Thought it was probably time that I laid out some of my initial thoughts of the Nokia N800 that I won at LugRadio Live. I don’t have any pictures / screenshots at the moment, but I promise I’ll get some up soon.

Background

It’s possible that I get some of these technical details a bit wrong - apologies in advance
The Nokia N800 is an “internet tablet” - it’s not a mobile phone, or a PDA. If anything, it’s more like a very small laptop. It runs on Linux, using the Hildon desktop, based on Gtk. It has built in wifi and bluetooth, and a beautiful screen. It even has stereo speakers. It has 2 SD Card slots, now compatible with SD cards up to 8GB in size. I believe both of these are hot-swappable. It comes with a web browser, googletalk for IM, and video conferencing with the built-in webcam, plus a media player, and a few other apps. It supports input via a stylus, or using your finger. It connects to your PC via USB, but doesn’t have any syncing software, nor does it charge over USB. There is a stereo headphone jack that also supports a headphone+microphone set on a single jack.

Some Thoughts

The screen is beautiful. It really is. It’s really crisp and bright. The wifi is good quality, and it has become my tool of choice for small bits of web surfing while at home. The clever bit of software that detects if you’re using the stylus or your thumb and displays different menus/keyboard is an inspired piece of work, although if I was doing a lot of typing I’d probably need to get some sort of bluetooth keyboard.
Being basically a Linux PC makes this a massively versatile device. There is tonnes of software available, and most of it is free. I have a few good tidbits installed:

• Maemo Mapper - a free bit of mapping software that can download maps from various sources, including Google Maps and Open Streetmap. If I had a bluetooth GPS and the flite voice software, it could even be a sat nav unit.
• SCUMMVM - for playing old LucasArts games. Great fun! (I am most of the way through Flight of the Amazon Queen thanks to my commute
• Terminal/SSH - surprisingly useful
• AisleRiot - Solitaire with knobs on

There are, however, 3 big things I dislike about the device:

• The N800’s predecessor, the N770, had a hard cover to protect it - the N800 only has a little cloth sleeve which, while being some protection from scratches, etc, wouldn’t stop the screen getting cracked in an impact.
• The battery life is quite poor - even on my short commute usage, in standby for the rest of the day and night, I probably need to charge every 1.5 days. This is very dependent on how much you use wireless, I believe. And it has got better with the latest firmware. However, it’s really a problem considering that:
• You can’t charge the device through the USB port. This was a real plus of my previous media player. Being able to plug in at work (plugging in non-tested devices to the main sockets is prohibited) was a great benefit.

The other thing that I need to get sorted out is Bluetooth networking - the N800 doesn’t support the wireless setup at work, so I’d like to be able to connect through the bluetooth on my laptop, but this is not part of the default setup, which is a shame.

All-in-all, this is an amazing little device. I have lots of things I still want to try on it (installing Django, play with GPS, install a calendar and syncing, etc), but I think it will be a faithful friend for a long while.

mrBen

After a long (make that a looooooonnnnnnng) amount of time I’ve finally re-installed TADS (the Text Adventure Development System) on the pc at home. And I ve actually started using it.

So far, using a map I created the last time I rattled on about this, I’ve got 11 locations, one character, a handful of objects and a puzzle.

I know that might not seem like much but I’m really happy with how it’s started. And I’ve only really been at it a few days now.

I’m hoping to have loads more done by the end of the weekend, especially since I’ve got Monday off for “Creative Purposes”. Creative purposes being catching up with the novel and doing some extra work on the text adventure.

BigAl

Okay, after a brief hiatus at work (it’s been really busy this week, I’m actually having to work for my money) I’ve managed to push the number of locations in the adventure to 150.

Hopefully this afternoon I’ll have a wee bit of time to push it up and over the 200 locations mark. At that point I think I’ll be rewriting the quests/storyline to see where we can go from here.

The ojects are being kept loosely as notes at the moment pending the completion of the storyline/map as are the characters (and dialogue).

So far, that still seems like a huge project, but it’s coming together steadily. At least it’s coming together faster than my novel is.

BigAl

Doing some adventure game planning to keep my mind off the approaching nuptials…
So with 90+ locations and a lot of them re-mapped with more details I’ll share what I’ve done location-wise.

There is:

• a creepy forest,
• a mad scientist’s lab,
• a river/lake,
• a wizards tower,
• a submarine base,
• and a beach.

Locations I want to include are:

• a village,
• a city,
• a mountain fortress,
• a desert/oasis,
• and, of course, a multi-level dungeon.

Every big adventure game has to have some kind of dungeon, and it has to be packed with monsters, treasure and adventure. So I think that I will be concentrating on the big dungeon today.

That ought to keep me busy.

BigAl

A while ago I came up with the (possibly ill-advised?) idea of creating my own text adventure game.

Why?

Well back in the day, when I owned a Sinclair ZX Spectrum, I loved playing text adventures and even wrote a few as well. They were simple and not particularly good, but it was the creativity of the story and the locations that I enjoyed mostly. The programming, such as it was, was a neccessary evil and my lack of interest at the time explained why the games were so bad.

So who’s going to program it?

Hopefully mrBen will be instrumental in helping with the engine. But that’s quite a way off yet.

How far have you got?

I’ve about 90+ locations at the moment with around half of them fleshed out. The characters, objects and dialogue are coming at a slower pace and the story line is still being worked on, as is the quest list.

Why are you talking to yourself like this?

Isn’t this how it’s done?

When will it be ready?

Ah, ha, ha, hah. Nice one.

BigAl