Housekeeping

Eagle-eyed readers will have noticed that All Your Disney has joined The Disney Fan Network. I say eagle-eyed, but that's not strictly true. Many of you will have noticed I'm actually pushing the Network hard, both at All Your Disney itself and here.

But why not? Networks are there to generate collective traffic. Anyone who likes Disney who visits the blogs on the All Your Blog Network would be well advised to keep tabs on TDFN - run by the good people at The Disney Blog - easily my personal favourite Disney site.

But, to business. Final preparations are underway for my getting a job. You know what that means. Stuff. Stuff to write about. Games, movies, accessories, phones and computers.

Well, just one each of those final two. First off, the iPhone. Funny thing is, I didn't realise how much I really wanted iPhone in my life until fairly recently. And yet, it is without a doubt the culmination of desires I've had for a long time.

The MacBook meanwhile is the core of a long-standing desire to be untethered from this desk. iPhone represents another pillar of that - providing connectivity at all times.

But the MacBook is to allow me to browse the web, chat and play music/videos away from the desk. On my bed for example, or in the living room. The iPhone can accomplish this, yes, and will do so in some instances, but when I want a computer, the MacBook enables me to use one with more freedom.

That also frees this machine up for use as a gaming platform and a server. Fun.

In bad news, I have a terrible cold or a mild flu. One or the other. Either way, existence is hell. Grr.

You know, even though I love this monitor, I am sorely tempted by this, the Disney HDTV, lovingly adorned with Mickey Mouse symbols...Then again, I suppose I will probably need a second screen at some point. Plus, watching TV with Pinnacle TVCentre Pro is a real bitch.

I'll have to think about it.

Jens Out

Passing the 7th Position in the Rule of Doubling

In a brief follow-up to the previous post, I have now definitely decided on the iPhone. It was the web that won it.

Now then, to the issue of the day. Portal. Hot freaking damn. Way back when Portal was newly announced and everyone was drooling over Team Fortress 2 and Half-Life 2 Episode 2 (I'm sorry, that is such a mouthful), I myself was more interested in Portal.

And man was I right to be. This game kicks ass. It's funny, crazy, quirky and above all, original. Truly it is the class of the Orange Box, as many have conceded in the time since the Box was unleashed.

Incidentally, what a freaking dumb name. Orange Box. It's so...Meh. Mind you, the box art is far worse.

Another great game is Metroid Prime 3 Corruption. Easily the best controls ina first-person shooter to date. I can't wait for an online game with similar controls - which I am reliably informed is inbound in the form of the 32-Player online Medal of Honor Heroes 2. Finally a reason to play a Medal of Honor game.

I know I can't wait to be blasting fools with my Wii. EA, I salute you.

Speaking of the Wii itself, my Remote Jackets showed up. I have my spare Remote in one - so newbies to Wii can't kill me - but my own personal Remote, with a rechargeable battery, is Jacket free. Well, it has one. I just don't put it on it.

The Writer's Guild is on strike stateside. Wowsers bowsers. That shit is real. I hope it gets resolved properly and fast - imagine the turmoil if the actors and directors went out in sympathy.

iPhone is out this Friday at 6:02PM. Yes, that's right. 02. O2. Get it?

Clever...But really lame.

Tomorrow I'm off to an interview for a job. Assuming I get said job, it should bring in moneys to buy all the things I'm wanting - starting with such games as Super Mario Galaxy, Medal of Honor Heroes 2, Guitar Hero 3 and some maybes like Geometry Wars Galaxies, Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games and a Disney game I might pick up to review for All Your Disney dependent on how much I earn.

And then later, of course, the iPhone, ahead of the MacBook a couple months later.

I should probably also upgrade my Desktop. I'll do that after the MacBook though. Things that need doing:

Replace Graphics Card with a higher memory DX10 number
Replace Pentium 4 with Core2 Duo
Replace one Optical Drive with Blu-Ray capable equivalent
Replace one optical drive with HD-DVD capable equivalent.
Maybe add another Half-Gig of RAM

That'll bring it in line with the peripherals and its peers - read, my brother's media centre monster.

Lastamly, I'm soft-announcing a delay in Six's development owing to other commitments the team has. I can however just about promise a 2008 launch. We may launch, however, with some of our niftiest features not in place yet. The content uploading and everything will be there, it's just of the flashy stuff like in-page notifications may be released in our 1.0.6, 1.1.2, 1.1.8 etc. updates.

"We do these things not because they are easy, but because they are hard."

Jens

PS: Anyone else think an open, multi-platform competitor to Xbox/Games for Windows LIVE would be a great idea? I sure do. And I have some ideas for it.You better believe it. Anyone who would like to see that happen, get in touch.

HD-DVD Vs. Blu-Ray: The Technical View

In this cross-blog feature, I'm taking a look at the optical media format war currently raging across the world.

Optical media is currently dominated by the ubiquitous Digital Versatile Disc, DVD. The DVD was in the right place at the right time, smashed VHS thanks to better pricing, better quality and more features.

It also schooled the older CD standard in the data optical disc market, thanks in large part to an increase of over 300% in per-layer capacity. Most households in the West now contain at least one DVD player, many have several. Additionally, most computers ship with one or 2 DVD drives.

But with the HD era approaching and the capacity of the DVD not really sufficient to hold enough content at HD to justify the effort - never mind the increasingly bloated size of video games - a new standard is needed. 2 competitors have emerged to take this role.

HD-DVD, Toshiba and NEC's direct successor to the DVD (In name only, it is technologically different) and the one endorsed by the DVD Forum and Sony's Blu-Ray Disc.

Both have upsides. In this part of my cross-blog feature I'll be looking at the discs from a technological and data perspective.

The primary concern on this front is the overall capacity. Blu-Ray wins out at 25GB per layer, supporting up to 2 layers for a total of 50GB. HD-DVD uses 15GB layes, so a single-layer HD-DVD has 10GB less than a Blu-Ray disc with the same number of layers. This gap increases to fully 20GB - the difference between the two formats capacity-per-layer.

That would seem to close the debate. But, alas, no.

For you see, the DVD Forum has an HD-DVD spec for a triple-layer, 51GB disc. I don't know where they found the 6GB from either, but the spec exists. This means that the higher capacity format is technically HD-DVD with the caveat of being only at the high-end. And it is a piddling advantage.

So the next consideration from a technical standpoint is read/write speed. Blu-Ray is an easy victor here over HD-DVD being 10-18Mbit/s faster. HD-DVD is roughly 3 times as fast as DVD.

Of course, these numbers being both significantly faster than DVD reduces the importance of the comparison, but that is beside the point. From a purely technical standpoint, Blu-Ray is - by and large - an easy winner.

All Your Time Are Belong To Us: The Technical view
All Your Disney: A Consumer and Entertainment Value Comparison
All Your Time Are Belong To Us: It's Not That Simple

Major Announcements

Some of you will be aware that I have in the past written for various different publications, premium and free. For example, I founded and edited the world's only Gizmondo Magazine (An E-Zine called GizzedUp, formed from the ashes of a website and blog with similar content), served as Editor in Chief of a progressive Nintendo website and had a 4-page article printed in a national magazine.

Of course, my major writing task is currently this, the free and simple All Your Time Are Belong To Us blog. This and its sister blog All Your Disney form what I think of as the All Your Blog Network and provide me with a great outlet for my writing. I would also like to take this oppurtunity to encourage reader feedback. I accept all comments except those which are factually inacurate or unnecesarily abusive and I moderate comments Post-Hoc, so the offending comment does appear and is removed when I discover it. I check through Comments almost every day.

As part of this encouragement to provide feedback, I'd like to encourage you to suggest any topics you want me to throw my two cents into here, on All Your Disney or on some future member of the All Your Blog Network. On that note, feel free to also suggest themes for new blogs you want to see me write.


But the most exciting thing I'm looking for your input on, is books.

Starting this month, I will be embarking on writing two books. One fiction, the other non-fiction.

The former is a story about an engineer inside a fictional MMORPG who ends up joining a clan who are implicated in a scandal that errupts in the game's forums and leads the Admins to take action. The story is mainly about how fallible those with power are and why you should not blindly trust those with authority or those who claim to be experts without giving valid proof.

The other book is a history of gaming over th past decade and a half told from the perspective of the gamers. By that I mean, it will deal with social trends in gaming as well as things like system releases. I'd like to encourage input for that. Tell me your stories.

I'm hoping to deliver the former book in time for Christmas, with the other due in or before summer next year.

But that's not all. These books are just the first 2, I want you guys to suggest ideas for future books. I'm mainly looking for non-fiction ideas as I have a few fiction ideas already, but feel free to suggest a story you'd like to see told if you so wish.

I'll provide more details when the time is right.

Yours,
Jens

Telephone

Well, I bought the phone. There were only 3 left and 2 had fairly beat up boxes. But I got one and it's sitting on my desk right now, just waiting for me to grab the necessary box to connect it to the VoIP network.

I'll be doing a review just as soon as I have it set up. I'll be releasing it initially on All Your Disney, but I might reprint it here with a tighter focus on telephony rather than the phone.

Phones are a really interesting area right now. Between Apple's iPhone and the OpenMoko project, mobile phones are going through their long-awaited revolution. Meanwhile, VoIP is making "landline" telephony simpler and better - both through cheaper services and great ideas like GrandCentral.

And all the while, the conventional landline operators are making efforts to move outward - BT for example is launching an IPTV service - and their new competitors are moving in on their territory - BSkyB offers Broadband now..!?

Yes, it's truly a time of change for telephony.

And meanwhile, the allegedly advancing television sector continues to diapoint. Between lacklustre uptake of HD broadcast and slow changes to aging systems, TV has lost a lot of its wonder.

A lot of the problem is that companies are failing to see the bigger picture. The internet is the obvious venue for expansion, yet the companies with the power continue to limit the expansion of TV into the internet. BT Vision has internet, but it's a sandbox.

iTunes TV Shows is great, but the broadcasters are being jerks.

BBC's iPlayer is hideoulsy crippled.

4OD makes me feel sick just thinking about it.

Come on TV companies, get your heads in the game.

Jens Out

Telephony

Recently, for whatever reason, I have gone from having virtually no interest in telephony to being into it in a big way. For instance, I'm planning on buying a (Admittedly novelty, but that's just who I am. For those of you wondering, yes it's Disney, no it's not Mickey. Assuming I manage to get it, I'll review it on All Your Disney) phone soon to plant on my desk.

Now, I'm not planning on using it as a standard phone. I'll be getting ahold of a VoIP system, most likely Tesco Internet Phone, and using it as a VoIP phone. But there's the kicker, I will be giving that number as the primary number for people to reach me on - previously I simply gave my mobile number.

This "home" or "desk" phone (Depending on how you look at it) is the precursor to my subscribing to Google's GrandCentral. As soon as that puppy hits the United Kingdom, I'll be signing up and merging my mobile and desk numbers into one. Perhaps +441322555367 (+44-13-CALL-JENS) or something like that.

I'm not sure what it is, but something has definitely prompted me to take more of an interest in telephony recently. For example, whilst Vonage and indeed Tesco Internet Phone (Previously) never held any interest for me, when I heard about GrandCentral, I had kittens.

I'll update you with more later along in my telephony plans.

Jens Out.

Feel Good.

High School Musical 2

I just previewed the music from the sequel to Disney's smash hit High School Musical. High School Musical 2's not showing until next month over here, but it's alreadys et records Stateside.

Anyway, the music. I gotta say, I loved the music of the original, but I felt it was artificialy bolstered by a reprisal and the Album by a couple of "alternative versions". The music in this sequel is almost all the equal of the best of the original. And there's more of it.

From the upbeat "What time is it?", a catch number as good as or better than the original's "Stick to the Status Quo" and "Breaking Free" to the spectacularly fun "You Are the Music in Me", High School Musical 2 is full of hits.

But it's not just the "catchy" numbers that are fantastic, "Gotta Go My Own Way" is superb, better than "When there was Me and You" from the original in every way.

Another standout is "All For One", a number similar in content to the original's "We're all in this together". It is equally as fun and catchy as its predecessor.

To summarise, whatever you thought of High School Musical (I myself thought it was delightful), High School Musical 2 is both its musical superior and a standout musical in modern times.

At least give it a try.

In other Disney news, further to my plan to seek to become a Cast Member at a Disney Store, I am considering starting a Disney Blog, partner to this one, about working for Disney and Disney news. Let me know if you like the idea.

Jens Out