Work While Drunk

I’ve always been fond of the Bomberman games, right back to my first encounter with Dynablaster on my Amiga. When Atomic Bomberman was released on the PC, a bunch of us got together for mini-LANparty just to play it in its 10 player glory (with 5 players per PC). I recently purchased Bomberman DS for the Nintendo DS which I’m finding merely ‘ok’ in single player mode, and it doesn’t make very strong use of the touch screen on the DS. I’m assured that the multi-player battle mode is where it shines, but I have yet to try it.

This morning I came across Bomberman Evolved. It’s a project by the students of the University of Aalborg in Copenhagen, whereby an imaging system is used to generate 2D positions of the human players in the room, which is then used to control the players. It looks clever and fun.

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Its also got me thinking about the potential for Bomberman games on the Nintendo Wii. Currently I can find info on Bomberman Land, but appear to be to Bomberman what Pacland was to Pacman – a platform game simply based on the same characters. I have high hopes that Hudsonsoft will make a Bomberman game that makes good use of the Wiimote’s. I look forward to being able to punch bombs, almost literally.

I keep meaning to seriously assess my software. The process in my mind is:

• Write a list of all the Windows XP software I use
• Identify which are freeware and which are not (and I know most of them are)
• Investigate if there are freeware alternatives to some of the ones which aren’t free
• Donate a small token of my appreciation to the cream of them
• Spread the word by writing up a brief list of them here

I originally meant to do this as an article for ZombieNexus. There’s a couple of flaws there though. Firstly as many people keep reminding me, I’m still not posting to this blog very often. Frankly, for the most part, I’m happy that my life is already busy and fulfilling enough that I get little ‘free’ time. Still, I’m very aware of it as I’m paying to host this site, and I still have good intentions for it. My buddy Graeme who’s reportedly still working on the code for ZombieNexus, knows the score.

Secondly, my main rig which is Running Windows XP has been a bit sick since about November. It generally works but I sometimes get strange errors, and all my investigations are coming up blank. I get DEP (Data Execution Errors) on boot sometimes. My sound mysteriously disappears sometimes, weirdly – an application at a time, but once one app does it I know its going to start on others and for the first time ever on my home machine I’ve had a BSOD – on shutdown of all things.

What this means is that I’m just keeping it ticking over until Windows Vista comes along. If I’m going to re-install, I may as well upgrade at the same time. This probably makes me glutton for punishment, as the driver situation on Windows Vista is quite clearly not ideal, but the strictness of how they have to be written should help stability.

Anyway, back to my original point. I’ve decided to try and post the list of good freeware apps, one by one, and then make the list later. I’ll see how that goes.