Tarique Naseem

It’s humbling to know that some of the games that I developed, many moons ago now, have entered VR folklore. In fact the word Virtuality, the name of the company that I worked for at the time, is now used as a noun!

I have been searching for screenshots and any footage of the games for some time now, just for posterity, without much luck. That is until I found this blog post from Arcade Heroes, where they pay homage to the old systems we developed. They include this video snippet from a TV show that aired in the US many years ago, which showcased our old systems, including footage of my old games!

Well, okay, by today’s standards they’re very basic looking, but you have to remember that these were developed prior to any mainstream 3D hardware becoming available, even predating the original 3DFX cards by some years (remember them!?).

Also note that back then the systems were well ahead of their time. For instance, we had developed our own graphics cards with onboard memory to store all the model data. The GPU would also run in parallel to the host system (PC or Amiga 3000). Later the cards were upgraded with on-board sound and hardware MPEG support. The graphics cards would run in parallel to the host computer, so the game code was actually a multi-threaded application (graphics and sound handling on the card, game code on the host). The boards were even capable of being run in an SLI-type configuration, with up to 8 cards in parallel!

If this all sounds familiar, then you’d be right… Most of these things have only just come to fruition within the last couple of years on the latest crop of graphics hardware, and yet we were developing these systems back in the early 90’s!

Anyway, it’s nice to see some footage of my old games finally. I’ll now have to dig around in my loft to see if I can find some more screenshots (or anything!) for the stuff we developed. Brings back fond memories… :)

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Recently the teacher in my son’s class has decided on a complete ban of pencil cases. Parents are now asked to remove them from the children’s school bags.

When I quizzed the teacher, she explained that the pencil cases could contain dangerous items like… sharp pencils(!) that the children could use to poke each other with (not that that’s actually happened yet). She went on to state that there’s no real reason for the children to have them in any case, as the school provided them with all the necessary writing equipment.

Now, I don’t know about you, but this just sounds completely ridiculous. Children have  been taking pencil cases into school since the dawn of man! Why is it such a problem all of a sudden? Are 6 year old’s now potential security threats?

I wonder if they’ll eventually allow the use of clear plastic pencil cases, containing items of 100mm in length or less, thus allowing the teacher to screen them for potential weaponry?

As for the contents being dangerous, let’s see… My son’s pencil case contains a pencil, a ruler, pencil sharpener and a rubber. Yes, I can see where she’s coming from. These are obviously weapons of maths instruction.

(She never said anything about the selection of flick knives and AK47 in his school bag, so I assume they’re okay)

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I’ve just been watching the Labour party news conference and noticed that our beloved Chancellor of the Exchequer looks remarkably like Hawk from Buck Rogers. Could this be the same person?

More evidence can be gleaned from their respective Bio’s:

Hawk: “Hawk is frequently seen on the bridge of the Searcher, handling the ships controls and performing other responsible duties.”

Alistair Darling: “Alistair is frequently seen at Downing Street, handling the country’s finances and responsible for losing CD’s containing child benefit records for over 25 million people.”

Just thought I’d share. :)

Edit: wtf is it with Hawk anyway? He wears a hawk wig and even his ship is hawk shaped. We’re descended from monkeys (allegedly), but we don’t wear monkey hats and drive monkey shaped cars! (Thanks Imran).

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It appears that some users, like myself, have been having problems connecting to the Windows Live Messenger service using Adium. Apparently the problem is with Adium 1.1.3 itself, and there is a fix in the works.

However, you can perform a temporary fix in the meantime, which has worked for me, as long as you’re comfortable working in the terminal. Basically, you need to add the following lines to your /etc/hosts file:

65.54.179.216 nexus.passport.com
65.54.239.20 messenger.hotmail.com
65.54.183.203 login.live.com

To do this, run up Terminal and follow the quick step by step below:

sudo su (enter your password)
cp /etc/hosts /etc/hosts.bak
echo 65.54.239.20 messenger.hotmail.com >> /etc/hosts
echo 65.54.179.216 nexus.passport.com >> /etc/hosts
echo 65.54.183.203 login.live.com >> /etc/hosts
exit

Just remember, this is a temporary fix until Adium is updated. I suspect you’ll have to remove these changes once you update, in which case simply enter the following:

sudo su (enter password)
cp /etc/hosts.bak /etc/hosts
exit

Thanks to the peeps at CocoaForge for the tips. :)

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Apple boast about having 300+ new features within their new OS, but conveniently forget to mention the features that they decided to remove!

One such feature, the ability to send & receive SMS messages from within Address Book via a bluetooth enabled phone, appears to be missing. The call options have also disappeared.

I initially thought that the plugin for my phone would need to be updated, but it transpires that these features have actually been removed, despite the fact that they were there in the Leopard betas.

Very annoying, especially as I spent £1.39 on that plugin. That’s like a months wages in some parts of Yorkshire.

So Apple, come clean… It’s 300+ new features and 1 removed feature!

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Well, I never made it to OpenCoffee Leeds (again!). One day I will actually turn up. Honest. The event, as usual, was a great success.

It sounds like some interesting peeps are turning up, a few of whom I really want to meet up with like Reinhold Behringer, who’s doing some interesting work in Augmented Reality. This is an area I had some involvement in during my BAe / Virtuality days.

Anyway, great work on setting these events up, Imran. :) View the full write up here.

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Rich Gibson, a fellow twitterer, overheard a conversation between two people. One of them stated that they had stopped using twitter as it made the smart people they knew sound stupid.

I thought it was an interesting point, but never thought much about it at the time. That is until I started to redesign my site. I decided to add a Twitter badge to my main page, displaying my latest tweets. However, within a few minutes of it going live, I clicked through my tweets and shockingly discovered that I did in fact come across as rather dull and sometimes just plain stupid! I have since removed it, you’ll be pleased to know.

This prompted me to analyse a number of tweets, not only from myself, but from my other contacts and, although it’s a great way to keep abreast of what they are thinking or doing, the banality of the majority of the posts is quite evident! In fact, one member of my family, who shall remain nameless, frequently twitters about being bored. I mean, how dull do you want to get?

My tweets are generally for the consumption of friends and family and, as I have a reputation for blurting out anything that enters my deranged mind, it’s a great way of playing to my audience, and good fun to boot! And that’s part of the problem; it’s like thinking aloud, and can become a little self-indulgent at times. As soon as something you deem to be interesting happens, you grab your phone and type away, with little thought about any consequences of what you’re saying. It’s far too easy and addictive.

However, as I have now acquired new followers, some of whom are business contacts, it’s forcing me to actually think before I twitter, in case I really do say something stupid! As such, some of my tweets are now work related (yawn), ironically making me sound even duller than before.

It makes you wonder though how your use of Twitter might affect your reputation with your contacts who barely know you. In fact, I wonder what opinion they have of me already? A worrying thought :)

If you really must, my twitter page is here.

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The Innovative Technologies Centre, the people behind the Wow Academy, approached me to develop a VR demonstrator that they could show off to their funding partners, which include Yorkshire Forward and the LSE. It was to be used as part of an overall demonstration to secure further funding for future projects.

After discussions with the client on the project specification, it was decided to base the demo on the Apollo 11 lunar landing, utilising immersive VR technology. This particular theme was chosen as it would be the first project to be fully developed should funding be secured.

The major challenge with the project was the tight time constraints imposed (3 weeks!). Within this time period I had to develop a basic game engine, create the 3D assets, and add in hardware support for various VR peripherals, amongst other tasks - A tall order for any developer!

Various open-source SDK’s were utilised in the development of the game engine, including the Ogre3D graphics SDK, the ODE physics library and the OpenAL audio API.

For the assets I decided to scour Turbosquid for suitable 3D models, and found a highly detailed pack designed by the excellent PerspectX. However, these high resolution models had to be converted for real-time use, as they were originally created for pre-rendered scenes. There was quite a bit of work with this alone, as it required polygon reduction and the re-working of the materials, utilising pixel and vertex shaders.

After 3 weeks of (very) hard work, the project was completed on time and budget. The client was delighted with the results, especially considering the short time scale. I celebrated by having a full nights sleep… and then some :)

You can view more screenshots of the project in the portfolio section.

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Those astute of you will have noticed that my site is undergoing some changes. It’s becoming more of a portfolio, as it’s time I re-branded myself. :)

It’s long overdue actually, as I’ve noticed some very prominent people starting to take an interest in me, so I need to tidy up around here and be all grown up - only a bit mind.

The site is still in a state of transition, and some sections will still be broken; so please bear with me for a little longer…

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Our local MP, Mr. Mike Wood, has written on my behalf to the Head of Learning at our local (Kirklees) council, seeking further information about the school fingerprinting debacle.

The letter he received in reply was quite interesting! They explain that they “require schools to consult with parents who in turn have to give their agreement for their child to have their fingerprint recorded and used”.

The letter then goes on to explain that they contacted the Head teacher of Birkenshaw First School, who assured them that parental consent was sought. No consent was ever sought, never mind any sort of consultation with parents! The head teacher has blatantly lied to them!

I have already written to the council explaining the situation, so let’s see what happens. Nothing much I suspect, as I feel there’s a lot of arse covering going on.
Oops… I mentioned the name of the school now. Too late… :)

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