My ramblings over the finer points of Godfather 2 has hit the interwebs and can be found over at Xboxgaming.co.za. I’m a fan of the movies and with the Godfather trilogy being one of cinema’s finest moments I was real interested to see how EA would approach the game. As of late EA has become know as a company willing to take risks on new IPs with Mirror’s Edge and Dead Space being two fine examples of that so I was hoping that they’d carry on in this vein with Godfather 2, after all it is one of the most well written movie of the modern era. If you want to see whether the game managed to live up to its illustrious name then hop on over to the review and check it out here.
Monthly Archive for May, 2009
The last two weeks or so I’ve been coming home from work and after a meal and some DVDs I’ve been relaxing by stealthily creeping up behind unsuspecting people and snapping their necks with a gleeful smile on my face. Of course I’ve been doing this in the wonderfully sublime Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena game on the Xbox but there’s always a chance I can use it in a real world setting some day. Assault on Dark Athena follows the adventures of Richard B. Riddick from Pitch Black and its sequel The Chronicles of Riddick as he is first incarcerated in the infamous Butcher Bay prison where he first gains his eyeshine ability before escaping, only to find himself caught by the mercenaries aboard the Dark Athena space ship. Its a darn fun game and well worth picking up if you enjoyed Starbreeze Studio’s previous effort, The Darkness. Check out my more in-depth review at Xboxgaming.co.za.
Those of you who know me will know that I’m a huge Tool fan of note. Ever since I was given my first Tool album, Lateralus, as a 21st birthday present I’ve never looked back and its been an almost constant album on my iPod, in my car and on my music centre so it was with keen interest that I read on Toolshed that Danny and Maynard have confirmed that they are in the very early stages of planning their next album:
In recent interviews, both Adam and Maynard have mentioned that the band is in the early writing phase for the next Tool album. You veterans of the waiting game know this means we still have a while to wait, especially with everyone being busy with side projects.
Tool fans will be used to the long wait between albums so this means we probably only have another 4 years or so to wait before their next album hits stores. One thing I know is that the album is definitely going to be worth the wait as I’ve yet to be disappointed by any of their albums, although admittedly I’m a huge fanboy so your results may vary. 
Microsoft has just released the second service pack for their Office 2007 suite and the one added capability that holds a lot of promise is the ability for Office 2007 to read and write ODF files which should increase its cross platform capability with many open source office suites out there such as OpenOffice.org and Lotus Symphony. This is in addition to the performance improvements it will also bring to the separate applications Excel, Word, Access and Outlook with Outlook especially seeing some huge leaps in performance.
Seems like a sure thing doesn’t it? Well taking a closer look it would seem as though the ODF compatibility is not all it’s made out to be with Office 2007 struggling particularly when it comes to reading and writing spreadsheets. A recent post by Rob on An Antic Disposition took an in depth look at all the major spreadsheet apps available and if they could read the other app’s spreadsheets. I won’t repeat the precise tests followed as you can easily read it on in his post, suffice to say it seems as though Excel 2007 spreadsheets saved as ODF files cannot be read by the other spreadsheet programs and that Excel 2007 struggles to read other programs spreadsheet ODF files. Now you may think that as an open source aficionado I’d be quick to find fault with Microsoft in this case but for once I have to admit that the bulk of the problem lies with Sun and its move towards ODF 1.2. A pertinent excerpt from Rob’s post shows the crux of the problem:
Sun should write out formulas in ODF 1.1 format, using the legacy “oooc” namespace prefix that the other vendors are using. Remember, the other vendors are using that namespace specifically for compatibility with OO’s ODF documents. This is the current convention. To unilaterally switch, without notice or coordination, to a new namespace, is not cool. When ODF 1.2 is an approved standard, then we all can move there in a coordinated fashion, to cause users minimal inconvenience. But the above table clearly shows the confusion that results if this move is not coordinated. I know OO 3.01 has an option to save in ODF 1.0/1.1 format. IMHO, this should setting should be the default. I’m not sure if the Sun Plugin has a similar configuration option, but I hope it does.
Hopefully at some point in the near future Sun and the various software vendors will be able to come to a point where the ODF format for all their programs and platforms is compatible making it far easier for users out there. Of course a lot of this may be null and void for the majority of users who will not even be aware of the addition of ODF support for Office 2007 as well as the fact that most users out there are still under the impression that only the Microsoft formats exist.
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