Now I’ve been doing IT work for approx 14 years and never have I heard any one make the statement that it’s “ok” to take a network down during business hours or during peak times. NEVER. In this case I wager during the middle of the day probably isn’t peak but I’d guess 5pm-11pm when every one is off work and home from school is probably peak.  I guess I give them credit for doing it closer to the middle of the week but wouldn’t 3am-5pm have been a better time?

Yet lately both in this instance, and where I work, it seems to be increasingly more acceptable to take something down when ever you darn well feel like it. Did I miss something? Are we becoming so reliant on our network 24×7 that it no longer matters when it becomes unavailable because it has to happen some time eventually any way? Or is it that we’re increasingly bowing to what management wants? The symptom is obvious but what do you think the cause is?

1. Grab Chainfire3D https://market.android.com/details?id=eu.chainfire.cf3d  The free version should work just fine.
2. Grab the Chainfire plugins which include the tegra plugin. http://www.megaupload.com/?d=4P9LEW7P
3. Finally grab the Shadowgun 1.0.2 APK file. I do not condone piracy. You do this at your own risk. Buy the game it’s that good! http://brockh.at/tiOUcP (google search)
4. Install chain fire.
5. Install Shadowgun.
6. Unrar the plugins(should have 3 zip files).
7. Copy the zip files to your SD card.
8. Open Chainfire install the chainfire driver(requires phone reboot).
9. Open Chainfire again. Choose Install plugins/shaders.
10. Install the Nvidia plugin.
11. Go to “Per-app OpenGL settings”
12. Tap Shadowgun
13. Uncheck “Use default settings”
14. Check “Reduce texture size” and “Disable MapBuffer emu”.

You can now run the game. If you want it even more buttery smooth and don’t mind giving up a little visual quality you can also check “reduce texture quality”. It’s also worth noting this little tweak could be applied to any tegra game you want to run and can also be used to increase performance for demanding non-tegra games especially if you are on an older device.

Happy hunting!

I work in a place where metrics are king. To the detriment of the common worker. I waste upwards of 50% of my time involved in activities designed to gather metrics(in a flawed manner) when my job is to keep the servers that make the business run up and running.

I fear that such preaching of metrics metrics metrics is really a bane in disguise. I understand we need to have a way to measure success, or failure, to have knowledge to change our processes and try to make them better but at the same time we’re all ready facing an over load of data and letting that interfere with getting actual work done is a very real thing. As I stated above it happens almost daily where I work. This is going to become a bigger and bigger problem as more and more devices and methods to gather metrics grows. Be cautious that you don’t hinder your businesses growth because your employees are spinning their wheels on metrics.

When there are to many numbers it makes it harder to chose which numbers are the important ones.

Update:

Thanks to my buddy Mike for catching this. This screen shot was taken from his Google Buzz feed. For those who may not be aware I work for the company of note.

It can’t be the hardware. The hardware is low to mid-range android fare. It’s certainly not the software. I mean it’s Android right. We all know what to expect there. So all that really leaves is the elimination of choice. The thing is the much anticipated Ipad competitor because Amazon has taken away any decision making requirements you might experience. You can watch Amazon streaming video, download apps from the Amazon app store get Kindle books and get your music from the iTunes…errr…Amazon music store.

It would be my hope that you as a human being can understand how having choice removed is a bad thing. You are no longer able or allowed to do what you want with what you paid for. People who are ok with this situation are often referred to as sheep, or lemmings. And the worst part is that the internet’s taste makers as they are called(IRL big media) are all lined up and on board for this.

As much as I enjoy Amazon and their services I have to urge you, dear reader, to go out, buy your self a Moto Xoom, Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 or Acer Iconia and enjoy your(mostly) choice filled standard Android experience.

For starters I wasn’t even invited to the closed beta a month or two ago. Never mind the fact that I’ve beta tested for a decade or more, have run a beta for my own game, played Battlefield since it’s inception and until recently owned Bad Company 2 on every system it exists on and even on the PC *TWICE!*. All that aside, here is my experience with the current beta.

Again I wasn’t invited to the PC version. Mainly because I chose not to buy my way in to it. My buddy Chris got his invite, downloaded the game and…can’t play it. First it only works on IE(officially any way) and second when he tries to launch the game he runs it, it finds a server and then the website tries to launch the game it won’t run. I spent about 45 mins googling and trying different possible solutions and nothing fixed it. This is 2 x 45mins so a total of an hour and a half man hours and no solution. He had spent some time before I got home from work trying to get it to work too so all told I’m sure it was more than 2hrs spent trying to fix it. Not a great start.

Tonight I discover that I’m able to download the PS3 beta no key or anything required. This, unfortunately, made a worse impression than the game not launching at all on the PC. Now before you jump down my throat about how it’s “beta” etc. and I should expect some issues. I fully understand that. Recall my comment above about having beta tested for over a decade. This, this thing, is a giant pile of garbage. It’s hard to know where to begin. Being as close to official launch as it is I assume they are throwing preview code out to aid in hyping the game. But lets be honest this is not what you want the first impression of your game to be.

For starters I had a tough time discerning lag from glitches from lag hacking. On more occasions than I can count I would watch an enemy player appear out of no where and kill a team mate or, with no footstep noises or other indication of his presence he would kill me from behind in our spawn. On one occasion I turned a full 360 degrees seeing no one only to be knifed from behind in an area with out cover. I mention the lag hacking or possible exploitation of the maps because there were several times the kill cam would seem to be moving in the floor. Another occasion I was covering a door and facing a teammate who was also covering the door from the other side. An enemy simply appeared from no where in front of my team mate and knifed him in the face before he could respond. I managed to kill the guy but only after he turned around and simultaneously killed me too.

This lag, or what ever it is continued in to other areas of the game. I would frequently throw grenades that an enemy would stand directly over as it went off, he would shoot me and kill me and his kill cam would show 100% health. Also while attempting to fire, even sited, I would be struck not only by recoil but apparently by epilepsy too. It would appear that recoil was happening but also that my character was sporadically bending at the waist. The flash light is way way way over powered. From a range of 30-40 meters away it would obscure a 10-15 meter radius keeping you from being able to hit not only the enemy carrying it but any enemies in the immediate vicinity.  It’s like they ripped one of the lights from the 9/11 memorial and attached it to a weapon rail. Last but not least were the weird buggy smoke trails lit like muzzle flash but with no one present. Other than obscuring vision and flashing sporadically they don’t move, they don’t do anything. Like a programmer was testing muzzle flashes but forgot to remove the particle system and lighting. Finally about every 3rd spawn or so I would spawn with no retical.

The interface has about as many problems. The outfitting menu is some what similar to Battlefield Bad Company 2′s but they’ve added so many do-dads and cruft elements that it’s just a visual mess. The kit selection menu was kind of jammed towards the bottom like they hadn’t scaled the elements for console and half covered the deploy button indicator. Weapons, as you would expect being metal, are a grey color and much of the kill indicator text is a sort of semi-translucent blue. When you’re weapon is sited the text is nearly invisible. I couldn’t tell if I got a kill at range or not due to this which essentially left me chasing ghosts on occasion.

All said this has been one of the worst beta’s I’ve ever played. I can give a lot of forgiveness to a game since I know what it takes to make one but this, I’d call this beta and probably wouldn’t let any one with out an NDA see it. This has completely re-enforced my belief that not buying this game is the right thing to do beta or not.

1. Backup your data! Use a second usb drive to make a backup through the backup utility. Move important saves to the cloud saves storage. You lose your data it’s your own fault!
2. Remove the old drive and install the new one. Unfortunately the person who made the video disabled embedding. Who know why but the link to the video is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5sRkj89axOU
3. When you start up the system for the first time with the new hard drive installed, you’ll get a message saying “The system software cannot be run correctly”. Don’t panic.
4. Format a usb flash drive with a FAT32 file system.
5. On the usb flash drive create a folder called PS3 and inside the PS3 folder create a folder called UPDATE.
6. Download the latest version of PS3 firmware from here http://us.playstation.com/support/systemupdates/ps3/pc_update/index.htm
7. What you will download is a file called PS3UPDAT.PUP. Put this file in the UPDATE folder on the usb flash drive.
8. Take your usb flash drive from your PC and plug it in to your PS3.
9. Press and hold the ‘start’ and ‘select’ buttons at the same time briefly and you should launch in to the formatting and re-install process.
10. Follow the prompts.