Preview - Ayreon 01011001 Artwork

Over the last few days, artwork previews from the new Ayreon album, 01011001, have been released on the official Ayreon site. Some of these images are familiar as they featured in the album's trailer, though in a much smaller scale. There is a different image for each track, with the exception of tracks 2 […]

Why arguing about religion is futile

Over the past few months the number of arguments, debates and discussions I've had on religion has been exponential - since I decided to fully reject the idea of a god, it seems like the opportunities arrive daily. And, god (no pun intended) it ain't easy. Hitler was a Christian … Stalin was an atheist. I'm sick of hearing those two names. The first thing people have to realise is that in their purest forms, neither religion nor atheism promotes immoral behaviour. As someone who has spent a large part of their life as a Christian, I'd define the fundamental nature of each as follows.

My Top Five Live Bands

Through my life I've seen a whole load of live bands, from festivals to concert halls. Although I count myself fairly lucky, there are so many I haven't yet seen and heard in the flesh - but for now, here's my five favourite live performances, over the past ten or so years.
NINE INCH NAILS […]

Please, Celebrities, Stop Exposing Yourselves …

I moderate a forum on a different site, and lately we've been having a spam problem. Each new captcha or human verification we add just triggers whoever writes these bots to work around it, sometimes in a matter of days. It's an incredibly popular site to begin with, so adding admin verification would be impractical.

There […]

How to Attempt to Get a Novel Published

Hell, I haven't published a novel. But I've tried harder, and got further, than most. I remember trawling huge numbers of sites trying to find some master plan, some unstoppable secret weapon to help me get my first novel published. What I can tell you is that the guides that are out there are largely contradictory and often misleading. And whilst the business of writing and publishing novels is a difficult, time-consuming, and ruthless one, there are a few golden rules that you can try to stay within if you're really serious about becoming the next Stephen King, Philip Pullman or (god help us) Dan Brown.

Beginning programming with C#

You've read Daniel's article on becoming a coder, you've had a look at PHP/Python, and maybe even written some programs. Now you've decided to move on and create some nifty code that uses a GUI, with menus, buttons, and all the other things that users expect. Using Python or PHP this can be done, but with rather a lot of difficulty.

In my opinion, a much better solution, especially for Windows developers, is to use Microsoft's C# (pronounced as C-Sharp) language. You can download Visual Studio Express 2008 C# edition for free, a complete C# Integrated Development Environment, with an easy-to-use form editor and a nice code editor. Also in the install program is the option to install SQL Server Express, a database server that works well with C#. SQL Server is a nice addition to have, if you decide to do some programs with databases, but be wary that it is an additional ~30mb to download.

The Man from Earth

This is the second film, the first being The Fountain, that I've watched recently which tackles the question: "What if you could live forever?" The Man From Earth has an uncomplicated story, though there are a few twists as the film progresses, which doesn't distract from the intellectual debate which is the focal point of the film. It begins by introducing a college professor who is leaving his job after 10 years. His impromptu farewell quickly turns into an emotionally involving debate when he, almost casually, reveals that he is 14000 years old. With characters from varying fields of science (such as a Biologist, Anthropologist, Archaeologist, Christian Literalist, and Psychologist) the discussion covers all the issues about a potential immortal man, from the science of it to the religious implications.

The Nine Billion names of God

Arthur C. Clarke wrote a classic SF short story in the 1950s called The Nine Billion names of God, in which he discusses a computer designed and built for a Buddhist monastery to calculate the billions of possible names possible for God, using the entirety of the possible combinations of available characters.
"We use a special […]

The Golden Compass

The first film to be based on Phillip Pullman's "His Dark Materials" trilogy. This was produced by New Line Cinema, who also made the Lord Of The Rings films, and they are obviously hoping to repeat that success with these films.

Set in a parallel world, where humans have external souls or 'daemons', usually in the form of animals. A young girl, Lyra (Dakota Blue Richards - great name!), living in an alternative Oxford, embarks on series of adventures which take her to the island of Svalbard in the arctic ocean.

On the way she encounters a Texan airship captain, Sam Elliot, and hires the services of an alcoholic armoured fighting polar bear, voiced by Ian McKellen. Daniel Craig, the latest Bond, plays an Indiana Jones type adventurous scholar and his co-star from Casino Royale, Eva Green, plays the queen of the witches.

Using Eventscripts to mod CS Source

 
My last article detailed how to write a very simple mod for Counter Strike Source servers; here, I plan to go into more detail. I will assume basic knowledge of Python, and an understanding of how to create a simple addon on your source server - essentially I plan to discuss Eventscripts' API and features.
Userids
Each […]