Exult update: Blackthorn's Castle tossed about by Sutek

Long-time Exult Studio user, Crowley, has updated his long-term gargoyle NPC project by trashing Castle Blackthorn. He ties Ultima VII with its forebears by stamping the castle with the marks of the hermetic mage, Sutek. Nice touch.

If ever this mod goes live, here's one person looking very much forward to thrashing about in it. 

Sword Coast Allows a DM to Run the Adventure

Pre-order Now at www.swordcoast.com Your Story. Your Adventure. Your Legend. Set in the lush and vibrant universe of the Forgotten Realms Sword Coast Legends offers an all-new way to enjoy the time-tested magic of playing Dungeons & Dragons as a shared storytelling experience.

Enworld's Morrus unearthed this lovely:

“Developer Dan Tudge mentions the setting. “You can certainly expect to visit iconic locations along the Sword Coast and you may even run into a few familiar faces along the way.” He also goes on to talk about how the game actually works: “Dungeon Master Mode is going to allow players to quickly jump in and play as a real-time DM in a way that has never really been fully realized in a video game. DMs are able to adjust encounters, place, promote, manage and even control monsters, set traps, reward and punish party members – all in real time”

Not only that, but a Campaign Mode allows for much larger storylines, and a Single Player mode allows one player to lead a groups of adventurers recruited within the game.”

Which, if you're a fan of pen-and-paper RPGs, as well as computer MMOs, is as awesome of news as you can get. The only fly in the ointment is this:

“it’s not clear what worldbuilding tools or custom content can be included.”

Nevertheless, with Dan Tudge at the helm, and him standing on the time-honoured tradition of making your mates suffer through your stratagems, I'm hopeful. 

27" iMac hinge default

Mine's had this problem for over a year, but I've not had a long enough break from work to fix it. If the hinge in yours snapped, and your iMac is guaranteed under Apple Care, it's time for a trip to the Genius Bar. 

Make sure to make note of this thread at Apple's Support Communities.

Role of the Bicycle in the Limitation of Transport Poverty in the Netherlands

Great research by Karel Martens on the bicycle's role in helping underprivileged people get around.

“ Respondents did not experience problems in the maintenance of their contacts at the neighborhood level; walking and cycling were the primary transport modes used to do so. At the urban level, a clear difference was shown between younger and older respondents. The former frequently used a bicycle and appreciated its flexibility, because it provided the possibility to visit family or friends on the way to other destinations. The older respondents indicated that they cycled much less than in the past and therefore felt limited in their ability to visit friends. Although public transport often was a solu-tion, it reduced the possibility for a spontaneous visit. Respondents that used to have access to a car experienced this lack of spontane-ity as a problem, especially, which resulted in less frequent visits to friends and family, even on an urban scale. Elderly respondents avoided visits to friends and family in the evening hours, because of concerns about personal safety. The problems identified by the older respondents seemed to be at odds with the findings of Ziems et al. (32), who found that lower levels of out-of-home activity were more than compensated for by the benefits derived from the pursuit of discretionary activities at home”

Thanks to @tokyobybike for sharing this research.

Samsung's Next Galaxy phone is starting to look an awful lot like the iPhone 6

Time will tell if these leaked skeletons mean anything, but if they mean what Business Insider purports them to mean, John Gruber was right: 

“Leaked photos certainly aren’t reliable, but this makes sense. Samsung rose to prominence with their iPhone-lookalike early Galaxy S models. Apple sued them and was awarded hundreds of millions of dollars in penalties. But then, as Samsung’s designs have diverged from Apple’s, Samsung has faltered in the market. So back to what worked before: copying Apple shamelessly and accepting the eventual legal losses and the public perception that Samsung is a blatant copycat as a cost of doing business.”

Overnight, Seoul blossomed with what I thought were iPhone 3s, but were Galaxy phones. The same thing happened with iPad lookalikes. But then again, that is what happens when dealing with corporate entities that have never specialised in anything. And Samsung, which started out as a grocer, has never, ever, had a specialty - excepting government pardons.

Source: Samsung's next Galaxy phone is starting to look an awful lot like the iPhone 6 via Daring Fireball

Pithy Shorts #002: Smart Miscommunication

I used to pride myself on my handwriting skills in school. (Okay, let's call it neatness.) I noticed over time as I started using computers and smartphones more, that not only my handwriting deteriorated but I've had to be extra careful when signing cheques, lest they bounce. I have cured that somewhat. A fountain pen-collecting friend told me to get a fountain pen. That slowed down my scratching. My handwriting improved. 

No wonder in my younger school days, when ballpoint pens were just invented (gosh ... my age is showing), my school disallowed them. Laundry shops are licking their lips at the return of ink stains. Now where's my quill pen?

From sign language to SIRI, man has evolved in his communication skills, written or otherwise, but, as seen in the example above, sometimes to the detriment of skills once learnt. It is possible that future smartphones will no longer be able to make or receive phone calls.

These future devices will probably be called smarttypewriters or smartpeckers.

Take a look at today's teenagers and even the slightly older adults like yours truly. They consume tonnes of data via whatsapp, Facebook, etcetera, on their smarttypewriters or smartpeckers, and hardly use these mis-named devices for actually making phone calls. Once upon a time, we were told to engage brain before mouth. Many keyboard warriors nowadays engage brain before fingers.

Talking of typewriters (carbon paper, stuck levers, paper whiteners, etc) the sounds it made when typing, when moving on to the next line, etc were so intoxicating that no less a man than Tom Hanks created Hanx Writer, an iOS app does the whole typewriter thing.

My question: who's going to invent the iOS ballpoint-- you know, the one that doesn't flow so smooth and purposely leaks once in a while? Hmm.

The other communication skill one learnt was when most of us were using Nokia and Motorola phones, etc and that was the T9 keyboard. You could feel your way through a correspondence. That was so useful. You could use one thumb to send off secret messages under a table with nary a glance. You were Leonardo DiCaprio. Now with smartphone keyboards, you got to be glued to your screen. Does anyone still know how to T9 through an email?

Remember movies where all forms of communication were down (you know, the usual Hollywood post-nuclear apocalyptic disaster catastrophe movie?), the heroes relied on Morse code to save the day. Morse code people would have loved the T9.

"Do you know T9?" I'm sure that's a question Hollywood spies are asked. Maybe the T9 will be the Morse code of the future.

Having said all that, our newly-mastered two-thumb typing skills are getting truncated yet again. The culprit? predictive spelling.

We don't even have to finish typing a single word. Apple's predictive spelling even corrects the previous bits we typed. Talk about putting words in one's mouth.

I just wish it came in different politically-correct options though. Sometimes I just need to type *%*€%¥# ... 

Editor's note: I'm pretty that by *%*€%¥#, George probably meant something naughty!

Tune in for more of Grumpy George's Pithy Shorts column.