the walls provide text to search for using the museum’s Search the Collections web site.

Who put that there?

There’s decent public wi-fi in the galleries and I would hope to see people using laptops, tablets and our mobile search on phones to research the vast collection.

Working in a museum web team, it feels warm and fuzzy to see our work in the digital space being written on the walls of the building.

How open is your mobile phone?

I am a freedom-hating iPhone owner. This means I tolerate DRM-encumbered films from the iTunes Store. I also enjoy Audible audiobooks, which I can only play back on a maximum of 5 computers. The development of the iPhone operating system is a closely-guarded secret which is then protected by litigation after release. I don’t like these things much at all. Yet, I am better rewarded than my friends who opted for the righteous Android option 12 months ago.

In October 2008, when the T-Mobile G1 was released in the UK, I seriously considered buying one in preference to an iPhone but it was very much a version 1.0 device and it didn’t have a headphone socket.

I considered the second Android phone on the UK market, the HTC Magic. I wanted the freedom to put any software on a device I paid for. But it didn’t have a headphone socket. In the summer of 2009, I bought an iPhone. On that day, I installed Google Earth for iPhone. This was not available on the Google Android platform at the time. I love Google Earth.

In February 2010, Google finally released Google Earth for Android. It works only on the latest version of Android, 2.1, which effectively limits it to the Motorola Droid and the Nexus One. Speaking to owners of Android phones purchased contemporaneously with my iPhone, I gather they remain on Android 1.5 or 1.6. HTC have indicated it is a matter for the carrier networks (such as T-Mobile or Vodafone) to update the OS. A search on the Vodafone forums indicates the Vodafone staff don’t have a timescale for upgrading to Android 2.1. Some people ask the question whether the hardware can even support the new Android version.

These good people who supported the open phone platform are being neglected now. The carriers still “own” the phone, Android or not. Their business has involved getting new phone models in and out as quickly as possible (since the Nokia 3210), not nurturing existing handsets.

There is currently no obvious or safe way to upgrade a 12 month old Android phone to the latest OS version.

Both Apple and O2 “own” my phone but this summer I will download iPhone OS 4.0 for free and I will benefit from the features immediately. The 3 year old iPhone 2G will probably not run iPhone OS 4.0 but every app developed for the last 3 years will run. 3 years is a long lifespan for a phone, albeit a real expensive one. But it strikes me that support for Android handsets is much more short-lived.

Bernard Bresslaw, at home and at work

I love it when collections of web data make the unlikely connections.

My colleague and I were delighted to see the Harry Hammond photography collection fully digitised on the V&A Search the Collections database a couple of months back. This is a collection worth exploring…

There are some extraordinary photographs from the fifties and sixties here. Update: I just realised I should link to these images rather than display them inline, due to copyright issues! Don’t want the people downstairs coming after me…

Frank Sintra at Radio Luxembourg

Elvis Presley at Glasgow Prestwick Airport

All very nice. But what struck me today was that one of the sites I develop (Film on Freeview) identified there was a glut (mostly from the Carry On stable) of films starring England’s 6’ 7½” comedy giant, Bernard Bresslaw over the 2010 Easter holidays.

Much to our amusement, there are plenty of photographs of Bernard Bresslaw in the Harry Hammond collection. And some are pure magic…

Bernard Bresslaw as a cowboy in 1958. (Gotta feel for the horse)

I’ve written a proper blog post about being a n00b to RPG games and gaming. What do you think? http://bit.ly/dAuBev

In Praise of RPGs

The experiences of a mostly casual gamer, tackling the RPG genre. A kind of newbie introduction.

Background

Looking back on games that have consumed me over the years, I notice many of them have elements of role-playing. I think of Championship Manager 93-94, Zelda: Ocarina of Time and Outcast (a much overlooked gem).

Exploring RPG Options for the uninitiated

I approached the RPG genre proper. I was spurred on recently by the Mass Effect 2 and Dragon Age: Origins phenomenon. Not having an XBOX or PC, I was encouraged by the those in-the-know to explore BioWare’s older catalogue. Using the phenomenal Wine software, I was able to get a gaming rig going on my Ubuntu Asus eee PC 901. I started playing with Knights of the Old Republic and Baldur’s Gate.

Obviously these games are deep and involved so I need to be careful about drawing conclusions after a couple of hours’ play.

I am also that dufus on the tube leaning against the door with an iPhone, so I thought I’d check out my RPG options on this established gaming platform. I’m liking Zenonia, Dungeon Hunter and Underworlds. I’ll be using screens from these games to brighten up this otherwise boring-looking post.

Night time in Adonis. Zenonia for iPhone.

Initial Observations

Having been tinkering with various RPGs for a week or two, here are the main concepts to grasp. These features are observed to a greater or lesser extent in the games I’ve tried.

• Characterage
• Questage
• Levelage
• Equipage

Allow me to elaborate along these lines…

Characterage

You need to pick the race of your character before you start. The world in which the RPG is set will dictate what kind of beings you can control. The only way I can think of expressing the range of RPG characters is as a Python dictionary.

characterage = {
    ('warlock', 'wizard', 'mage'): "frail dude, lots of spells, useful to have at the back to throw fire at baddies",
    ('soldier', 'warrior'): "good to have at the front swinging a two-handed sword",
    ('thief', 'assassin', 'rogue'): "stealthy, sly buggers, useful in towns and a closing-time ruckus",
    ('ranger', 'scout'): "enigmatic types, to be found in dark, candlelit corners of the Inn",
    'paladin': "the Holy fool, Parsifal,  class and therefore my first choice",
    'all female characters': "pole-dancers with pointy ears. Russ Meyer meets Tolkein.",
}

I quite like the ranger option, identifying with Aragorn/Strider from Lord of the Rings, but the paladin is a more commonly available character. The paladin is a Holy Knight from the court of Charlemagne, unflinching in the service of Good. You need to overlook the fact that this effectively makes you a crusading, Christian fundamentalist lest our Candlewind Guardian-reading sensibilities be offended.

Rogue’s Gallery: Character selection in Dungeon Hunter for iPhone.

Character classes are a fine way of capturing your imagination. Anybody who has grown up reading Lord of the Rings, watching Dungeons & Dragons or has had even the slightest exposure to Arthurian romance and legend should instinctively find a character that fits their personality. These characters are not just a niche fantasy but are part of a (mostly Western) folk tradition of story-telling.

Questage

The quest is an easy thing to get a handle on. You and your character will likely be starting a journey, often for unclear reasons; no dramatic irony here. As the main story is revealed to you, you will meet other characters asking you to run small errands and giving you snippets of information. You might have to deliver a letter because too many messengers have been shot or put several noisy baddies to the sword as they are making reading difficult in the castle library. As you complete these quests, you will receive gold for equipment and experience points that will contribute to your character’s level.

Levelage

Leveling up is a phrase entering common, non-gaming parlance. Your character gains experience through achievements, like completing tasks and beating up baddies. You are assigned a simple, incremental number (1,2,3), designating your current level. Once your experience reaches a given threshold, you Level up. Like a butterfly emerging from a chrysalis, your new level bestows new abilities upon you. You may be able to wield more powerful weapons or take on fiercer opponents.

The green bar at the bottom indicates I am over a quarter of the way to my next level. I have a rather fatter, more pressing matter at hand here.

You’ll also be able to increase certain metrics on your character, like strength or endurance.

When entering into combat with a foe, you will usually see a dialog box describing the opponent’s health and level. If it is of a level significantly higher than yours, you might be better going back to the village and running a few errands to gain more experience. Your attacks will then have more effect on the foe and, in turn, its attacks may cause you less grief.

This Level 9 Slime is no match for axe-and-dagger combination.

Sometimes you can find yourself beating up numerous weaker enemies in order to inflate your experience, outside the normal narrative of the game, in order to progress. Experienced gamers often regard this as flaw in game design, known as grinding. However, I tend to find this quite therapeutic and it reflects the satisfying free-form nature of some RPGs.

Equipage

A key part of working the RPG genre is tooling up your character. You may be able to buy equipment from a rotund merchant or innkeeper in your nearest village or town. You will have acquired gold from completing quests, opening boxes or thieving from rooms at the Inn. You can then equip bits of of your body; gloves and gauntlets for the arms; tunics and armour for the torso; swords, bludgeons and shields for the hands. To carry the best weapons, you’ll need more than gold; you may need to be at a certain level to even lift a two-handed sword.

The choice of armaments can be impressive.

In Conclusion

The distilled RPG format that can be found on the iPhone games above has assisted me in understanding the mechanics of the game play. I’m not, at this stage, talking about the MMORPGs, like World of Warcraft (awesome as they are).

I’ll continue playing Knights of the Old Republic and Baldur’s Gate and see what complexities and subtleties lie therein. I hope too to be able to play the latest breed of action RPGs, such as Dragon Age and Mass Effect on a friend’s XBox 360 in the not too distant future.

Mrs. Blackbird gathering nesting material.

I seem to have written some Javascript that inadvertently tries to print the page.

Great achievement here RT @portableant http://www.finds.org.uk has gone live in full β

This is a really lovely 1000 year old sword pommel http://bit.ly/bOqFfU which I can enjoy because of @portableant’s graft!

Went for a routine blood test in Tottenham. Grab a numbered ticket and wait your turn. Bit like a trip to the deli. Civilised.