I wish I were there.

E3 is coming up this week. Nuff said...........

Ok maybe not enough is said but you gotta believe it, the world's best (ok formerly best) gaming conference is in California. More of an expo for companies than gamers, E3 is the equivilant of comicon...but for gamers.

This year will see, the much anticipated, launch of Star Wars: Force Unleashed which is said to revolutionise how game developers will use the Playstation 3's Unreal engine.

Meanwhile the industry is reporting sales of $21 billion dollars with GTA IV being the biggest release of the year. Beating Hollwood movies. Like I said last year, in my thesis, games are more than here to stay.

I only wish I was there to see it all and know it all before everyone else. Hopefully this new job I have at ITWeb will send me there next year.

Attack of technology

Well it had to happen sooner or later. It was ten years to this day when my prep school principle, Mr Brady, invited parents and pupils alike to an evening none of us would forget...or so we thought. Over 100 parents and children crammed into the Champagnat Hall (then converted into the prep school library at St Charles College) to hear some IT guru talk about the future of classrooms.

We were balled away to hear that in that coming year (1999 by my estimates) every pupil in St Charles would have an Apple eMate 300.

This personal notebook that was built by Apple to be used by personal assistants and students was going be the arsenal of the student of the future.

I had whet dreams about this technological wonder. With only 1MB of DRAM and 2MB of flash memory it wasn't much to be impressed with but I loved it nonetheless. I had daydreams of lines of SCC boys walking to school with no schools bags but their eMate's in their hands. When we were told to take out writing material we'd instead pull out our eMates and happily type away.

Unfortunately the eMate didn't make it's grand debut at St Charles, instead spending a few months in the library being lent out to boys who don't have PCs at home if not being the personal toy of the senior teachers. My dream was dashed and the techno revolution that was promised by the Apple salesman died at conception.

Imagine my surprise, ten years on, that schools in the United States are going through a phase where online courses, laptops, and virtual teachers are making textbooks, paper and notebooks redundant (http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080707/tc_nm/usa_education_technology_dc;_ylt=Ase4bfR_slku9G.ryZS2M8IjtBAF) My dream realised. It has taken years of failed experimentation with Apple iBooks and other laptops for the world's frontrunner in technology to finally hail the coming of the virtual classroom.

The children of this era may be using Apple Macbooks that are far superior than their eMate predessesor, yet the result is almost the same. Classrooms have become the cyber cafes where students are supervised instead of where they are force-fed education. Children can learn those subjects which eeke them out in the most rudimentary way - video games.

The technological revolution is here and my only regret is that I am not in the classroom banging away my english comprehension test on my laptop.

Indie game developers unite

I recently read a report on gamesindustry.biz in which Darren Jobling, director of business development at Eutechnyx told developers not to sell their companies and instead remain independant.

I have long foretold of a time when independent games developers will return and bring us cheap and entertaining games. In this era of large games companies (your Ubisofts, EA Games and Namcos) it is refreshing to see a big advising smaller companies against being assimilated into the large corporate wheel.

Independent developers mean a larger variation in the genres of games developed and hopefully the emergance of developers such as Impact Games who brought us Peacemaker.

I'M BACK!!!!!!

Man I hate blogging. At times I wonder what's the point. I personally believe that blogging is unlike a column. You see a column is something that an experienced writer is given curatorship and is expected to contribute to come rain or sunshine. A blog is just a blog and I can disappear and not have to account to anyone just because I didn't write in it.

That being the case we do have much to catch up on.

Wow, where to start.

Firstly, those darn xenophobia attacks. Yes they still so get mentioned at every braai and pub I go to, so I guess I still can blloooooggg about them. Yet it was a tragic time in our country and one that has made ashamed to be associated with the Zulu tribe. During that time I worked on a documentary with Australian journalist Ginny Stein (see http://news.sbs.com.au/dateline/fear_and_foreigners_in_south_africa_548353ateline/fear_and_foreigners_in_south_africa_548353) and we explored the underlying issues behind the attacks. In my opinion there was no justification for the killing of people, even if that person seemed to have stolen your house.

Yet what really eecked me out was the manner in which foreign correspondents go about getting the story. Forgetting that they are tourists in the country, they act brash and insist on getting into peoples' spaces as if it's nothing. And don't get me started on the accent.

And the other big news of the last couple of months must be the oil price. Woo hoo. The oil price. One thing comes to mind when I think about the oil price is why are we still using carbon fuels to power our economies. I mean seriously didn't anyone think that oil, being a scarce commodity, would run out at some stage? And by anyone I mean our elected "leaders".

Well we find ourselves in a collective pickle where the price of a single commodity is having an adverse effect on the prices of food, transport and our general well-being. If there was ever a time when leadership was needed it is now.

And then we have the ANC Youth League, Joke League, Adolescent League...whatever you want to call it. I call a bunch of morons over 30 who control an organisation that was created by the stalwarts of our democracy. Or in short, an absolute shame.

Julias Malema goes infront of thousands callin for blood-shed in the name of Zuma our art about to be tried for corruption. When an overzealous junior despot gives a hate speech without being reprimanded....Nuff said.

Black and maybe not that beautiful

Wow. The race row continues. Seems as though Oluchi is running out of cash money from her previous jobs so she's pulling the race card on SA fashion mags and everyone is falling for it. It's funny how The Times seems to be trumping her "race" card when the Sowetan (a paper perceived as black-centric) is taking the road less travelled and supporting the "racist" magazines.

I throw my weight behind Sowetan (for the first time) on this matter. This girl, who won Face of Africa a million years ago, is playing the card that most people don't want to touch with a ten-foot pole. It was only a few weeks ago that the Black Journalists Forum caused an uproar, a few months before that and gung-ho Johann was capping some hapless blacks in Skieliek, and I see today that The Times is running the Waterkloof Vier (I mean Four) who last graced our pages when they convicted.

So I guess race is the new, or rather current, Maddy McCann. Sad days when people try to move forward with this sensitive of taboos. If Oluchi gets her way with this story who knows what that'll mean for the rest of the country. Let's not forget that she was late for the scheduled photoshoots, acting so primadonna by suggesting that a tight-on-deadline magazine work aroudn her forgotten ass. Soon incompetent employees will trump this card blaming their respective industries of racism when in reality it's a dog-eat-dog world and calling racism is like kicking the poor mutt in the balls without putting up a proper fight.

Cheese dicks of the year

Let me take this opportunity to thank my lucky stars that I currently live in Gauteng. Yes the crime is bad and traffic sucks but at least I wasn't back at my alma mater getting mace in my face from the cheese dicks of the year.

Imagine my surprise on Monday morning when one of my colleagues tells me that 2 of my favorite drinking holes in Stellies (being Bohemia and Die Mystic Boer) were raided by South Africa's finest. And not only that but there is a video on the net that shows the "police" giving the cops who beat down Rodney King a run for their money.

The most disturbing thing is that had this been a year ago, one of those hapless blokes getting pepperspray all over their Nikes, could've been me.

3 weeks later

Hi people. Sorry for the delay in blog posts. Life has been ever so busy what with Castro retiring before making his half-century and Bob celebrating his 81st day on this planet that he loves to smight with mere presence. Yes the world is being run by the dogs and boy does it make everyday life so interesting.

Seriously, imagine if those people whom everyone points to as signs that the world is ending, were to disappear. Mugabe out of Zim, Castro no longer smoking cigars in his Cuban office, and Kim Jung Il sent to the rice pads in rural North Korea. How boring life would be. Papers would have to report on some politician opening a new department, or a kitten that got stuck up in a tree.

So when you take that arbitrary minute off to think about the disastrous wonders of this world, think tp yourself how much more interesting life is that Uncle Bob and his kinfolk are still running those corners of the earth miles away from you.

Happy birthday Bob, enjoy retirement Castro and long live the great demi-god Kim Jung Il.